GAZA: Strikes by the Israeli military killed dozens in Gaza on Sunday, the civil defence said, while also hitting near Beirut's international airport. Israel has been fighting on two fronts since September, intensifying attacks on Lebanon's Hezbollah after nearly a year of cross-border clashes alongside its war in the Gaza Strip.
In the latest violence in the besieged Palestinian territory, the civil defence agency said Israeli air raids killed at least 46 people. The deadliest strike, in the middle of the night in Beit Lahia in the north, killed 26 people, including women and children, and left at least 59 others buried under the rubble, said civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal. Another strike killed 10 people in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, where a separate strike on a house claimed the life of a woman, he said.
An Israeli drone strike killed five people in the southern city of Rafah, Bassal said, adding another strike killed three women and a child in the Nuseirat camp. Gaza's health ministry on Sunday said the overall death toll in more than 13 months of war had reached 43,846.
Meanwhile, footage showed several strikes hit Hezbollah's south Beirut stronghold, shortly after the Israeli military warned people to evacuate. Columns of smoke were seen rising over the capital's southern suburbs, where Lebanon's only international airport is located. Further south, overnight Israeli air strikes and shelling hit the flashpoint town of Khiam, the Lebanese state-run National News Agency reported. Following the bombardment, the Israeli army said about 20 projectiles were seen crossing from Lebanon into Israel, and that some of them were intercepted.
In Lebanon's east, the health ministry said an Israeli strike in the Bekaa Valley killed six people including three children. Hezbollah said it fired a guided missile that set an Israeli tank ablaze in the southwestern Lebanese village of Chamaa. In eastern Lebanon, funerals were held for 14 civil defence staff killed in an Israeli strike on Thursday. Lebanese authorities say more than 3,452 people have been killed since October last year.
A UN-backed assessment on November 9 warned famine was imminent in northern Gaza, amid the increased hostilities and a near-halt in food aid. Israel has pushed back against a Human Rights Watch report this week alleging that its mass displacement of Gazans amounts to a "crime against humanity", as well as findings from a UN Special Committee pointing to warfare practices "consistent with the characteristics of genocide". — AFP
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