At least 93 killed in Israeli strike on residential building in northern Gaza

LAST UPDATE | 20 hrs ago

GAZA’S CIVIL DEFENCE agency has said that 93 people were killed in an overnight Israeli air strike on a residential building in the northern district of Beit Lahia.

“The number of martyrs in the massacre of the Abu Nasr family home in Beit Lahia has risen to 93 martyrs, and about 40 are still missing under the rubble,” agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP in an updated toll.

The Israeli military said it was “looking into the reports”.

Earlier, Dr Hossam Abu Safiya, director of the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, said the bodies of 15 people killed in the strike were brought to the hospital. 

He said 35 wounded people, most of them children, were being treated at the hospital.

“We are still receiving a number of martyrs and wounded,” Safia said, adding that the hospital was struggling to treat patients due to a lack of staff and medicines.

“There is nothing left in the Kamal Adwan Hospital except first aid materials after the army arrested our medical team and workers when they invaded the hospital during the military operation in Jabalia,” Safia said.

Israeli forces raided the medical facility over the weekend, detaining dozens of medics.

The Israeli military has repeatedly struck shelters for displaced people in recent months, saying it carried out precise strikes targeting Palestinian militants and tried to avoid harming civilians. The strikes have often killed women and children.

The current conflict in Gaza has been ongoing since Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. 

The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

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Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 43,020 Palestinians in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the region’s health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.

Lebanon

Separately, Lebanon’s health ministry has said at least 60 people were killed in Israeli raids on several areas in the eastern Bekaa Valley, most of them in the Baalbek region.

The health ministry said the tolls covered 12 areas in the Bekaa Valley, which is a Hezbollah stronghold. At least two children were among the dead, it said.

At least 58 others were wounded, the health ministry added, noting that the toll was preliminary as rescue efforts were still underway.

Of the 60 killed, at least 16 deaths were recorded in Al-Alaq, west of Baalbek city, according to the health ministry.

Monday’s deaths raise the overall toll to more than 1,700 killed in Lebanon since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah erupted late last month, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures.

The real number is likely to be higher due to gaps in the data.

Israel last month escalated air strikes on Hezbollah strongholds and sent ground forces into Lebanon, following a year of cross-border exchanges of fire with the Iran-backed group over the Gaza war.

Baalbek governor Bachir Khodr decried what he called the “most violent” raids on the area since the start of the conflict.

Baalbek is an impoverished region in the Bekaa Valley that borders Syria.

The heavy strikes there on Monday were not preceded by an evacuation warning.

They came as Israel pounded south Lebanon, including the coastal city of Tyre, according to the official National News Agency.

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The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted on 23 September after nearly a year of cross-border fire between the two rivals.

The war has displaced at least 1.3 million people, more than 800,000 inside Lebanon according to the UN’s migration agency.

More than half a million people have crossed into Syria, according to Lebanese authorities, most of them Syrians. 

Two killed near Syrian border

Today, a Syrian war monitor said two people have been killed in an Israeli strike near Syria’s border with Lebanon, the second strike in less than a week near a key land crossing.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Israeli warplanes “attacked vehicles near Al-Nazariya Village in Al-Qaseer countryside” along the border with Lebanon, adding that “two people inside the vehicles were killed”.

The NGO said the area lies on a smuggling and transportation route between Lebanon and Syria.

The attack comes less than a week after Israel’s military confirmed a similar strike on the nearby Jousieh crossing, claiming it was being used by Hezbollah to transfer weapons.

Lebanese and United Nations officials warned that strike had jeopardised the main escape route for people fleeing the conflict in Lebanon in search of refuge in Syria.

Israel had previously struck the Masnaa crossing further south, leaving it unusable.

© AFP 2024, with reporting from Jane Moore