What Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza refugee camp says about IDF’s conduct, choice of weaponry

Special What Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza refugee camp says about IDF’s conduct, choice of weaponry
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Following the Christmas Eve airstrike on Maghazi refugee camp, which killed scores of Palestinians, Israel’s military called the bombing a ‘regrettable mistake’ caused by “an incorrect munition.” (AFP)
Special What Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza refugee camp says about IDF’s conduct, choice of weaponry
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Palestinians carry the dead body of a woman casualty in an Israeli strike on a house at Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on January 3, 2024. (REUTERS)
Special What Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza refugee camp says about IDF’s conduct, choice of weaponry
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Following the Christmas Eve airstrike on Maghazi refugee camp, which killed scores of Palestinians, Israel’s military called the bombing a ‘regrettable mistake’ caused by “an incorrect munition.” (AFP)
Special What Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza refugee camp says about IDF’s conduct, choice of weaponry
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​Palestinians injured in an Israeli airstrike on the al-Maghazi refugee camp, Gaza Strip, on Dec. 6, 2023, receive care at Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir Balah. (AFP)
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Displaced Palestinian children watch from inside a tent as a man mourns relatives killed in an overnight Israeli strike on the Al-Maghazi refugee camp on December 25, 2023. (AFP)
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Updated 07 January 2024
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What Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza refugee camp says about IDF’s conduct, choice of weaponry

What Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza refugee camp says about IDF’s conduct, choice of weaponry
  • The Christmas Eve airstrike on Maghazi refugee camp in Gaza killed scores of Palestinian civilians
  • Israeli authorities called the bombing a “regrettable mistake” due to the use of “an incorrect munition”

LONDON: Just hours before midnight on Christmas Eve, an Israeli airstrike on Maghazi refugee camp, east of Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, killed more than 70 people, including 12 women and seven children, according to figures from the nearby Al-Aqsa Hospital.

The UN estimates the strike killed at least 86, making it one of the single most deadly strikes of the entire war, devastating an overcrowded residential area and burying whole families under tons of rubble.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said that the work of rescue teams was further hindered by damage to roads between the camps of Bureij, Maghazi and Nuseirat. Shortages of fuel to power machinery also meant that rescuers had to search for survivors with their bare hands.




Palestinians mourn their relatives, killed in an overnight Israeli strike on the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, during a mass funeral at the Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, on December 25, 2023. (AFP)

Medecins Sans Frontieres tweeted on Dec. 25 that Deir Al-Balah’s Al-Aqsa Hospital had admitted 209 injured and 131 dead following Christmas Eve strikes on both Maghazi and Bureij.

Hamas, the Palestinian group that has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, described the attack as “a horrific massacre” and “a new war crime.” For its part, the Israeli government has called the bombing a “regrettable mistake” due to the use of “an incorrect munition.”

In a statement on Dec. 28, the Israel Defense Forces said that a preliminary investigation by a special committee revealed that the bombing had destroyed buildings that were not military targets, killing and injuring dozens of civilians.




Men recover the body of a victim killed in the aftermath of an overnight Israeli strike at al-Maghazi refugee camp on December 25, 2023. (AFP)

The Israeli military added that the “extensive collateral damage that could have been avoided” in Maghazi was due to the use of improper ordnance. “The type of munition did not match the nature of the attack,” an Israeli military official told the state-owned broadcaster Kan.

The IDF vowed “to draw lessons from the incident.” However, in an interview with Sky News on Dec. 29, Eylon Levy, an official Israeli spokesperson, said that his government refused to apologize for “waging this campaign to bring the Hamas terror regime to justice.”

He stressed that the “war against Hamas” would continue until the militant group surrendered and released the remaining hostages it took on Oct. 7, when it carried out brutal massacres and a series of kidnappings across southern Israel.

Hamas killed an estimated 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took 240 hostages, including many foreign nationals, 110 of whom were subsequently released in a series of hostage and prisoner swaps.

