The deadly attacks came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he has spoken with President-elect Donald Trump three times in recent days.
BEIRUT — Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of people, including at least 20 children, across Gaza and Lebanon on Sunday, health authorities said, as the human toll of Israel’s parallel wars continued to climb. The strike in the northern Gaza Strip hit family homes in the besieged Jabalya refugee camp, sparking an hours-long rescue effort to find survivors and retrieve the dead, according to accounts from the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the Gaza Health Ministry.
Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Health Ministry, said at least 33 people were killed, including 13 children. The Israel Defense Forces said the strike in Jabalya targeted militants who “posed a threat to IDF troops,” adding that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”
In Alamat, a mountainous village in northern Lebanon, at least 20 people were killed, including seven children, in an attack on a residential building, according to the country’s Health Ministry. The IDF said the strike was aimed at Hezbollah militants “responsible for firing rockets and missiles toward Israeli territory,” adding that the incident was under review.
The lethal attack in Gaza came ahead of a U.S. deadline this week for Israel to improve aid access to the north, which the United Nations warned Friday was facing imminent famine, or the Biden administration could consider possible cuts to military assistance. However, with Washington looking at an extended period of political transition after Donald Trump’s election victory, it is unclear how much leverage the Biden administration still has — or will be willing to exert — on Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has wasted no time preparing for Trump’s next term, revealing in a recorded message Sunday that he has spoken to the president-elect thrice recently. Trump has simultaneously told Netanyahu to “do what you have to do” in Gaza and Lebanon while promising to bring both conflicts to an end, leaving his Middle East policy an open question. Netanyahu said he and Trump “see eye-to-eye on the Iranian threat in all its aspects and the dangers they reflect. We also see the great opportunities facing Israel, in the area of peace and its expansion.”
For now, the violence in Gaza and Lebanon remains relentless. Civil defense workers with the Red Crescent Society were told by Palestinians at the scene that about 70 displaced people had been staying in the building hit by Israel on Sunday. “There is a lack of equipment,” spokeswoman Nebal Farsakh told The Washington Post in voice messages after speaking to rescue teams on the ground in Jabalya. “Civilians are trying to evacuate the people trapped under the rubble using their hands.”
Amer Abdel-Moati, 31, listed the names of each of his family members killed in the strike. “My aunt’s house had 15-17 people in it,” he said in a WhatsApp message. He has already buried 12 of them, he said, with the rest lost to the rubble. The home of the Alloush family, which was in front of his aunt’s home, was also completely destroyed, he said. Photos from the scene showed some of the shrouded bodies being taken from the site in a minivan for burial. With a shortage of ambulances in the area, Farsakh said, the task has mostly fallen to civilians.
Something like five hours after the fact, Lebanese salvage laborers started a similar horrid hunt in Alamat. The Wellbeing Service said it expected the loss of life to rise once body parts gathered at the scene had been distinguished. No less than 42 individuals were killed altogether in the nation in nine dangerous strikes Sunday, generally amassed in the area of Baalbek-Hermel in the upper east, as per primer losses of life from the Wellbeing Service.
As the Israeli military broadens the extent of its elevated and ground crusade against Hezbollah, the cost for regular people and the country's well-being framework has mounted.
Health officials reported on Sunday that ten paramedics had been killed in the last 24 hours, including three in an Israeli airstrike in the country's south. Six paramedics from the Risala Scout Association, a civil defense and ambulance group affiliated with the Amal Movement, a Lebanese political party and Hezbollah ally, and one paramedic from the Islamic Health Committee were killed in a strike in Deir Qanoun, in the southern district of Tyre, on Saturday afternoon.
A "clear continuation of the Israeli war crime of targeting rescue and ambulance teams in violation of all international humanitarian laws" is how the Health Ministry characterized the most recent attacks on paramedics.
Since October 2023, Israel has increased airstrikes against Lebanese first responders in preparation for its ground invasion on October 1. The majority of these strikes—more than 185—have occurred in the last seven weeks. Israel has accused Hezbollah of transporting fighters in ambulances, but it has not shown any proof to back up its allegations.
The IDF didn't remark on the negative marks against paramedics or on the regular citizens killed in Alamat, yet said it knew about the reports and was investigating them.
Hezbollah, in the interim, keeps on terminating rocket and rocket salvos at Israel, setting off alarms the nation over. In articulations, the aggressor bunch said its warriors were likewise conflicting with Israeli soldiers in two separate areas of southeast Lebanon. Israel has said it will continue to battle the conflict in Lebanon until nearly 60,000 Israelis dislodged by Hezbollah fire can get back to their homes in the north.
The violence Sunday continued to spill over into other countries in the region, with Israel striking a building in the Sayyidah Zeinab area of Damascus, according to Syria’s state news agency. Harb reported from London.
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