GAZA: Gaza medics and rescuers on Monday said Israeli strikes on several homes killed at least 18 people, as Palestinian Hamas claimed it had ample resources to sustain its fight nearly a year into the war.
The latest strikes came as Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned that prospects for a halt in fighting with Hezbollah militants along the Lebanon border were dimming, yet again raising fears of a wider regional conflagration.
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said during an interview in Istanbul on Sunday: "The resistance has a high ability to continue." "There were martyrs and there were sacrifices... but in return there was an accumulation of experiences and the recruitment of new generations into the resistance."
His comments came less than a week after Gallant told journalists that Hamas "no longer exists" as a military formation in Gaza.
Deadly fighting raged on in the Gaza Strip on Monday, with survivors seen searching through the debris of crushed buildings following a strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
Ten people were killed and 15 others were wounded when an air strike hit the home of the Al Qassas family in Nuseirat on Monday morning, a medic at Al-Awda hospital, where the bodies were brought, said.
Gaza's civil defence agency said six Palestinians were killed in a similar air strike during the night on a house belonging to the Bassal family in Gaza City's Zeitun neighbourhood, a regular target of Israeli military raids since the war began. Two people were killed in another overnight air strike in Rafah that targeted a house belonging to the Abu Shaar family, the agency said. Israel's retaliatory military offensive has so far killed at least 41,226 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Palestinian territory.
The war has also drawn in groups from across the region, including in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Tensions have surged along Israel's northern border with Lebanon, amid fears the violence could explode into an all-our war. Lebanon's Hezbollah group has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces since October 7. Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem said that his group has "no intention of going to war", but if Israel does "unleash" one "there will be large losses on both sides".
The cross-border violence has killed 623 people in Lebanon, including at least 141 civilians. On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, authorities have announced the deaths of at least 24 soldiers and 26 civilians. — AFP
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