INNUMBERS

86 Number of people killed in the attack on Maghazi, with some estimates as high as 106.

33K People living in Maghazi refugee camp prior to the conflict, according to the UN.

0.6% Area of the densely populated Maghazi refugee camp

22K+ Death toll in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Levy described the killing of civilians in Maghazi as a “regrettable mistake,” adding that “mistakes” are “inevitable” in war.

Tahani Mustafa, a senior Palestine analyst at International Crisis Group, believes official statements like these are part of Israel’s preferred public relations strategy.

“It is the usual Israeli defense of ‘we made mistakes but didn’t mean to’ in order to mitigate the negative publicity Israel is increasingly receiving that is becoming harder to justify and cover up,” she told Arab News.

“They did what they did when they thought they could get away with it, and when they couldn’t, they made futile statements like this to mitigate any PR fallout.”




A picture taken from a position in southern Israel along the border with the Gaza Strip, shows smoke billowing over the Palestinian territory during Israeli bombardment on January 5, 2024. (AFP)

She added: “If previous experience is anything to go by, any internal investigation will be immediately dropped once public interest wanes.”

Furthermore, Maghazi is not the only refugee camp in Gaza to have suffered Israeli bombardment in recent weeks, with Bureij and Nuseirat also coming under fire. On Dec. 29 alone, Israeli bombing in central Gaza killed at least 100 Palestinians and injured 150 others.

Such attacks indicate that the mistakes acknowledged by the Israeli military and government officials are either commonplace, or that the IDF takes a cavalier approach to the lives of civilians and the potential for collateral damage.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has voiced concerns about the bombardment of central Gaza and its densely populated camps.




Israeli soldiers take up positions near the Gaza Strip border on Dec. 29, 2023, amid ongoing battles with the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AP Photo)

Founded in 1949, Maghazi originally had a population of about 2,500, which later grew to around 30,000, according to statistics from the UN Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA.

Today, owing to the displacement of Gazan families fleeing Israel’s assault, which has killed more than 22,000 people since Oct. 7, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, the camp’s population has climbed to about 100,000.

While the Christmas Eve strike was the deadliest in Maghazi’s history, it was by no means the first. Airstrikes on Oct. 17, Nov. 5 and Dec. 6 also pummeled the densely populated camp — once again testing the veracity of Israeli claims that the Dec. 24 strike was a one-off mistake.




In an earlier Israeli airstrike on the Maghazi refugee camp on December 6, 2023, most of the 18 Palestinians who died and 20 injured were children. (AFP photos)

The first strike in October hit an UNRWA-operated school, killing six people. The Hamas-run Health Ministry also reported that the November strikes killed at least 45 people. Reports from the Guardian and Al Jazeera said that the camp’s only bakery was also destroyed.

The Israeli military is continuing its ground offensive, despite international pleas for an immediate and lasting ceasefire. Calls from Washington to scale back its onslaught, or at least prioritize the preservation of civilian life, also appear to have been disregarded.

US President Joe Biden warned on Dec. 12 that owing to its “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, Israel was losing international support. Two days later, he told reporters that Israeli forces must “be focused on how to save civilian lives — not stop going after Hamas, but be more careful.”

The day after Christmas, IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari announced that Israeli forces had “expanded the combat to the area known as the Central Camps.”

Humanitarian organizations, UN agencies and many Western media outlets have confirmed that the Israeli military has been attacking areas that it had previously encouraged displaced Gazans to flee to and had designated as “safe.”

An analysis by CNN found that the IDF had carried out strikes in Rafah, which Israel had previously labeled as a safe zone for refugees.

The Dec. 21 report also showed that Israeli statements identifying “safe zones” or “danger zones” are often contradictory and confusing.

Given the disruption to electricity and telecommunications caused by the conflict, many Palestinians are unable to view maps delineating these zones, which can only be accessed using QR codes printed on leaflets.

