LAST UPDATE | 19 Oct
ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu has accused militant group Hezbollah of trying to assassinate him, with the Middle East already on edge after Israel had vowed retaliation for an Iranian missile barrage.
Netanyahu’s office said a drone was launched toward his residence in the central town of Caesarea on Saturday but he and his wife were not home at the time and there were no injuries.
“The attempt by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah to assassinate me and my wife today was a grave mistake,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
“Anyone who tries to harm Israel’s citizens will pay a heavy price,” he said in comments to Tehran and “its proxies”, which include Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a group Israel has been at war with since late September.
Israel’s military early Saturday reported a drone from Lebanon had “hit a structure” in Caesarea. The military statement, however, did not specify if the hit structure was the prime minister’s home.
While fighting a two-front war, in Lebanon and in Gaza, Israel has also vowed to respond to Iran’s October 1 missile barrage with a “deadly, precise and surprising,” attack, according to Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
On its southern front, Israel hammered Gaza with airstrikes, with an overnight raid on Jabalia in the north killing 33 people according to Gaza’s civil defence agency.
Throughout the morning, sirens blared in Israel as Lebanese militants Hezbollah launched projectiles from various locations.
The group said it fired a large salvo of advanced rockets at a military base in the Haifa region of northern Israel.
Late last month Israel dramatically stepped up its airstrikes on Lebanon and sent in ground forces after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges.
In Gaza, the fighting came after the killing on Wednesday of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, accused of masterminding the 7 October attack on Israel, which had raised hopes of an end to the war and the release of Israeli hostages.
On Friday, Qatar-based Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya reiterated the Palestinian group’s position that no hostages would be freed “unless the aggression against our people in Gaza stops”.
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose country is also a key backer of Hamas, said the group “will not end at all with the martyrdom of Sinwar”.
With fighting raging in Gaza, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal announced “33 deaths and dozens of wounded” in an Israeli strike Jabalia overnight.
The Israeli military said it was “looking into it”.
Early today, three houses in the Jabalia refugee camp were targeted, the agency said, while witnesses told AFP there was heavy gunfire and artillery shelling in the direction of the camp.
#Gaza: another attack on an @UNRWA school. This time in Jabalia, north of the Strip.
— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) October 18, 2024
Scores of people reported killed, among them too many children who were sheltering in the building.
This is the third such attack on UNRWA facilities this week alone.
Meanwhile, I received…
The head of the UN aid agency in Palestine, Philippe Lazzarini, said yesterday that yet another attack on an UNRWA school killed “scores” of people.
“Scores of people reported killed, among them too many children who were sheltering in the building,” he said in a post on X.
“This is the third such attack on UNRWA facilities this week alone.”
He also said he received “the most grim of updates that more UNRWA team members have been killed bringing the death toll to 231 since the war began just over a year ago”.
“While we hear that delivery of aid will increase, people in Gaza are not feeling any difference. They continue to be trapped, hungry and sick often under heavy bombardment.
“A report from the UN warns that the population classified under “catastrophic” levels of hunger is expected to triple in the coming months. Time for political will and courage to end this brutal war.”
Israeli forces have been concentrating their efforts on northern Gaza in recent days, saying Hamas was regrouping there.
Witnesses also reported Israeli shelling in central Gaza’s Al-Bureij camp.
“We always thought that when this moment arrived, the war would end and our lives would return to normal,” 21-year-old Gazan Jemaa Abu Mendi said, referring to Sinwar’s death in the territory’s far south.
“But unfortunately, the reality on the ground is quite the opposite. The war has not stopped, and the killings continue unabated.”
Health authorities in Gaza said Israeli forces surrounded and shelled the Indonesian Hospital in the territory’s northern town of Beit Lahia at dawn today.
“Israeli tanks have completely surrounded the hospital, cut off electricity and shelled the hospital, targeting the second and third floors with artillery,” said the facility’s director, Marwan Sultan.
“There are serious risks to medical staff and patients.”
In a statement, Gaza’s health ministry also said Israel had targeted the upper floors, adding there were “more than 40 patients and wounded in addition to the medical staff” present.
“Heavy gunfire” towards the hospital and its courtyard had sparked a “state of great panic” among patients and staff, it added.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said today more than 400 Palestinians were killed in the north of the territory over the past two weeks.
“We have recovered more than 400 martyrs from the various targeted areas in the northern Gaza Strip, including Jabalia and its camp, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, since the start of the military operation by the occupation army” on October 6, Gaza civil defence agency spokesman, Mahmud Bassal, told AFP.
Israel launched a new offensive in northern Gaza earlier this month, saying it was targeting Hamas fighters who were regrouping there.
The health ministry in Gaza said today that at least 42,519 people have been killed since October.
The UN humanitarian affairs agency on Friday continued “to sound the alarm about the increasingly dire and dangerous situation that civilians in northern Gaza are facing. Families there are trying to survive in atrocious conditions, under heavy bombardment.”
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