DEIR AL BARAHA, Gaza Strip (AP) – A Hezbollah drone attack on a military base in central Israel killed four soldiers and seriously injured seven others Sunday, the military said, prompting Israel to threaten a ground invasion. The military said it was the worst attack by insurgents since the outbreak began. Almost two weeks ago in Lebanon.
Lebanon-based Hezbollah claimed the attack near the city of Binyamina was retaliation for the Israeli attack on Beirut on Thursday that killed 22 people. It then targeted Israel’s elite Golani Brigade and announced it had captured Israel’s air defense system by firing dozens of missiles during an attack by a squadron of unmanned aircraft.
Israel’s National Rescue Service said 61 people were injured in the attack. Due to Israel’s sophisticated air defense system, it is unusual for drones and missiles to injure so many people. Since the war in Gaza began, Hezbollah and Israel have engaged in near-daily firefights and fighting has intensified.
At least 20 people, including children at a school, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip on Sunday night, according to two local hospitals. The school in Nuseirat sheltered some of the many Palestinians displaced by the war.
Meanwhile, an explosion occurred outside Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah early on Monday morning. The tent went up in flames, sending dozens of people into a panic, with some rushing the injured to hospitals.
Hezbollah’s deadly attack on Israel came on the same day the United States announced it would send Israel a new air defense system and the troops needed to operate it to strengthen its defenses against missiles. An Israeli military spokesperson declined to provide dates.
Israel is currently at war with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both Iranian-backed extremist groups, and are expected to attack Iran in retaliation for a missile attack earlier this month. Iran said it would respond to any Israeli attack.
Prime Minister Netanyahu calls UN peacekeepers Hezbollah’s ‘human shield’
UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, said Israeli tanks forced their way into the gates of one of their positions early Sunday, destroying the main gate and then firing smoke grenades near the peacekeepers, causing skin irritation. announced that it had been caused. UNIFIL called the incident “a further serious violation of international law.”
Since the start of ground operations in Lebanon, Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on UN peacekeepers, prompting international criticism. Five peacekeepers were injured in attacks on their respective positions, most of which were attributed to Israeli forces.
The military claims, without providing evidence, that Hezbollah operates in close proximity to peacekeepers.
The Israeli military said on Sunday that tanks attempting to evacuate wounded soldiers had retreated into a UN camp while coming under fire. He said a smoke screen was used for cover.
Army spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani insisted that Israel seeks to maintain continuous contact with UNIFIL and that all cases of harm to UN forces will be investigated at the “highest level.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on UNIFIL to heed Israel’s evacuation advisory and accused Israel of “providing a human shield” to Hezbollah.
“We deplore the injury to UNIFIL soldiers and are doing everything in our power to prevent this injury. However, the simple and obvious way to ensure this is to simply remove them from the danger zone.” he said in a video addressed to the United Nations Secretary-General, who is banned from entering Israel.
Israel has long accused the United Nations of being biased against it, and relations have deteriorated further since the start of the Gaza war.
Israel’s attack on Lebanon destroys Ottoman-era market
Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel on October 7, 2023, the day after Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel and carried out retaliatory airstrikes. The conflict escalated in September with Israeli air strikes that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and most of his senior commanders.
Israel launched a ground operation earlier this month. More than 1,400 people have been killed in Lebanon since September, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, but it does not say how many of them were Hezbollah fighters. At least 58 people were killed in rocket attacks on Israel, nearly half of them soldiers.
An overnight Israeli airstrike destroyed an Ottoman-era market in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh, killing at least one person and injuring four others.
“All our livelihoods have been leveled,” said Ahmad Fakih, whose store was destroyed. Rescuers searched the pancake-shaped building as Israeli drones soared overhead.
The Israeli military said it had struck Hezbollah targets and continued targeting the militants on Sunday, without providing details.
Separately, the Lebanese Red Cross said emergency workers were searching for injured people in a house destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon, with four paramedics suffering concussions in the second airstrike. , two ambulances were damaged.
The Red Cross said the operation was coordinated with U.N. peacekeepers, who informed the Israeli side.
Bodies rot on the streets of northern Gaza
Israel continues to attack suspected militant targets in the Gaza Strip on an almost daily basis. The military said it was trying to avoid harming civilians and blamed civilian deaths on Hamas and other armed groups operating in populated areas.
In northern Gaza, Israeli air force and ground forces are attacking Jabaliya, where the military says militants have rallied. Over the past year, Israeli troops have repeatedly returned to refugee camps and other areas built dating back to the 1948 war over the creation of Israel.
Israel has ordered a complete evacuation of northern Gaza, including Gaza City. An estimated 400,000 people remain in the north after mass evacuations were ordered in the first weeks of the war.
Palestinians fear that Israel seeks to permanently depopulate the north in order to establish military bases and Jewish settlements there.
The United Nations has announced that no food has entered northern Gaza since October 1.
The military confirmed that hospitals were also included in the evacuation order, but did not set a schedule and said it was working with local authorities to facilitate the transfer of patients.
Fares Abu Hamza, an official with Gaza’s health ministry’s emergency services, said the bodies of “numerous martyrs” remained unrecovered on the streets and under rubble.
“We can’t contact them,” he said, claiming that dogs were eating parts of the bodies.
The war began a year ago with an attack by Hamas-led militants that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250 others. About 100 hostages are still being held in Gaza, and a third are believed to be dead.
Israel’s shelling and ground invasion of Gaza has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians and left much of the territory in ruins, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between militants and civilians, but says more than half of the dead are women and children.
Israel claims, without providing evidence, that it has killed more than 17,000 fighters.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Kareem Chehayeb and Abby Sewell in Beirut, Natalie Meltzer in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Wafa Shurafa in Deir Al Bala contributed to this report.
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For more of AP’s war coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