Criticism of the IDF’s conduct in Gaza has not been reserved to the intensity of its air and ground raids but also its choice of weapons and ordnance.




Israeli soldiers prepare munitions near a self-propelled artillery howitzer in southern Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip on December 16, 2023. (AFP)

An investigation by The New York Times published on Dec. 21 found that the IDF has used US-supplied 2,000-pound bombs, which munitions experts say are unsuitable for use on densely populated areas.

These bombs were dropped in an area of southern Gaza where Israel had ordered civilians to move for their “safety,” the investigation revealed.

Those living in Maghazi can only hope for a pause in the fighting that will allow aid to enter the camp, which has been cut off from the surrounding region due to regular bombardment.

However, Herzi Halevi, the IDF’s chief of staff, has said that the offensive in Gaza will last “many more months.”

 


Israeli army orders Gaza City suburb evacuated, spurring new displacement wave

Israeli army orders Gaza City suburb evacuated, spurring new displacement wave
Updated 18 sec ago
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Israeli army orders Gaza City suburb evacuated, spurring new displacement wave

Israeli army orders Gaza City suburb evacuated, spurring new displacement wave
  • Israeli military blames Hamas rocket fire for renewed evacuation directive
  • Palestinians say hospitals in north Gaza barely functioning
CAIRO: The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders to residents in areas of an eastern Gaza City suburb, setting off a new wave of displacement on Sunday, and a Gaza hospital director was injured in an Israeli drone attack, Palestinian medics said.
The new orders for the Shejaia suburb posted by the Israeli army spokesperson on X on Saturday night were blamed on Palestinian militants firing rockets from that heavily built-up district in the north of the Gaza Strip.
“For your safety, you must evacuate immediately to the south,” the military’s post said. The rocket volley on Saturday was claimed by Hamas’ armed wing, which said it had targeted an Israeli army base over the border.
Footage circulated on social and Palestinian media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed residents leaving Shejaia on donkey carts and rickshaws, with others, including children carrying backpacks, walking.
Families living in the targeted areas began fleeing their homes after nightfall on Saturday and into Sunday’s early hours, residents and Palestinian media said — the latest in multiple waves of displacement since the war began 13 months ago.
In central Gaza, health officials said at least 10 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on the urban camps of Al-Maghazi and Al-Bureij since Saturday night.
Hospital director wounded by gunfire
In north Gaza, where Israeli forces have been operating against regrouping Hamas militants since early last month, health officials said an Israeli drone dropped bombs on Kamal Adwan Hospital, injuring its director Hussam Abu Safiya.
“This will not stop us from completing our humanitarian mission and we will continue to do this job at any cost,” Abu Safiya said in a video statement circulated by the health ministry on Sunday.
“We are being targeted daily. They targeted me a while ago but this will not deter us...,” he said from his hospital bed.
Israeli forces say armed militants use civilian buildings including housing blocks, hospitals and schools for operational cover. Hamas denies this, accusing Israeli forces of indiscriminately targeting populated areas.
Kamal Adwan is one of three hospitals in north Gaza that are barely operational as the health ministry said the Israeli forces have detained and expelled medical staff and prevented emergency medical, food and fuel supplies from reaching them.
In the past few weeks, Israel said it had facilitated the delivery of medical and fuel supplies and the transfer of patients from north Gaza hospitals in collaboration with international agencies such as the World Health Organization.
Residents in three embattled north Gaza towns — Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun — said Israeli forces had blown up hundreds of houses since renewing operations in an area that Israel said months ago had been cleared of militants.
Palestinians say Israel appears determined to depopulate the area permanently to create a buffer zone along the northern edge of Gaza, an accusation Israel denies.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,000 people, uprooted nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million population at least once, according to Gaza officials, while reducing wide swathes of the narrow coastal territory to rubble.
The war erupted in response to a cross-border attack by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023 in which gunmen killed around 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Iran to hold nuclear talks with three European powers in Geneva on Friday, Kyodo reports

