Drone strike launched at Netanyahu’s house as Israel attacks hospitals in Gaza – National
JERUSALEM (AP) – The Israeli government said a plane was targeted at the prime minister’s home on Saturday, although no one was killed, as Iran’s supreme leader vowed to continue the fight against Hamas following the killing of the cleric in an attack last year on October 7.
Bells rang in Israel warning of fire from Lebanon. The military said dozens of projectiles were launched. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the plane was headed for his home in the Mediterranean coastal city of Caesarea, although neither he nor his wife were home.
The scandal comes as Israel considers how it is expected to respond to Iran’s attack earlier this month and clamp down on Hamas militants in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In Gaza, Israeli soldiers opened fire on hospitals in the occupied northern Palestinian territory, and strikes in the line killed more than 50 people, including children, in less than 24 hours, according to hospital officials and an Associated Press reporter there.
In September, Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired a missile at Ben Gurion Airport as Netanyahu’s plane landed. The arrow was caught.
Boats from Lebanon headed for northern Israel
In addition to the missiles launched at Netanyahu’s residence, the Israeli military said about 180 projectiles were fired throughout the day from Lebanon on Saturday morning. A 50-year-old man died after being hit by explosives while sitting in his car in northern Israel, and four people were injured, Israeli health officials said.
In the northern town of Kiryat Ata, sirens rang out as people ran for cover and rockets exploded in the sky. One rocket landed in the area, and Associated Press reporters saw burned cars and a damaged building. Itzik Billet, a commander in the Haifa area, said nine people were slightly injured.
Israeli firefighters also said they were battling several flare-ups caused by missiles in the Shlomi area, less than a kilometer (kilometer) from the Lebanese border.
Israel’s war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah – which is allied with Iran-backed Hamas – has intensified in recent weeks. Hezbollah said on Friday it plans to launch a new phase of combat by sending missiles and drones to Israel. The terrorist group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in late September, and Israel sent ground troops to Lebanon in early October.
On Saturday, the Israeli army issued new evacuation warnings for two buildings in the southern Beirut neighborhood of Haret Hriek. Israel has issued daily warnings for people to leave buildings and villages across parts of Lebanon. The war has displaced more than a million people, including about 400,000 children.
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Israel also said on Saturday it had killed a Hezbollah deputy commander in the southern town of Bint Jbeil. The army said Nasser Rashid directed the attack on Israel.
In Lebanon, the health ministry said an Israeli airstrike on Saturday hit a car on a highway north of Beirut, killing two people. It was not clear who was in the car when it was hit.
Israel attacks Gaza as Hamas refuses to release hostages
There are also tensions between Israel and Hamas, which is fighting in Gaza, with both showing resistance to ending the war after the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar this week.
On Friday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Sinwar’s death was a tragic loss but noted that Hamas had continued despite the killing of other Palestinian terrorist leaders before him.
“Hamas is alive and will continue to live,” Khamenei said in his first comment on the killing.
Since Israel said Sinwar was dead on Thursday, which was confirmed by a senior Hamas official on Friday, Hamas has reiterated that Israeli hostages from last year will not be released until there is a ceasefire in Gaza and the withdrawal of Israeli forces. The position reversed Netanyahu’s statement that his country’s military would continue to fight until the hostages were released, and would remain in Gaza to prevent a weakened Hamas from re-arming.
Sinwar was a key architect of the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that killed around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapped another 250. Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, which do not distinguish between soldiers and civilians. but we say that more than half of the dead are women and children.
Other strikes hit Gaza on Saturday. The Ministry of Health in Palestine said in a statement that Israeli strikes hit the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya, and the forces opened fire on the hospital building and its courtyard, causing panic among patients and health workers.
At the Al-Awda Hospital in Jabaliya, north of Gaza, strikes hit the top floor of the building, injuring many workers, the hospital said in a statement. Three houses in Jabaliya were hit overnight on Friday, killing at least 30 people, more than half of whom were women and children, said Fares Abu Hamza, head of the health and emergency department. At least 80 people were injured.
In central Gaza, at least ten people, including two children, were killed when a house was hit in the town of Zawayda, according to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where the dead were taken. Another strike killed 11 people, all from the same family, in the Maghazi refugee camp, the hospital said. Associated Press reporters counted the bodies of both hospital strikes.
A United Nations school sheltering homeless people west of Gaza City has been attacked again, killing many people, according to first responders from the Hamas defense organization.
The strikes have disrupted internet connectivity in northern Gaza, Paltel, a Palestinian telecommunications company, said on Facebook on Saturday.
The war has devastated much of Gaza, displacing nearly 90 percent of its 2.3 million people, leaving them struggling for food, water, medicine and fuel.
Chance at Sinwar’s death
Sinwar’s killing was seen as an opportunity to meet with the Israeli military on Wednesday, and could change the dynamics of the war in Gaza as Israel pressures Hezbollah with ground troops in southern Lebanon and airstrikes in other parts of the country. .
Israel has pledged to destroy Hamas politically in Gaza, and killing Sinwar was a military priority. But Netanyahu said in a speech on Thursday announcing the killings that “our fight is not over.”
Still, Israel’s allied governments and weary Gazans expressed hope that Sinwar’s death would pave the way for an end to the fighting.
In Israel, families of hostages still being held in Gaza want the Israeli government to use Sinwar’s killing as a way to restart negotiations to bring their loved ones home. About 100 hostages remain in Gaza, at least 30 of whom Israel says have died.
Associated Press reporters Jack Jeffery in Ramallah, West Bank and Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Lebanon contributed to this report.
