Israeli forces pound Khan Younis near major Gaza hospital

Palestinians check the rubble of a building following Israeli bombardment, on January 18, 2024 in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (AFP)
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Updated 18 January 2024
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Israeli forces pound Khan Younis near major Gaza hospital

  • Israel’s military is striking targets in areas of the besieged territory where it has told civilians to seek refuge
  • Netanyahu says Israel will push for victory that may take many more months of fighting

GAZA: Israeli forces advanced into the southern Gaza Strip’s main city on Thursday, pounding areas near the enclave’s biggest functioning hospital, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau vowed “many more months” of fighting until total victory is achieved.
The heaviest battle of the year was under way in Khan Younis, sheltering hundreds of thousands of people who fled the north earlier in the war, now in its fourth month.
Residents described heavy fighting and intense bombardment in the north and east of the city and, for the first time, in the west, where they said tanks had advanced to carry out a raid before withdrawing.
Khan Younis residents said on Thursday the fighting had come within a whisker of Nasser Hospital, the biggest hospital still working in the enclave. It has been receiving hundreds of wounded patients a day, crammed into wards and treated on the floors since the fighting shifted to the south last month.
“What is happening in Khan Younis now is complete madness: the occupation bombards the city in all directions, from the air and the ground too,” said Abu El-Abed, 45, now living in Khan Younis after being displaced several times with his family of seven since leaving Gaza City in the north earlier in the war.
Israeli officials have accused Hamas fighters of operating from Nasser Hospital, which staff deny.
In an update on progress, Netanyahu said the Israel Defense Forces had destroyed “16 or 17” out of 24 of Hamas’ organized combat regiments, adding the next step would be “clearing the territory” of militants.
“The first action is usually shorter, the second usually takes longer,” Netanyahu said at a news briefing.
“Victory will take many more months but we are determined to achieve it.”
The Israeli military said a brigade in Khan Younis, now operating further south than troops had ventured before, had “eliminated dozens of terrorists in close-quarters combat and with the assistance of tank fire and air support.” It said it had killed 60 fighters in the previous 24 hours, including 40 in Khan Younis.
The charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, which has doctors at the city’s Nasser Hospital, said patients and displaced people sheltering there were fleeing in panic.
In Rafah, further south, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are now crammed into a small city by the Egyptian border, 16 bodies were laid out on the bloodstained cobbles outside a morgue, most in white shrouds, a few in body bags.
A branch of the Zameli family had been wiped out in a strike that destroyed their home overnight. Half the bundles were tiny, holding the bodies of small children. A grey-haired man howled in sorrow as he clung to one of the bodies, burying his face in the face of the shrouded corpse. A woman in a pink headscarf keened and stroked one of the shrouds.
At the scene of the bombing, a tattered schoolbag lay in the rubble. Tears rolled down the cheeks of 10-year-old cousin Mahmoud Al-Zameli, who lived next door and had escaped.
“Yesterday, I was playing with the children over there. They have all died,” he sobbed. “I’m the only one still alive.”

TOO MANY CIVILIANS DYING
Gaza health authorities said on Thursday the war’s death toll had risen to 24,620 with many more feared buried under the rubble. More than 170 were killed in the past 24 hours. Israel claims it has killed 9,000 Hamas fighters.
The US again warned there had been too many civilian casualties in Gaza and vowed to keep working for a two-state solution.
“There will be a post-conflict Gaza, no reoccupation of Gaza,” White House national security adviser John Kirby told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Reiterating his plans for a post-conflict Gaza, Netanyahu said the enclave must be demilitarized and run by a civil administration that does not preach the destruction of Israel.
Israel has said it is planning to wind down its ground operations and shift to smaller-scale tactics. But it appeared determined to first capture all of Khan Younis, which it says is now the principal base for the Hamas fighters who stormed across the border on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages.
In central Gaza, the Israeli military said it had destroyed facilities that were the “heart of Hamas’ weapons manufacturing industry.” Reuters could not independently verify the assertion.

HOSPITALS
Two-thirds of Gaza’s hospitals have now ceased functioning and losing Nasser would curtail the limited trauma care still available.
In a statement on Thursday, Hamas denied claims aired by released Israeli hostage Sharon Aloni in an interview on CNN that she and other prisoners had been detained in rooms in Nasser Hospital.
The group “considers this to be in line with the lies of Israel and its old and new incitement against hospitals to justify its destruction of them.”
In November, Israel stormed Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza and showed what it said were Hamas weapons and equipment found on the premises.
MSF Head of Mission for Palestine Leo Cans, who reached Nasser Hospital, said fighting had come “very close.”
“The wounded people that we take care of, many of them lost their legs, lost their arms. There are really complex wounds that require a lot of surgery. And we don’t have the capacity to do this now.”
Israelis marked the first birthday of the youngest hostage, baby Kfir Bibas, who was not among scores of women and children freed during a truce in November. Hamas says it is no longer holding children, and that Kfir and his family were killed in an Israeli air strike, though it has released no images confirming their deaths.
“His whereabouts are unknown,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, sitting next to a photograph of the baby. “I call upon the entire universe to work endlessly to free Kfir and all the hostages.”


