Middle East Wars: Israeli raids kill a family in Gaza and destroy a market in Lebanon

DEIR BALAH (Gaza Strip) – Palestinian medical officials said Sunday that an Israeli raid in Gaza killed a family of eight, including children. I fought Hamas in the north of the region and destroyed a century-old market in the south Lebanon While pursuing Hezbollah.

Israel is now at war with Iranian-backed armed groups, and is expected to strike Iran in response to a missile attack earlier this month. Although he did not say how or when. Iran said it would respond to any Israeli attack.

In other developments, the United States announced that it would do so Sending a new air defense system to Israel To help enhance its protection against missiles.

A year into the war with Hamas, Israel continues to strike what it says are armed targets in Gaza almost every day. The strike late Saturday hit a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing the parents and their six children, ages 8 to 23, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah. An Associated Press reporter counted the bodies there.

Muhammad Abu Ghali, the man’s brother, said: “They were safe while he was sleeping, and he and all his children died.” The women beat the body bags with tears.

The Israeli military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas and other armed groups because they operate in densely populated areas.

Netanyahu describes UN peacekeepers as a “human shield” for Hezbollah

International criticism is increasing after Israeli forces opened fire repeatedly United Nations peacekeeping forces Since the start of the ground operation in Lebanon. The army says Hezbollah is operating around peacekeepers without providing evidence.

The peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL said Israeli tanks forcefully entered the gates of one of its sites early Sunday and destroyed the main gate, then later fired smoke shells near the peacekeepers at that site, causing skin irritation. UNIFIL said the incident was “another flagrant violation of international law.”

Israeli strikes resulted in the injury of five peacekeepers in recent days.

The Israeli army said that a tank trying to evacuate wounded soldiers retreated to a UN position while coming under fire. A smoke screen was used to provide cover, she said.

Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani confirmed that Israel tried to maintain continuous contact with UNIFIL and that any case in which UN forces were harmed would be investigated at the “highest level.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on UNIFIL forces to heed Israel’s warnings to evacuate, accusing them of “providing a human shield” to Hezbollah.

“We regret that the UNIFIL soldiers were injured, and we are doing everything we can to prevent this injury. But the simple and obvious way to ensure this is to simply remove them from the danger zone.” Who was banned from entering Israel.

Israel has long accused the United Nations of bias against it, and relations have deteriorated further since the beginning of the war in Gaza. Israel accused the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) of infiltrating the Hamas movement. Charges that the agency denies.

Bodies rot in the streets of northern Gaza

In northern Gaza, Israeli air and ground forces are attacking Jabalia, where the army says militants have regrouped. Over the past year, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to the refugee camp built in 1938. The 1948 war surrounding the establishment of Israeland other fields.

Israel ordered the complete evacuation of the northern Gaza Strip, including Gaza City. An estimated 400,000 people remain in the north after mass evacuation orders in the first weeks of the war. The Palestinians fear that Israel is intent on doing so Evacuate the north permanently To establish military bases or Jewish settlements there.

The United Nations says no food has entered northern Gaza since October 1.

The army confirmed that hospitals were included in the evacuation orders, but said it had not set a timetable and was working with local authorities to facilitate the transfer of patients.

Fares Abu Hamza, emergency service official at the Ministry of Health in Gaza, said that the bodies of “a large number of martyrs” had still not been recovered from the streets and under the rubble.

“We are unable to reach them,” he told the AP, saying dogs were eating some of the remains.

The war has begun When Hamas-led militants stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapping about 250. About 100 hostages They remain detained in GazaIt is believed that a third of him died.

The Israeli bombing and ground invasion of Gaza led to the deaths of more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Much of the land was left in ruins. The ministry does not differentiate between militants and civilians, but says that women and children constitute more than half of the deaths. Israel says it killed more than 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.

Israeli air strikes destroy an Ottoman-era market in Lebanon

Israeli air strikes destroyed an Ottoman-era market in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh overnight, killing at least one person and wounding four others. The Lebanese Civil Defense said that it fought fires in 12 residential buildings and 40 shops in the market dating back to 1910.

“All our livelihoods have been destroyed,” said Ahmed Fakih, whose shop was destroyed.

The Israeli army said it struck Hezbollah targets, without elaborating.

Rescuers searched the destroyed buildings while Israeli drones flew overhead. Nabatieh was one of dozens of population centers in southern Lebanon that Israel warned of evacuation.

Lebanese Hezbollah, allied with Hamas, began firing rockets into Israel on October 8, 2023, triggering retaliatory airstrikes. The conflict escalated dramatically last September after Israeli raids led to the killing of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of its senior commanders. Israel launched a ground operation earlier this month.

Separately, the Lebanese Red Cross said paramedics were searching for victims in a house destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon on Sunday, when a second strike left four paramedics with concussions and damaged two ambulances.

The Red Cross said that the operation was coordinated with the United Nations peacekeeping forces, which informed the Israeli side.

The Israeli military said it continued to target Hezbollah in Lebanon on Sunday, and reported rocket fire at northern Israel throughout the day, with at least 115 rockets fired from Lebanon. It added that two soldiers were seriously injured in a barrage of anti-tank missiles in Lebanon.

At least 2,255 people have been killed in Lebanon since the beginning of the conflict, including more than 1,400 since September, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, which did not mention the number of Hezbollah fighters. At least 54 people were killed in rocket attacks on Israel, nearly half of them soldiers.

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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Karim Chehayeb in Beirut and Natalie Melzer in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.

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Find out more AP war coverage on https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.