More than 70 Palestinians killed in Gaza attacks on residential buildings housing displaced
Hezbollah's Afif, killed in Israeli strike, managed Al Manar TV before becoming spokesman
Dubai: Israeli airstrikes on Sunday killed more than 70 Palestinians in Gaza, with the deadliest attack targeting Beit Lahia in the north, where 50 people, including women and children, died.
“We heard the Israeli strike, and the whole area was shaking,” said Jaber Ghabayen, whose family lived in the razed building.
“I was at a relatives’ place, and we all thought that death was near,” he told AFP.
The deadliest strike, in the middle of the night in Beit Lahia in the north, also left dozens of other displaced people buried under the rubble, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal was quoted as saying.
Three separate attacks on refugee camps in central Gaza killed 15 people, and an Israeli drone strike on the southern city of Rafah killed seven.
Israeli forces struck a building in Beirut, that housed the Lebanese office of Syria’s Baath party, killing Hezbollah spokesperson Mohammed Afif.
Afif managed Hezbollah’s Al Manar television station for many years before taking over as the top media relations officer for the armed group.
Ali Hijazi, secretary-general of the Lebanese branch, “confirmed the death of Hezbollah media official” Afif, the official National News Agency (NNA) reported.
Lebanese state media earlier said the Israeli strike on Ras Al Nabaa district killed at least one person and wounded three.
12-storey residential building razed
Previous strikes claimed by Israel have killed senior Hezbollah officials, including its leader Hassan Nasrallah in late September.
Columns of smoke rose over the southern suburbs, where Lebanon’s only international airport is located.
One raid “completely destroyed a 12-storey residential building” in the Chiyah district, the NNA said.
Further south, the NNA reported seven strikes on Jibsheet village in less than two hours, with more attacks on villages closer to the border with Israel.
The Israeli army said about 20 projectiles were seen crossing from Lebanon into Israel on Sunday, and that some were intercepted.
Columns of smoke rose over the southern Beirut suburbs, where Lebanon’s only international airport is located.
UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon reported being shot at nearly 40 times on Saturday, though no injuries were sustained.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis for the first time tackled claims of Israel’s ongoing “genocide” of Palestinians in Gaza in a forthcoming book, urging further investigation into whether Israel’s actions meet the definition.
Titled “Hope Never Disappoints. Pilgrims Towards a Better World”, the book includes his latest and most forthright intervention into the more than year-long war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.