JERUSALEM (AP) – The Israeli government said Saturday that a drone targeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home, causing no casualties. The attack comes as fighting between Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, and Hamas, based in Gaza, continues unabated after the killing of the mastermind behind the tragic incident on October 7 last year.
The Israeli military said dozens of projectiles had been fired from Lebanon as sirens wailed. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said a drone targeted his home in the Mediterranean city of Caesarea, but neither he nor his wife were there.
Israeli security forces secure a road near where the Israeli government said a drone was fired at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea, Israel, Saturday, October 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariel Shalit)
Hezbollah did not claim responsibility for the drone attack, but said it had carried out several rocket attacks against northern and central Israel. The barrage comes as Israel appears to be responding to an attack on Iran earlier this month.
Israel then conducted at least three airstrikes on the southern outskirts of Beirut, known as Dahiyeh, a densely populated area where Hezbollah offices are located. The Israeli military said it was investigating the reported attack.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces opened fire on a hospital in the northern Palestinian enclave, killing more than 50 people, including children, in less than 24 hours, according to hospital officials and an Associated Press reporter there.
“The possibility of war in the region remains a serious concern,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said during a visit to Turkey.
Concentration of artillery fire from Lebanon targeting northern Israel
The war between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, an ally of Iran and Hamas, is escalating. Hezbollah announced Friday that it plans to send more guided missiles into Israel and detonate a drone to begin a new phase of the fighting. The militant group’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike in September, and Israel sent ground troops to Lebanon earlier this month.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that about 180 projectiles were fired from Lebanon. A 50-year-old man sitting in a car in northern Israel was killed by shrapnel and four others were injured, Israeli medical authorities said.
A rocket struck the northern city of Kiryat Ata, and Associated Press reporters saw burnt out cars and damaged buildings. Haifa region commander Itzik Bilet said nine people suffered minor injuries. Israeli fire authorities said they were battling multiple fires caused by missiles in the Shlomi area next to the Lebanese border.
Lebanese state news agency reported that an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in the eastern village of Baal-Uul killed five people, including the head of the nearby village of Somor. The Israeli military said it was investigating reports of attacks on buildings in the eastern Bekaa Valley.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry says an Israeli airstrike has killed two people in a vehicle collision on a highway north of Beirut.
Israel issues almost daily warnings to people in some parts of Lebanon to leave their buildings and villages. The fighting resulted in the evacuation of more than 1 million people, including approximately 400,000 children.
Israel also announced on Saturday that it had killed a second-in-command of Hezbollah in the southern town of Bint Jubeir. The military said Nasser Rashid was overseeing attacks against Israel.
Israeli forces attack Gaza as Hamas refuses to release hostages
Both Israel and Hamas have expressed opposition to an end to the war in Gaza following the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Shinwar was the mastermind behind a Hamas raid on Israel a year ago that killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped another 250.
On Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei said that while Sinwar’s death was a painful loss, “Hamas is alive and will continue to live.”
Hamas reiterated its position that the hostages taken from Israel a year ago would not be released until a ceasefire is established in the Gaza Strip and Israeli forces withdraw. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces would remain in Gaza to continue fighting until the hostages are freed and to prevent the severely weakened Hamas from rearming.
More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli retaliatory attacks in Gaza, local health officials say. Officials do not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but say more than half of the dead are women and children.
Further strikes took place in the Gaza Strip on Saturday. Palestinian telecommunications company Partel said on Facebook that the airstrikes had disrupted internet networks in northern Gaza.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said Israeli airstrikes hit the upper floors of the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya, causing panic as troops fired into the hospital building and courtyard. Several staff members at al-Awda Hospital in Jabaliya, north Gaza, were injured when a strike attacked the top floor of the building, the hospital said.
Three houses in Jabaliya were attacked on Friday night, killing at least 30 people, more than half of them women and children, said Fares Abu Hamza, head of the health ministry’s ambulance and emergency services. At least 80 people were injured.
In central Gaza, at least 10 people, including two children, were killed in an attack on a house in the town of Zawaida, according to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Eleven people, all from the same family, were killed in separate attacks in the Magaji refugee camp, the hospital said. Associated Press reporters counted bodies from both attacks.
A United Nations school sheltering displaced people in western Gaza City was also attacked, killing several people, according to the Hamas-run civil defense first response force.
The war has destroyed vast swathes of Gaza, with about 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people displaced and struggling to find food, water, medicine and fuel.
Some see hope after Sinwar’s death
Mr. Sinwar’s killing could change the dynamics of the war in Gaza, while Israel ramps up its offensive against Hezbollah with ground forces in southern Lebanon and airstrikes in other parts of the country.
Israel’s allies and exhausted Gaza residents expressed hope that Mr. Sinwar’s death would pave the way for an end to the fighting.
In Israel, families of hostages still held in Gaza have called on the Israeli government to use Mr. Sinwar’s killing as a means to restart negotiations to bring their loved ones home. About 100 hostages remain in Gaza, and Israel says at least 30 of them have died.
Israel had pledged to politically destroy Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and killing Shinwar was a top military priority. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in announcing the killing that “our war is not over yet.”
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Associated Press writers Jack Jeffrey in Ramallah, West Bank, and Bassem Mourou in Beirut contributed to this report.