Army says 40 projectiles fired from Lebanon into central, northern Israel

Updated 4 sec ago
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Army says 40 projectiles fired from Lebanon into central, northern Israel

  • On Monday, one person was killed and several people injured in two separate incidents
Jerusalem: The Israeli military said on Tuesday that some 40 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into central and northern Israel, with first responders reporting that four people were lightly injured by shrapnel.
“Following sirens that sounded between 09:50 and 09:51 in the Upper Galilee, Western Galilee, and Central Galilee areas, approximately 25 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israel. Some of the projectiles were intercepted and fallen projectiles were identified in the area,” the military said in a statement.
That announcement followed earlier reports that some 15 projectiles fired that set of air raid sirens.
A spokesperson for Israeli first responders said that in central Israel it found “four individuals with light injuries from glass shards.... They were injured while in a concrete building where the windows shattered.”
The Israeli police said they were searching the impact sites from projectiles intercepted by Israel’s air defense systems but did not report any serious damage.
On Monday, one person was killed and several people were injured in two separate incidents, one in the northern Israeli town of Shfaram and the other in the suburbs of Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv.
The military said Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, which is backed by Iran, fired around 100 projectiles from Lebanon toward Israel on Monday, while Israel’s air force carried out strikes on Beirut.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in October last year in support of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza. Since September, Israel has conducted extensive bombing campaigns in Lebanon primarily targeting Hezbollah strongholds, though some strikes have hit areas outside the Iran-backed group’s control.

US envoy Amos Hochstein arrives in Lebanon: state media

Updated 19 November 2024
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US envoy Amos Hochstein arrives in Lebanon: state media

  • US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters that Washington had been sharing proposals with the Lebanese and Israeli governments
  • Another Lebanese official said earlier that US Ambassador Lisa Johnson discussed the plan on Thursday with Prime Minister Najib Mikati

Beirut: US special envoy Amos Hochstein arrived in Lebanon for truce talks with officials on Tuesday, state media reported.
The United States and France have spearheaded efforts for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war.
On September 23, Israel began an intensified air campaign in Lebanon before sending in ground troops, nearly a year into exchanges of fire initiated by Hezbollah in support of Palestinian ally Hamas after its October 7, 2023 attack sparked the war in Gaza.
A Lebanese official told AFP on Monday that the government had a positive view of a US truce proposal, while a second official said Lebanon was waiting for Hochstein’s arrival to “review certain outstanding points with him.”
On Monday, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters that Washington had been sharing proposals with the Lebanese and Israeli governments.
“Both sides have reacted to the proposals that we have put forward,” he said.
Miller said the United States was pushing for “full implementation” of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006 and requires all armed forces except the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers to withdraw from the Lebanese side of the border with Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said that even with a deal Israel would “carry out operations against Hezbollah” to keep the group from rebuilding.
Another Lebanese official said earlier that US Ambassador Lisa Johnson discussed the plan on Thursday with Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Hezbollah-allied parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, who has led mediation efforts on behalf of the group.
If an agreement is reached, the United States and France would issue a joint statement, he said, followed by a 60-day truce during which Lebanon will redeploy troops in the southern border area, near Israel.
Lebanese authorities say more than 3,510 people have been killed since clashes began in October last year, with most fatalities recorded since late September.


Food shortages bring hunger pains to displaced families in central Gaza

Updated 19 November 2024
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Food shortages bring hunger pains to displaced families in central Gaza

  • Almost all of Gaza’s roughly 2.3 million people now rely on international aid for survival, and doctors and aid groups say malnutrition is rampant

DEIR AL-BALAH: A shortage in flour and the closure of a main bakery in central Gaza have exacerbated an already dire humanitarian situation, as Palestinian families struggle to obtain enough food.
A crowd of people waited dejectedly in the cold outside the shuttered Zadna Bakery in Deir Al-Balah on Monday.
Among them was Umm Shadi, a displaced woman from Gaza City, who told The Associated Press that there was no bread left due to the lack of flour — a bag of which costs as much as 400 shekels ($107) in the market, she said, if any can be found.
“Who can buy a bag of flour for 400 shekels?” she asked.
Nora Muhanna, another woman displaced from Gaza City, said she was leaving empty-handed after waiting five or six hours for a bag of bread for her kids.
“From the beginning, there are no goods, and even if they are available, there is no money,” she said.
Almost all of Gaza’s roughly 2.3 million people now rely on international aid for survival, and doctors and aid groups say malnutrition is rampant. Food security experts say famine may already be underway in hard-hit north Gaza. Aid groups accuse the Israeli military of hindering and even blocking shipments in Gaza.
Meanwhile, dozens lined up in Deir Al-Balah to get their share of lentil soup and some bread at a makeshift charity kitchen.
Refat Abed, a displaced man from Gaza City, no longer knows how he can afford food.
“Where can I get money?” he asked. “Do I beg? If it were not for God and charity, my children and I would go hungry,”


