Heavy Israeli bombardment in northern Gaza as UN peacekeepers in Lebanon are hit again

Author of the article:

Associated Press

Samy Magdy and Bassem Mroue

Published Oct 12, 2024  •  3 minute read

Palestinians transport their belongings as they flee areas north of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on Oct. 12, 2024. Photo by OMAR AL-QATTAA /AFP via Getty Images

BEIRUT — Palestinians in northern Gaza described heavy Israeli bombardment Saturday in the hours after airstrikes killed at least 22 people, as Israel continued to tell people there and in southern Lebanon to get out of the way of its offensives against the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups.

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In Lebanon, the United Nations peacekeeping force said its headquarters in Naqoura had again been hit, with a peacekeeper struck by gunfire late Friday and in stable condition. It wasn’t clear who fired. The shooting occurred a day after Israel’s military fired on the headquarters for the second straight day. Israel, which has warned the peacekeepers to leave their positions, didn’t immediately respond to questions.

Hunger warnings emerged again as residents in northern Gaza said they hadn’t received aid since the beginning of the month. The UN World Food Program said no food aid had entered the north since Oct. 1. An estimated 400,000 people remain there.

Israel’s military renewed its offensive in northern Gaza almost a week ago while escalating its air and ground campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said an Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in the Zarout coastal area on the edge of Barja south of Beirut, and the Health Ministry said four were killed. The ministry said another airstrike on the village of Maisra northeast of Beirut killed five.

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People inspect the damage at the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted an apartment building in town of Bajra south of Beirut on Oct. 12, 2024. Photo by MAHMOUD ZAYYAT /AFP via Getty Images

Hezbollah continued to fire into Israel.

“We will keep standing with the Lebanese people during these difficult circumstances and also with the Palestinian people,” the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said Saturday while touring the scene of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.

Gaza residents are trapped

In northern Gaza, residents told The Associated Press many were trapped in their homes and shelters with dwindling supplies while seeing bodies uncollected in the streets as the bombing hampered emergency responders.

Those who rushed to the scene of the latest deadly airstrikes in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya found a hole 20 metres (65 feet) deep where a home once stood.

At least 20 bodies were recovered as of Saturday morning, while others likely were trapped under the rubble, emergency service officials said. Elsewhere in Jabaliya, a strike on a home killed two brothers and wounded a woman and newborn baby, the officials said.

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Another strike in the afternoon hit a Jabaliya home and killed at least four people including a woman, said Fares Abu Hamza, an official with the emergency service.

Israel’s military did not immediately respond to request for comment on the strikes. Military spokesperson Avichay Adraee told people in parts of Jabaliya and Gaza City to evacuate south to an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone as Israel plans to use great force “and will continue to do so for a long time.”

Israel has repeatedly returned to parts of Gaza as Hamas and other militants regroup. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.

“It’s like the first days of the war,” said a Jabaliya resident, Ahmed Abu Goneim. “The occupation is doing everything to uproot us. But we will not leave.”

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The 24-year-old said Israeli warplanes and drones struck many neighbouring houses in the past week, He counted 15 relatives and neighbours, including four women and five children as young as 3, killed in neighbouring homes. He said there were dead in the streets and “no one is able to recover them because of the bombing.”

Hamza Sharif, who stays with his family in a school-turned shelter in Jabaliya, described “constant bombings day and night.”

He said the shelter has not received aid since the beginning of the month. “Families depend on what they have stored, but they will run out of supplies very soon,” he said.

Food is running out

The World Food Program said it was unclear how long the limited food supplies it distributed in northern Gaza earlier will last.

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The UN’s independent investigator on the right to food last month accused Israel of carrying out a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians, which Israel has denied.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza started after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, when militants stormed into Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others.

Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not specify between combatants and civilians. Gaza’s Health Ministry said hospitals had received the bodies of 49 people killed over the past 24 hours.

— Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Jack Jeffery in Jerusalem and Sam Metz in Rabat, Morocco, contributed to this report.

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