Since late September, Israel has been engaged in a full-scale war against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, while fighting continues against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which started the Gaza war by attacking Israel on October 7. last.

The war has threatened to spread further after Israel and Iran have attacked each other in recent months. Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday vowed a further response to attacks against the Islamic republic and its allies.

Since October 6, Israeli forces have carried out a major air and ground assault in northern Gaza, centered on the Jabalia area, vowing to halt attempts by Hamas militants to regroup.

“The situation unfolding in northern Gaza is apocalyptic,” said a joint statement by the heads of UN agencies.

“The area has been under siege for nearly a month, denied basic aid and rescue supplies, while shelling and other attacks continue,” the heads of humanitarian, health and other agencies said.

“The entire Palestinian population in northern Gaza is at imminent risk of death from disease, starvation and violence.”

Witnesses said Israeli warplanes struck Beit Lahia, near Jabalia, twice overnight.

Deaths in Gaza

The Israeli military said on Saturday that dozens of militants were killed around Jabalia “in air and ground activities”.

Troops were also operating in central Gaza and Rafah in the far south of the territory, it added, while witnesses said Israeli drones and boats opened fire on Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza.

Gaza civil defense medics and rescuers reported three people killed in a strike on Nuseirat in central Gaza on Saturday, a day after AFP images showed the blood-stained shrouds of several people killed there in an Israeli attack.

After nearly a year of tit-for-tat exchanges across Israel’s northern border, which Hezbollah said were in support of Hamas, Israel escalated its bombing campaign against targets in Lebanon on September 23 and subsequently sent ground troops.

Since then, Hezbollah has pulled deeper into Israel.

A strike in Israel’s Sharon area, north of Tel Aviv, wounded 19 people, police said early Saturday, after the military reported that three projectiles had been fired from Lebanon into central Israel.

Four of the wounded were in “moderate condition,” Israeli police said.

Hezbollah said it fired rockets again at Israel’s Glilot intelligence base near Tel Aviv.

AFP images from Tira, a predominantly Arab city about 25 kilometers (15 miles) northeast of Tel Aviv, showed the top wall blown out of what appeared to be a residential building.

Several cars below were crushed.

Israel’s military said a strike around the southern Lebanese city of Tire on Friday killed two fighters “responsible for firing more than 400 projectiles at Israel in the past month alone.”

On Friday evening, the Ministry of Health in Lebanon announced that 52 people were killed in Israeli attacks in the east of the country, attacks for which the Israeli army did not issue evacuation warnings.

Since the war escalated, Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,911 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of Health Ministry figures.

Drone attacks

The Israeli military says 37 soldiers have been killed in Lebanon since it began ground operations on September 30.

According to Israeli figures, at least 63 people have been killed by the Israeli side since last October.

Fears that war could engulf the entire Middle East have intensified with eye-rolling between Israel and Iran.

On October 26, Israel bombed military targets in Iran, killing four soldiers, in retaliation for the Islamic republic’s barrage of about 200 missiles against Israel on October 1. Iran said the dam was itself retaliation for the killing of top militants and a general. in the Revolutionary Guards.

“The enemies, both the US and the Zionist regime, should know that they will certainly receive a heartbreaking response to what they are doing against Iran, the Iranian nation and the resistance front,” said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

He was referring to Iran-aligned groups, which also include those in Yemen, Iraq and Syria.

Analysts say Israel has inflicted serious damage on Iran’s air defenses and missile capabilities and may yet launch larger-scale actions against Iran.

On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had intercepted three drones over the Red Sea, after reporting on Friday evening that seven drones had been launched from “multiple fronts”.

Later on Saturday, pro-Iranian Iraqi groups said they had carried out a drone attack on the southern Israeli port city of Eilat.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have repeatedly attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea, are turning into a “powerful military organization” thanks to “unprecedented” military support from outside sources, notably Iran and Hezbollah, according to a report UN published. Friday.

On Friday, the Pentagon announced the deployment of additional assets to the Middle East, including ballistic missile defense destroyers and long-range B-52 bombers, as a warning to Iran.

The capabilities will begin rolling out “in the coming months,” a Pentagon spokesman said.

The October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas killed 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Israel’s military campaign of revenge has killed 43,259 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-ruled territory’s Ministry of Health, which the UN considers reliable.

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© 2024 AFP