Iran to hold nuclear talks with three European powers in Geneva on Friday, Kyodo reports
Updated 6 min ago
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Iran to hold nuclear talks with three European powers in Geneva on Friday, Kyodo reports

Iran to hold nuclear talks with three European powers in Geneva on Friday, Kyodo reports
  • A senior Iranian official confirmed that the meeting would go ahead next Friday

DUBAI: Iran plans to hold talks about its disputed nuclear program with three European powers on Nov. 29 in Geneva, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported on Sunday, days after the UN atomic watchdog passed a resolution against Tehran.
Iran reacted to the resolution, which was proposed by Britain, France, Germany and the United States, with what government officials called various measures such as activating numerous new and advanced centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium.
Kyodo said Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s government was seeking a solution to the nuclear impasse ahead of the inauguration in January of US President-elect Donald Trump.
A senior Iranian official confirmed that the meeting would go ahead next Friday, adding that “Tehran has always believed that the nuclear issue should be resolved through diplomacy. Iran has never left the talks.”
In 2018, the then-Trump administration exited Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six major powers and reimposed harsh sanctions on Iran, prompting Tehran to violate the pact’s nuclear limits, with moves such as rebuilding stockpiles of enriched uranium, refining it to higher fissile purity and installing advanced centrifuges to speed up output.
Indirect talks between President Joe Biden’s administration and Tehran to try to revive the pact have failed, but Trump said in his election campaign in September that “We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal.”


Lebanon military says one soldier killed, 18 hurt in Israeli strike on army center

Lebanon military says one soldier killed, 18 hurt in Israeli strike on army center
Updated 15 min 5 sec ago
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Lebanon military says one soldier killed, 18 hurt in Israeli strike on army center

Lebanon military says one soldier killed, 18 hurt in Israeli strike on army center
  • The attack caused severe damage to the facility, the army added in a post on X

At least one soldier was killed and 18 others injured, some seriously, after an Israeli attack targeted an army center in the town of Al-Amiriya on the Al-Qalila-Tyre road in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese army said on Sunday.
The attack caused severe damage to the facility, the army added in a post on X.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the incident.


Israel cracks down on Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza

Israel cracks down on Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza
Updated 24 November 2024
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Israel cracks down on Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza

Israel cracks down on Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza
  • Israeli authorities have opened more incitement cases against Palestinian citizens during the war in Gaza than in the previous five years combined

