A drone targets the Israeli prime minister's house during new barrages with Hezbollah
UNB
Publish: 20 Oct 2024, 01:50 PM
JERUSALEM,
Oct 20 (AP/UNB) - Israel's government said a drone targeted Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's house Saturday, with no casualties, as fighting with
Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Gaza -based Hamas showed no pause after the killing
of the Hamas mastermind of last year's Oct. 7 attack.
Israel's military said
dozens of projectiles were launched from Lebanon a day after Hezbollah
announced a new phase in fighting. Netanyahu's office said the drone targeted
his house in the Mediterranean coastal town of Caesarea. Neither he nor his wife
was there. It wasn't clear if the house was hit.
"The proxies of
Iran who today tried to assassinate me and my wife made a bitter mistake,"
Netanyahu said.
Hezbollah didn't claim
responsibility but said it carried out several rocket attacks on Israel. The
barrage came as Israel is expected to respond to an attack earlier this month
by Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas.
Israel in turn carried
out at least 10 airstrikes on Beirut's southern suburbs known as Dahiyeh, a
heavily populated area home to Hezbollah's offices, Lebanese authorities said.
Israel's military said it struck Hezbollah targets.
The U.S. defense
secretary, Lloyd Austin, called civilian casualties in Lebanon "far too
high" in the intensifying Israel-Hezbollah war and urged Israel to scale
back some strikes, especially in and around Beirut.
In Gaza, Israeli forces
fired at hospitals in the Palestinian enclave's battered north, and strikes
killed 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 while visiting Turkey. Group of Seven defense ministers
warned against escalation and "all-out war."
New exchange of
airstrikes
Israel's military said
about 200 projectiles were fired from Lebanon, a day after Hezbollah said it
planned to send more guided missiles and exploding drones. The militant group's
longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in
September, and Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon this month.
A 50-year-old man was
hit by shrapnel and killed in northern Israel, and four other people were
wounded, Israel's medical services said.
Lebanon's state-run
National News Agency said an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in eastern
Baaloul village killed five people, including the mayor of nearby Sohmor
village. An Israeli military official confirmed that the IDF struck targets in
the Bekaa Valley.
Lebanon's health
ministry said an Israeli airstrike hit a vehicle on a highway north of Beirut,
killing two people. Israel also said it killed Hezbollah's deputy commander in
the southern town of Bint Jbeil. The army said Nasser Rashid supervised attacks
against Israel.
Israel has issued
near-daily warnings for people to leave buildings and villages in parts of
Lebanon. The fighting has displaced more than 1 million people, including
around 400,000 children.
Israel drops leaflets
showing Sinwar's body
Israel's military on
Saturday dropped leaflets in southern Gaza showing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar
dead, blood running down his forehead. "Sinwar destroyed your lives,"
it said. "Whoever lays down his weapons and returns the kidnapped people to
us, we will allow him to leave and live in peace."
Sinwar was the chief
architect of the raid on Israel more than a year ago that killed about 1,200
people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped another 250. About 100 hostages remain
in Gaza.
Israel and Hamas have
signaled resistance to ending the war after Sinwar's killing. Hamas has
reiterated that the hostages won't be released until there is a cease-fire and
Israeli troops withdraw. Netanyahu says Israel's military will fight until the
hostages are released, and will remain in Gaza to prevent a severely weakened
Hamas from regrouping.
Israel's retaliatory
offensive in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local
health authorities, who don't distinguish combatants from civilians but say
more than half the dead are women and children.
More strikes pounded
Gaza on Saturday, and Palestinian communications company Paltel said they
knocked out internet networks in the north.
The Palestinian Health
Ministry said Israeli strikes hit the upper floors of the Indonesian Hospital
in Beit Lahiya, and forces opened fire at it, causing panic. The U.N. said two
patients died due to a power outage and lack of supplies in recent days.
Israel's military said
it was operating near the hospital and "there was no intentional fire
directed at it."
The military also said
it was looking into the matter after Al-Awda hospital in Jabaliya, northern
Gaza, said strikes hit the top floors, wounding several staff members. It later
said the military hit its ambulances and courtyard, wounding four people, including
a medic.
Three houses in Jabaliya
were struck overnight, killing at least 30 people, more than half women and
children, said Fares Abu Hamza, head of the health ministry's ambulance and
emergency service. At least 80 were wounded.
Palestinian residents
said Israel's military was forcing hundreds of displaced people to leave
Jabaliya and head to Gaza City.
"The occupation
evicted us at gunpoint," said Umm Sayed, a mother of three. "Tanks
and heavy armed forces were encircling us." She said many young men were
taken apparently for interrogation, and most were later released.
Israel's military
described it as an evacuation and said it detained militants for questioning.
A U.N. school sheltering
displaced people west of Gaza City was hit, killing several people, according
to the Hamas-run civil defense first responders.
"What is this?
There is a clinic and there are children," said Bashir Haddad, a displaced
person there, according to AP video. A boy collected body parts on a piece of
cardboard.
Elsewhere in central
Gaza, at least 10 people were killed, including two children, when a house was
hit in the town of Zawayda, according to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir
al-Balah. Another strike killed 11 people from the same family in the Maghazi
refugee camp, the hospital said.
The war has destroyed
vast swaths of Gaza, displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million
people, and left them struggling to find food, water, medicine and fuel.
END/UNB/AP/PR