CAIRO (Reuters) – An Israeli airstrike that hit several houses and a multi-storey residential building in Beit Lahiya town in northern Gaza on Saturday caused dozens of casualties, doctors and officials said, with rescue operations still underway.
The Hamas media office said at least 73 people had been killed in the strike. No official casualty figures were immediately available from the health ministry however Medway Abbas, a senior health ministry official, said the figures were accurate.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident but said the numbers issued by the Hamas media office were exaggerated. It said the figures did not align with its own information, the precise munitions used or the accuracy of the strike, which it said was directed at a Hamas target.
Palestinian health officials said rescue operations were being hampered by the cut-off of telecommunication and internet services for a second day. Earlier in the day, the Gaza health ministry said Israeli military strikes killed 35 Palestinians across the enclave.
"This is a war of genocide and ethnic cleansing. The occupation has conducted a horrifying massacre in Beit Lahiya," the Hamas media office said.
Residents and medics said Israeli forces had tightened their siege on Jabalia, the largest of the enclave's eight historic camps, which it encircled by also sending tanks to the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya and issuing evacuation orders to residents.
Israeli officials said evacuation orders were aimed at separating Hamas fighters from civilians and denied there was any systematic plan to clear civilians out of Jabalia or other northern areas.
In Jabalia, residents said Israeli forces besieged several shelters housing displaced families before they stormed them and detained dozens of men. Footage on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed dozens of Palestinian men sitting on the ground next to a tank, while others were led by a soldier to a gathering site.
Residents and medical officials said Israeli forces were bombing houses and besieging hospitals, preventing medical and food supplies from entering to force them to leave the camp.
Health officials said they refused orders by the Israeli army to evacuate the hospital or leave the patients, many in critical condition, unattended.
"Hospitals in northern Gaza suffer from stark shortages of medical supplies and manpower and are overwhelmed by the number of casualties," said Hussam Abu Safiya.
"We are now trying to decide who among the wounded we needed to attend to first, and several wounded died because we could not deal with them," he said.
SINWAR LEAFLETS
Earlier on Saturday, Israeli planes dropped leaflets over southern Gaza showing a picture of the dead Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar with the message "Hamas will no longer rule Gaza", echoing language used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The move came as Israeli military strikes killed at least 108 people across the Gaza Strip on Saturday, Palestinian health officials said.
“Whoever drops the weapon and hands over the hostages will be allowed to leave and live in peace," read the leaflet, written in Arabic, according to residents of the southern city of Khan Younis and images circulating online.
The leaflet's wording was from a statement by Netanyahu on Thursday after Sinwar was killed by Israeli soldiers operating in Rafah, in the south near the Egyptian border, on Wednesday.
The Oct. 7 attack Sinwar planned on Israeli communities a year ago killed around 1,200 people, with another 253 dragged back to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel's subsequent war has devastated Gaza, killing more than 42,500 Palestinians, with another 10,000 uncounted dead thought to lie under the rubble, Gaza health authorities say.
In the central Gaza Strip camp of Al-Maghzai, an Israeli strike on a house killed 11 people, while another strike at the nearby camp of Nuseirat killed four others.
Five other people were killed in two separate strikes in the south Gaza cities of Khan Younis and Rafah, medics said, while seven Palestinians were killed in the Shati camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
Later on Saturday, an Israeli strike killed three Palestinians in Nuseirat, medics said.
Late on Friday, medics said 33 people, mostly women and children, were killed and 85 others were wounded in Israeli strikes that destroyed at least three houses in Jabalia.
The Israeli military said it was unaware of that incident.
It said forces were continuing operations against Hamas across the enclave, killing several gunmen in Rafah and Jabalia and dismantling military infrastructure. Palestinian medics said five people were killed in Jabalia on Saturday.
BEIRUT ATTACKED
Meanwhile, Israel struck what it said were Hezbollah arms facilities in southern Beirut on Saturday after the Lebanese armed group fired rockets into northern Israel and a spokesman said a drone was launched at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's holiday home.
Netanyahu was not there at the time, and it was not immediately clear if the building was hit. But he described it as an assassination attempt by "Iran's proxy Hezbollah" and called it a "grave mistake", as Israel prepares to retaliate for an Iranian missile barrage earlier this month.
In Beirut's southern suburbs, Israel carried out heavy strikes on several locations, leaving thick plumes of smoke hanging over the city into the evening.
The strikes targeted "a number of Hezbollah weapons storage facilities and a Hezbollah intelligence headquarters command centre", Israel's military said.
Israel had issued evacuation orders for four separate neighbourhoods within the suburbs, urging residents to get 500 metres (yards) away, but carried out strikes in other areas as well, witnesses said.
Tens of thousands of people have fled the southern suburbs - once a densely populated zone that also housed Hezbollah offices and underground installations - since Israel began regular strikes there about three weeks ago.
An Israeli air attack on Sept. 27 killed Hezbollah's secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, and strikes nearby have killed other top figures from the Iran-backed group.
The United States would like to see Israel scale back some of its strikes in and around Beirut, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
NEW AREA STRUCK
Earlier on Saturday, an Israeli strike killed two people as they were travelling on Lebanon's main highway near the Christian-majority town of Jounieh. Israel's military said it was looking into the incident.
Another strike killed at least four people in Lebanon's Bekaa valley, health authorities said. One of them was the mayor of a nearby town, the second mayor to be killed this week.
In a series of Hezbollah rocket salvos in Israel, one person was killed and at least nine injured, the Israeli ambulance service said.
There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah on any drone attack targeting Netanyahu's house in the northern Israeli town of Caesarea, which the prime minister said was aimed at killing him and his wife.
The conflict over the past year has caused direct Iranian-Israeli confrontations, including missile attacks on Israel in April and on Oct. 1.
Netanyahu has vowed to respond to the October ballistic missile attack.
"I say to Iran and its proxies in its axis of evil: Anyone who tries to harm Israel’s citizens will pay a heavy price," he said in a statement following the Caesarea attack.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations said in a statement: "We have already responded to the Israeli regime, and the action in question has been carried out by Hezbollah in Lebanon."
STALLED TALKS
Hezbollah has been trading fire with Israel since the war between Israel and Iran-backed Hamas began in Gaza last October. On Saturday alone, Hezbollah launched around 200 "projectiles," the Israeli military said.
Nearly three weeks ago, Israel launched a ground assault inside Lebanon in an attempt to stabilise the border region for its citizens who had fled the fighting.
Israel's military said on Saturday said it had destroyed tunnel shafts and underground infrastructure in southern Lebanon. It also said it had killed Hezbollah's deputy commander of the Bint Jbeil area on Friday.
The Israeli military has opened an investigation into the death of a Hezbollah detainee in Lebanon, Israeli media said.
Since October 2023, more than 2,400 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them in the last month, according to Lebanon's health ministry, while 59 people have been killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights, according to Israeli authorities.
Hamas fighters killed some 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in the attack that triggered the war, according to Israeli tallies. Israel's military response has left more than 42,500 people dead, Palestinian officials say.
The Israeli offensive has made most of Gaza's 2.3 million people homeless, caused widespread hunger and destroyed hospitals and schools.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that oversees administration in the Palestinian Territories, has stepped up deliveries of aid into Gaza amid international pressure. Israel and the United Arab Emirates made an air drop of aid into southern Gaza on Saturday.
Western leaders, including US President Joe Biden, have said Sinwar's death offered a chance for a deal for a truce in Gaza and the release of the remaining hostages.
Negotiations for such a deal have been stalled for weeks. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has led diplomatic efforts, is expected to travel to Israel on Tuesday as part of a regional tour, Axios reported on the social media platform X.