UMM AL-FAHM, Israel: Israel’s yearlong crackdown against Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza is prompting many to self-censor out of fear of being jailed and further marginalized in society, while some still find ways to dissent — carefully.
Ahmed Khalefa’s life turned upside down after he was charged with inciting terrorism for chanting in solidarity with Gaza at an anti-war protest in October 2023.
The lawyer and city counselor from central Israel says he spent three difficult months in jail followed by six months detained in an apartment. It’s unclear when he’ll get a final verdict on his guilt or innocence. Until then, he’s forbidden from leaving his home from dusk to dawn.
Khalefa is one of more than 400 Palestinian citizens of Israel who, since the start of the war in Gaza, have been investigated by police for “incitement to terrorism” or “incitement to violence,” according to Adalah, a legal rights group for minorities. More than half of those investigated were also criminally charged or detained, Adalah said.
“Israel made it clear they see us more as enemies than as citizens,” Khalefa said in an interview at a cafe in his hometown of Umm Al-Fahm, Israel’s second-largest Palestinian city.
Israel has roughly 2 million Palestinian citizens, whose families remained within the borders of what became Israel in 1948. Among them are Muslims and Christians, and they maintain family and cultural ties to Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel captured in 1967.
Israel says its Palestinian citizens enjoy equal rights, including the right to vote, and they are well-represented in many professions. However, Palestinians are widely discriminated against in areas like housing and the job market.
Israeli authorities have opened more incitement cases against Palestinian citizens during the war in Gaza than in the previous five years combined, Adalah’s records show. Israeli authorities have not said how many cases ended in convictions and imprisonment. The Justice Ministry said it did not have statistics on those convictions.
Just being charged with incitement to terrorism or identifying with a terrorist group can land a suspect in detention until they’re sentenced, under the terms of a 2016 law.
In addition to being charged as criminals, Palestinians citizens of Israel — who make up around 20 percent of the country’s population — have lost jobs, been suspended from schools and faced police interrogations posting online or demonstrating, activists and rights watchdogs say.
It’s had a chilling effect.
“Anyone who tries to speak out about the war will be imprisoned and harassed in his work and education,” said Oumaya Jabareen, whose son was jailed for eight months after an anti-war protest. “People here are all afraid, afraid to say no to this war.”
Jabareen was among hundreds of Palestinians who filled the streets of Umm Al-Fahm earlier this month carrying signs and chanting political slogans. It appeared to be the largest anti-war demonstration in Israel since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. But turnout was low, and Palestinian flags and other national symbols were conspicuously absent. In the years before the war, some protests could draw tens of thousands of Palestinians in Israel.
Authorities tolerated the recent protest march, keeping it under heavily armed supervision. Helicopters flew overhead as police with rifles and tear gas jogged alongside the crowd, which dispersed without incident after two hours. Khalefa said he chose not to attend.
Shortly after the Oct. 7 attack, Israel’s far-right government moved quickly to invigorate a task force that has charged Palestinian citizens of Israel with “supporting terrorism” for posts online or protesting against the war. At around the same time, lawmakers amended a security bill to increase surveillance of online activity by Palestinians in Israel, said Nadim Nashif, director of the digital rights group 7amleh. These moves gave authorities more power to restrict freedom of expression and intensify their arrest campaigns, Nashif said.
The task force is led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, a hard-line national security minister who oversees the police. His office said the task force has monitored thousands of posts allegedly expressing support for terror organizations and that police arrested “hundreds of terror supporters,” including public opinion leaders, social media influencers, religious figures, teachers and others.
“Freedom of speech is not the freedom to incite ... which harms public safety and our security,” his office said in a statement.
But activists and rights groups say the government has expanded its definition of incitement much too far, targeting legitimate opinions that are at the core of freedom of expression.
Myssana Morany, a human rights attorney at Adalah, said Palestinian citizens have been charged for seemingly innocuous things like sending a meme of a captured Israeli tank in Gaza in a private WhatsApp group chat. Another person was charged for posting a collage of children’s photos, captioned in Arabic and English: “Where were the people calling for humanity when we were killed?” The feminist activist group Kayan said over 600 women called its hotline because of blowback in the workplace for speaking out against the war or just mentioning it unfavorably.
Over the summer, around two dozen anti-war protesters in the port city of Haifa were only allowed to finish three chants before police forcefully scattered the gathering into the night. Yet Jewish Israelis demanding a hostage release deal protest regularly — and the largest drew hundreds of thousands to the streets of Tel Aviv.
Khalefa, the city counselor, is not convinced the crackdown on speech will end, even if the war eventually does. He said Israeli prosecutors took issue with slogans that broadly praised resistance and urged Gaza to be strong, but which didn’t mention violence or any militant groups. For that, he said, the government is trying to disbar him, and he faces up to eight years in prison.
“They wanted to show us the price of speaking out,” Khalefa said.


Israeli strikes across Lebanon kill more than 55 as US officials push for ceasefire

Israeli strikes across Lebanon kill more than 55 as US officials push for ceasefire
Updated 24 November 2024
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Israeli strikes across Lebanon kill more than 55 as US officials push for ceasefire

Israeli strikes across Lebanon kill more than 55 as US officials push for ceasefire
  • At least 20 were killed and 66 wounded in a strike in the heart of Beirut
  • Air strikes also killed 24 in eastern Lebanon and 14 in the south, health ministry says

BEIRUT: Lebanon said Israeli air strikes on Saturday killed more than 55 people, many of them in central Beirut, as Israel’s defense minister vowed decisive action against Hezbollah, in a call with his US counterpart.

