Israel bombards Gaza relentlessly on war anniversary
‘We have endured a year under bombardment, terror, and fear in my children’s hearts’
Dubai: Israel marked the first anniversary of the Gaza war with relentless bombing of the besieged enclave, resulting in at least 39 deaths in the last 24 hours.
“Last night, we were terrorised by bombardments from quadcopters and tank shells,” said Hawajri, who has been displaced 10 times with his family of seven over the past year.
“We have endured a whole year in the north under bombardment, terror, and fear in my children’s hearts,” he told AFP news agency, noting that he remained in Gaza’s devastated north because “there is no safe place in the entire Strip.” Gaza’s health ministry reported that at least 41,909 people have been killed, including the latest 39 deaths, since the war began a year ago.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is also considering how to respond to Iran, which launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel last week.
Security forces in Israel and abroad are on high alert for potential attacks from Iranian proxies. In northern Gaza, the most populated part of the Palestinian territory before the war began, Israel stepped up aerial and ground ground attacks. It warned that Hamas is trying to rebuild in the area.
Hamas, meanwhile, fired a barrage of rockets toward Tel Aviv after Israel bombed a number of targets connected to the militant group in Gaza.
Hamas’s armed wing vowed on Monday, the anniversary of the militant group’s October 7 attack on Israel, to keep fighting what it described as a “long war of attrition”.
“We choose to keep up the fight in a long war of attrition, one that is painful and costly for the enemy,” said Abu Obeida, spokesman of the militant group’s armed wing, in a video broadcast on Al Jazeera.
The Israel Defence Forces said five projectiles were launched from the Palestinian territory and sirens sounded across central Israel, with Haaretz reporting two people injured.
Israel is engaged in a multi-front war with no clear end in sight, deploying troops back to northern Gaza and maintaining intense aerial attacks, along with limited ground manoeuvres in Lebanon.
Israel’s military said air defences intercepted a missile fired from Yemen.
“A surface-to-surface missile was fired from Yemen,” where Iran-backed rebels have previously launched missiles towards Israel, the military said in a statement, with warning sirens audible in the commercial hub of Tel Aviv.
Hezbollah fires 135 projectiles into Israel
Hezbollah said it targeted Israeli troops in two south Lebanon border villages, as the Israeli army said it had deployed another division to participate in operations in Lebanon.
Hezbollah fighters “bombed... a gathering of Israeli forces” in Maroun Al Ras with “a rocket salvo”, the Iran-backed group said in a statement.
Hezbollah later said its fighters “bombed... a gathering of Israeli enemy forces” in the nearby village of Blida “with a barrage of rockets and artillery shells”.
It also claimed a series of attacks on northern Israel, including near the city of Haifa “with a large rocket salvo”, and on Israeli military positions.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said Israel launched “a series of strikes targeting more than 30 towns and villages in the Tyre district”, near the Mediterranean cost, after earlier saying strikes hit other south Lebanon locations.
Israel’s military on Monday said its air force was launching extensive strikes across southern Lebanon targeting Hezbollah positions. It also said its 91st Division had begun “localised and targeted operational activity in southern Lebanon,” the third troop grouping at division strength to be used in the ground fight.
Israel’s military said that Lebanese armed group Hezbollah had fired some 135 projectiles into Israel on Monday.
Israeli aggression pushing the region towards ‘abyss’
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi warned Monday that “Israeli aggression” was pushing the region towards the “abyss” of full-blown war, during a visit to Lebanon, where Israel says it is striking Hezbollah targets.
“The Israeli aggression... which started in Gaza and now has continued into Lebanon is pushing the whole region into the abyss of full-blown regional war,” Safadi told a news conference in Beirut.
A Lebanese security source reported that an Israeli strike hit near Beirut’s only airport on Monday, close to Hezbollah’s stronghold in southern Beirut.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei boasted, in a Hebrew post on X, that Hamas’s assault “set the Zionist regime back 70 years.”
World mourns horror
Meanwhile, mourners and leaders around the world voiced horror and a desire for peace at tearful memorials remembering the unprecedented October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that sparked a year of devastating war in Gaza.
People from Sydney to Rome and Warsaw to Washington grieved for those killed and urged freedom for those taken hostage one year ago, while rallies also called for peace in the Palestinian territories.
US President Joe Biden and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris mourned the bloody Hamas attack on Israel a year ago Monday while deploring heavy civilian losses of Palestinians in the subsequent Israeli operation.
“Let us bear witness to the unspeakable brutality of the October 7th attacks but also to the beauty of the lives that were stolen that day,” Biden said.
Harris, the vice president, said she would “never forget the horror of October 7, 2023” when Hamas militants launched a surprise attack into Israel, killing 1,205 people, most of them civilians, and taking 251 hostages.
“I am devastated by the loss and pain of the Israeli people,” she said in a statement.
But Biden added in his statement “that history will also remember October 7 as a dark day for the Palestinian people because of the conflict that Hamas unleashed that day.”
“Far too many civilians have suffered far too much during this year of conflict,” he said.
In her statement, Harris also described herself as “heartbroken over the scale of death and destruction in Gaza over the past year.”