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BEIRUT (AP) – Palestinians in northern Gaza on Saturday described heavy Israeli shelling that killed at least 22 people hours after an airstrike, as Israel began to attack people in the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon against Hamas and Hezbollah militants. He warned them not to get in the way of attacks on sect groups.
In Lebanon, U.N. peacekeepers said their headquarters in Nakoura was attacked again and a peacekeeper was shot late Friday but was in stable condition. It was not clear who fired the shots. The incident came a day after Israeli forces shelled the headquarters for the second consecutive day. Israel has warned peacekeepers to leave their positions, but did not immediately respond to questions.
Famine alarms have resurfaced in northern Gaza, with residents saying they have not received aid since the beginning of the month. The United Nations World Food Program said no food aid had been delivered to the north since October 1, and an estimated 400,000 people remained in the north.
The Israeli military resumed its offensive in northern Gaza nearly a week ago, while stepping up air and ground operations against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Amid the war between Israel and Hezbollah, U.N. official Karl Skau told The Associated Press he fears Lebanon’s ports and airports will be rendered unusable. More than 1 million people have been forced to live as evacuees.
The Israeli military said Hezbollah fired more than 300 projectiles on Yom Kippur, the holiest and solemn day in the Jewish calendar. Hezbollah claimed a series of rocket attacks on Israeli military positions and said its warplanes engaged Israeli infantry units attempting to enter Lebanese territory.
The Israeli army also announced that it had killed 50 insurgents in Lebanon. Neither side’s claims could be verified.
Israeli airstrikes on Saturday hit several areas in southern and eastern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health. Nine people were killed in the northeastern village of Mythra. Four people were killed in an apartment building in the suburb of Barha, south of Beirut. Rayak Hospital and Tal Chiha Hospital in the Bekaa Valley were damaged. Eight people were injured in Nabatiers.
The total number of deaths in Lebanon over the past year in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah now stands at 2,255, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health. More than 1,400 people have been killed since mid-September. It is not clear how many were combatants.
“We continue to stand with the Lebanese and Palestinian people in this difficult situation,” Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said Saturday while touring the site of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.
Some Gaza residents are trapped
In northern Gaza, residents say bombing has hampered emergency response and many people are running low on supplies and trapped in their homes or shelters, while seeing bodies left unrecovered on the streets. told the Associated Press.
People arriving at the scene of a recent deadly airstrike in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya found a 20-meter (65-foot) deep hole where a house once stood.
At least 20 bodies have been recovered, but others may have been trapped under debris, emergency officials said.
Elsewhere in Jabaliya, an attack on a house killed two brothers and injured a woman and her newborn baby, officials said. At least four people, including a woman, were killed in the afternoon attack on a house, said Fares Abu Hamza, an emergency services official.
The Israeli military said it had killed more than 20 insurgents in the past day in the Jabaliya area.
Military spokesman Avichai Adlai said Israel was “planning to use significant force for a long time to come” and ordered some residents of Jabaliya and Gaza City to move south into Israeli-designated humanitarian areas. told them to evacuate.
Israel has repeatedly returned to parts of the Gaza Strip as Hamas and other armed groups regroup. The war destroyed vast areas of Gaza and forced approximately 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million to flee multiple times.
Once again, some families moved south on foot, in donkey carts, or packed into cars that waded through piles of rubble. Others refused to go.
“It’s like the beginning of the war,” said Ahmed Abu Ghoneim, a resident of Jabaliya. “The occupation forces are doing everything to uproot us. But we will not leave.”
The 24-year-old said Israeli warplanes and drones had attacked many homes in his neighborhood over the past week. He counted 15 relatives and neighbors killed in nearby homes, including four women and five three-year-old children.
Hamza Sharif, who lives with his family in a school-turned-evacuation center in Jabaliya, described “constant bombing day and night.”
He said the shelter had not received any aid since the beginning of this month and that families “will soon be out of supplies.”
food is running out
The World Food Program said it was unclear how long the limited food supplies it had distributed to northern Gaza would last.
Last month, the UN’s independent inspector general on the right to food accused Israel of waging a “hunger campaign” against Palestinians, a charge Israel denies.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza began after a Hamas attack on October 7, in which the militants stormed into Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250 others.
More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish between fighters and civilians. The Gaza Ministry of Health announced that the bodies of 49 people killed in the past 24 hours have been received at hospitals.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with Israeli Defense Minister Yov Gallant on Saturday about reports that Israeli forces opened fire on a UN peacekeeping post in Lebanon and the deaths of two Lebanese soldiers. He expressed “deep concern.” According to a statement from the Department of Defense.
Austin said it was important to ensure the safety and security of UNIFIL forces and the Lebanese Armed Forces, and “stressed the need to shift from military operations in Lebanon to diplomatic channels as soon as possible,” the statement said.
The U.S. defense secretary also said steps must be taken to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza and reaffirmed the United States’ “unwavering, enduring and ironclad commitment to Israel’s security,” according to the statement.
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Sammy Magdy reported from Cairo. Jack Jeffrey in Jerusalem and Sam Metz in Rabat, Morocco contributed to this report.
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For more AP coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