It was one of the deadliest strikes in a day since Israel escalated air strikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon on September 23, after nearly a year of limited cross-border exchanges of fire, in which Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it was acting in support of Hamas.

One strike on Saturday in the heart of Beirut brought down a residential building and jolted residents across the city.

The strike on the working-class Basta neighborhood killed at least 20 people and wounded 66, Lebanon’s health ministry said in a revised toll.

A Lebanese security source told AFP that the central Beirut strike had “targeted a leading Hezbollah figure,” but a Hezbollah lawmaker, Amin Sherri, denied to Lebanese media that any official was present at the time of the attack.

Similar strikes carried out without warning outside of Hezbollah’s traditional bastions — which include southern Beirut but not the center — have tended to target senior figures.

The health ministry said Israeli air strikes also hit eastern Lebanon, killing 24 people including 13 in the town of Shmostar overlooking the Bekaa Valley, another Hezbollah stronghold.

In Lebanon’s south, at least 14 were killed including five in the coastal city of Tyre, the ministry said.

Rude awakening

Residents in Beirut's Basta neighborhood were asleep and had not been given prior warning to evacuate, according to a civil defense source.

Four bunker buster missiles hit the building in the densely populated Al-Ma’moun Street.

It resulted in the complete or partial destruction of adjacent structures, while the targeted building was reduced to rubble, leaving a deep crater.

The sheer number of residents who sustained various injuries overwhelmed local hospitals that issued urgent calls for blood donations.

“We saw two dead people on the ground... The children started crying and their mother cried even more,” said Samir, 60, who lives in a building facing the one destroyed.

The attack in the capital was followed by others in the city’s southern suburbs after calls by the Israeli military to evacuate.

Israel has not commented on the strike in central Beirut but said it had again hit Hezbollah targets in the city’s southern suburbs, a stronghold of the Iran-backed group.

A military statement said that over the past week, the air force “struck dozens of Hezbollah command centers, weapons storage facilities, and terrorist infrastructure in the Dahieh area.”

Survivors recounted the moments of terror they experienced during the airstrikes and how they narrowly escaped death as parts of their homes collapsed.

Among the victims of the raid was a family of 10 from the southern town of Shaqra’s Hourani family. They had been displaced to the Al-Salam neighborhood in the southern suburbs of Beirut but chose to move to Basta, “believing it offered greater security than the southern suburbs,” according to a relative.

The bunker buster munitions resembled those used in the assassinations of the former chief of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and another top official, Hashem Safieddine.

A building about 100 meters from the new target was attacked about a month ago.

Confusion over the targets

About 12 hours after the raid that shook Beirut and its suburbs, Hezbollah MP Amin Sherri, while inspecting the targeted site in Basta, said: “There was no Hezbollah member in the targeted building.”

Information circulating at the time of the airstrikes suggested that the target of the raid was a “prominent Hezbollah leader” taking part in a leadership meeting.

Israeli Channel 12 reported that the “target was Sheikh Naim Qassem, the secretary-general of Hezbollah.”

But the Israel Broadcasting Authority reported in the morning, citing a security source, that the target was Hezbollah official Mohammed Haidar.

However, the Israeli source did not confirm at the time whether he was killed or survived.

Haidar, a former member of Lebanese parliament, represented the Marjayoun-Hasbaya district from 2005 to 2009.

He served as a military aide to Nasrallah and was a member of the Jihad Council, regarded as Hezbollah’s highest executive leadership for military and security operations.

Haidar is one of the three prominent members of the council alongside Talal Hamieh and Khudar Yussuf Nader.

Additionally, Haidar serves as head of Hezbollah’s operations room.