Even with Lebanon truce deal, Israel will operate against Hezbollah — Netanyahu

Updated 19 November 2024
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Even with Lebanon truce deal, Israel will operate against Hezbollah — Netanyahu

  • Lebanon’s government has largely endorsed US truce proposal to end Israel-Hezbollah war
  • Israel insists any truce deal must guarantee no further Hezbollah presence in area bordering Israel

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel will continue to operate militarily against the Iran-backed Lebanese armed movement Hezbollah even if a ceasefire deal is reached in Lebanon.
“The most important thing is not (the deal that) will be laid on paper,” Netanyahu told the Israeli parliament.
“We will be forced to ensure our security in the north (of Israel) and to systematically carry out operations against Hezbollah’s attacks... even after a ceasefire,” to keep the group from rebuilding, he said.
Netanyahu also said there was no evidence that Hezbollah would respect any ceasefire reached.
“We will not allow Hezbollah to return to the state it was in on October 6” 2023, the eve of the strike by its Palestinian ally Hamas into southern Israel, he said.
Hezbollah then began firing into northern Israel in support of Hamas, triggering exchanges with Israel that escalated into full-on war in late September this year.
Lebanon’s government has largely endorsed a US truce proposal to end the Israel-Hezbollah war and was preparing final comments before responding to Washington, a Lebanese official told AFP on Monday.
Israel insists that any truce deal must guarantee no further Hezbollah presence in the area bordering Israel.


Defiant Lebanese harvest olives in the shadow of war

Updated 19 November 2024
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Defiant Lebanese harvest olives in the shadow of war

  • A World Bank report this month said that “the disruption of the olive harvest caused by bombing and displacement is expected to lead to $58 million in losses” in Lebanon

KFEIR: On a mountain slope in south Lebanon, agricultural worker Assaad Al-Taqi is busy picking olives, undeterred by the roar of Israeli warplanes overhead.
This year, he is collecting the harvest against the backdrop of the raging Israel-Hezbollah war.
He works in the village of Kfeir, just a few kilometers (miles) from where Israeli bombardment has devastated much of south Lebanon since Israel escalated its campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in September.
“But I’m not afraid of the shelling,” Taqi said, as he and other workers hit the tree branches with sticks, sending showers of olives tumbling down into jute bags.
“Our presence here is an act of defiance,” the 51-year-old said, but also noting that the olive “is the tree of peace.”
Kfeir is nine kilometers (six miles) from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, in the mixed Christian and Druze district of Hasbaya, which has largely been spared the violence that has wracked nearby Hezbollah strongholds.
But even Hasbaya’s relative tranquillity was shattered last month when three journalists were killed in an Israeli strike on a complex where they were sleeping.
Israel and Hezbollah had previously exchanged cross-border fire for almost a year over the Gaza conflict.
The workers in Kfeir rest in the shade of the olive trees, some 900 meters (3,000 feet) above sea level on the slopes of Mount Hermon, which overlooks an area where Lebanese, Syrian and Israeli-held territory meet.
They have been toiling in relative peace since dawn, interrupted only by sonic booms from Israeli jets breaking the sound barrier and the sight of smoke rising on the horizon from strikes on a south Lebanon border village.
Hassna Hammad, 48, who was among those picking olives, said the agricultural work was her livelihood.
“We aren’t afraid, we’re used to it,” she said of the war.
But “we are afraid for our brothers impacted by the conflict,” she added, referring to the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese displaced by the fighting.
Elsewhere in south Lebanon, olive trees are bulging with fruit that nobody will pick, after villagers fled Israeli bombardment and the subsequent ground operation that began on September 30.
A World Bank report this month said that “the disruption of the olive harvest caused by bombing and displacement is expected to lead to $58 million in losses” in Lebanon.
It said 12 percent of olive groves in the conflict-affected areas it assessed had been destroyed.
Normally, the olive-picking season is highly anticipated in Lebanon, and some people return each year to their native villages and fields just for the harvest.
“Not everyone has the courage to come” this time, said Salim Kassab, who owns a traditional press where villagers bring their olives to extract the oil.
“Many people are absent... They sent workers to replace them,” said Kassab, 50.
“There is fear of the war of course,” he said, adding that he had come alone this year, without his wife and children.
Kassab said that before the conflict, he used to travel to the southern cities of Nabatiyeh and Sidon if he needed to fix his machines, but such trips are near impossible now because of the danger.
The World Bank report estimated that 12 months of agriculture sector losses have cost Lebanon $1.1 billion, in a country already going through a gruelling five-year economic crisis before the fighting erupted.
Areas near the southern border have sustained “the most significant damage and losses,” the report said.
It cited “the burning and abandonment of large areas of agricultural land” in both south and east Lebanon, “along with lost harvests due to the displacement of farmers.”
Elsewhere in Kfeir, Inaam Abu Rizk, 77, and her husband were busy washing olives they plan to either press for oil or jar to be served throughout the winter.
Abu Rizk has taken part in the olive harvest for decades, part of a tradition handed down the generations, and said that despite the war, this year was no different.
“Of course we’re afraid... there is the sound of planes and bombing,” she said.
But “we love the olive month — we are farmers and the land is our work.”