JERUSALEM: Israel said a drone targeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence on Saturday, as Hezbollah launched a barrage of projectiles into Israel from its northern neighbor Lebanon.
On the southern front, Israel hammered Gaza with air strikes, with an overnight raid on Jabalia in the north killing 33 people, according to the besieged civil defense agency.
Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister and his wife were not at their residence in the central town of Caesarea during the drone attack and there were no injuries. Earlier, the military said a drone launched from Lebanon had “hit a structure” in Caesarea.
Sirens blared across Israel throughout the morning as Hezbollah fired projectiles from various locations in Lebanon.
The Iran-backed group said it launched a large salvo of advanced rockets at a military base in Israel’s Haifa region.
A man in the northern Israeli port city of Acre died after being struck by shrapnel, the Magen David Adom emergency service said, while shrapnel also wounded five people in the Haifa city of Kiryat Ata.
Late last month Israel ramped up air strikes on Lebanon and deployed ground forces after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges.
The fighting in Gaza came after the Israeli military killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on Wednesday.
Sinwar, accused of masterminding the October 7 attack on Israel, was seen as pivotal to ending the Gaza war and securing the release of Israeli hostages.
On Friday, Qatar-based Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya reiterated no hostages would be freed “unless the aggression against our people in Gaza stops.”
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose country also backs Hamas, said the group “will not end at all with the martyrdom of Sinwar.”
As fighting raged in Gaza, civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal announced “33 deaths and dozens of wounded” in an Israeli strike on the northern area of Jabalia overnight.
The Israeli military said it was “looking into it.”
Early on Saturday, three houses in the Jabalia refugee camp were targeted, the civil defense agency said, while witnesses told AFP there was heavy gunfire and shelling in the direction of the camp.
Israeli forces have focused their attacks on northern Gaza, where they say Hamas is regrouping.
Witnesses also reported Israeli shelling in central Gaza’s Al-Bureij camp.
Israeli forces, accused of targeting health facilities, were shelling Indonesian Hospital in north Gaza, medics there said.
The violence has dashed hopes Sinwar’s death might bring the war closer to an end.
“We always thought that when this moment arrived, the war would end and our lives would return to normal,” 21-year-old Gazan Jemaa Abu Mendi said.
“But unfortunately, the reality on the ground is quite the opposite. The war has not stopped, and the killings continue unabated.”
Netanyahu said that while Sinwar’s killing did not spell the end of the war, it was “the beginning of the end.”
US President Joe Biden, along with the leaders of Germany, France and Britain, urged “the immediate necessity to bring the hostages home to their families, for ending the war in Gaza, and ensure humanitarian aid reaches civilians.”
In August, Netanyahu called Sinwar “the only obstacle to a hostage deal.”
Ayala Metzger, daughter-in-law of killed hostage Yoram Metzger, said with Sinwar dead it was “unacceptable” that hostages remained in captivity.
An Israeli autopsy found Sinwar was initially wounded in the arm by shrapnel, but killed by a gunshot to the head, the New York Times reported. The circumstances of the shot remain unclear.
Hamas sparked the war in Gaza with its October 7 attack last year that resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
During the attack, militants took 251 hostages back into Gaza. Ninety-seven are still being held there, including 34 who the Israeli military has confirmed are dead.
Israel’s campaign to crush Hamas and bring back the hostages has killed 42,519 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the UN considers reliable.
A conservative estimate puts the death toll among children in Gaza at over 14,100, said James Elder, spokesman for the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF.
For the one million children in the besieged territory, “Gaza is the real-world embodiment of hell on Earth,” he said.
Criticism has been mounting over the civilian toll and lack of food and aid reaching Gaza, where the UN has warned of famine.
There is also growing concern about the toll in Lebanon, where Israel is fighting a war with Hamas ally Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s health ministry said two people were killed in an Israeli strike on a vital highway north of Beirut on Saturday.
Since late September, the war has left at least 1,418 people dead in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real toll is likely higher.
The war has also drawn in other Iran-aligned armed groups, including in Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
On Friday and Saturday, the Israeli military reported drones being launched from Syria.
Iran conducted a missile strike on Israel on October 1, for which Israel has vowed to retaliate.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Saturday that the “possibility of war in the region is always serious.”
“We want to reduce tensions, but.. we are ready for any scenario.”
Netanyahu residence targeted by drone as Hezbollah launches barrage at Israel
https://arab.news/wng43
Netanyahu residence targeted by drone as Hezbollah launches barrage at Israel
- PM and wife not at residence in Caesarea during attack
- Two more drones that crossed into Israeli territory were intercepted
UN rights chief Shocked by ‘unbearable’ Darfur atrocities
- Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur
PORT SUDAN: Nearly three years of war have put the Sudanese people through “hell,” the UN’s rights chief said on Sunday, blasting the vast sums spent on advanced weaponry at the expense of humanitarian aid and the recruitment of child soldiers.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that has left tens of thousands of people dead and around 11 million displaced.
Speaking in Port Sudan during his first wartime visit, UN Human Rights commissioner Volker Turk said the population had endured “horror and hell,” calling it “despicable” that funds that “should be used to alleviate the suffering of the population” are instead spent on advanced weapons, particularly drones.
More than 21 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and two-thirds of Sudan’s population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid, according to the UN.
In addition to the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis, Sudan is also facing “the increasing militarization of society by all parties to the conflict, including through the arming of civilians and recruitment and use of children,” Turk added.
He said he had heard testimony of “unbearable” atrocities from survivors of attacks in Darfur, and warned of similar crimes unfolding in the Kordofan region — the current epicenter of the fighting.
Testimony of these atrocities must be heard by “the commanders of this conflict and those who are arming, funding and profiting from this war,” he said.
Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur.
“We must ensure that the perpetrators of these horrific violations face justice regardless of the affiliation,” Turk said on Sunday, adding that repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure could constitute “war crimes.”
He called on both sides to “cease intolerable attacks against civilian objects that are indispensable to the civilian population, including markets, health facilities, schools and shelters.”
Turk again warned on Sunday that crimes similar to those seen in El-Fasher could recur in volatile Kordofan, where the RSF has advanced, besieging and attacking several key cities.
Hundreds of thousands face starvation across the region, where more than 65,000 people have been displaced since October, according to the latest UN figures.