Channel 12’s military reporter said that the official “was residing in a hidden apartment,” adding that the Basta attack “was an attempt to assassinate him.”

Israeli attacks against Beirut, especially against Hezbollah commanders, prompted internal backlash.

Independent MP Waddah Sadek said: “Hezbollah should take the moral and courageous decision of protecting Beirut’s residents and displaced people.

“Beirut is not an operation area, but a city that welcomed our displaced people only.”

Former Beirut MP Rola Al-Tabesh said: “The magnitude of the Israeli enemy’s criminality and blood-shedding is condemned and indescribable.”

Diplomatic solution

In a telephone call with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Saturday, Washington's Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “reiterated US commitment to a diplomatic resolution in Lebanon that allows Israeli and Lebanese civilians to return safely to their homes on both sides of the border,” a Pentagon spokesperson said.

A spokesman for Katz said he commended the US efforts toward “de-escalation in Lebanon” and underscored that Israel would “continue to act decisively in response to Hezbollah’s attacks on civilian populations in Israel.”

United States envoy Amos Hochstein was in Lebanon and Israel this week, meeting with both countries’ senior officials, to try to negotiate an end to the war.

After talks in Beirut he said a deal was “within our grasp” but as he headed to Israel both sides put out statements that dented hopes of rapid progress.

Lebanon says more than 3,670 people have been killed in the country since October 2023. Most of the deaths have been since September this year.

Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed at least 44,176 people, most of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.

In the pre-dawn darkness of Gaza on Saturday, one strike killed seven people including children at a house in the Zeitun area of Gaza City, civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

AFPTV footage showed victims being brought in to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital including a bloody and dust-covered man, as a boy on a bed beside him struggled to reach the man and called for his father.

“We were sleeping, I was lying here. What happened?” one survivor, Abu Shaker Shaldan, said, lost for words at the scene of the strike, with blood trickling down his head.

Tensions escalate

Meanwhile, confrontations between the Israeli army and Hezbollah have escalated, reaching the second line of villages across the southern Lebanese border.

The escalation included Baalbek, Brital and Chmistar, where three children and their mother were killed.

Israeli drones targeted several fishermen on the beach of Tyre, killing two.

Hezbollah said it was now using cruise missiles to target Israeli military outposts in northern Israel.

Beirut’s southern suburb has been subject to a series of Israeli raids since the early morning. The airstrikes targeted not only single houses and buildings, but also residential and commercial compounds.

The attacks were preceded by evacuation warnings issued by the Israeli army, along with a map showing the targeted locations.

Raids reached Burj Al-Barajneh, Hadath, Choueifat, Amrousieh near the Lebanese University and Haret Hreik.

The Israeli army claimed that it targeted “many Hezbollah headquarters, weapon depots and military infrastructure.”

Clashes intensified in the southern town of Khiam between Hezbollah and the Israeli army amid fierce militant resistance.

The Israeli army carried out detonations, described as “very violent,” in the heart of the town, and homes were destroyed in Shamaa and Tayr Harfa, which the Israeli army entered a few days earlier.

Reports suggested that the Israeli army took control of large areas of the coastal town of Al-Bayada.

Media reports spoke of Israeli soldiers entering between the border towns of Al-Taybeh and Rab Al-Thalathin.

The Israeli army fired heavy munitions toward the outskirts of the town of Naqoura.

Several people were killed in Israeli airstrikes targeting motorcycles on the roads in the Tyre and Bint Jbeil districts.

Airstrikes targeted frontline and second-line towns, and in the city of Bint Jbeil, about 50 shells hit residential neighborhoods within a two-hour period.

Israeli jets struck Chehabiyeh and Zefta, killing three people, and the vicinity of Al-Bazourieh, Chaaitiyeh and Roumine, where five people were killed, as well as Khirbet Selm and Mayfadoun.

Airstrikes hit the town of Roum in the Jezzine district, resulting in three deaths and two injuries.

- With Agencies