Israel said its aircraft struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon on Sunday and that one of its soldiers was hit by an anti-tank missile, in cross-border fighting that the Iran-backed group said killed six of its fighters. With the frontier region seeing its worst violence in years as Israel wages war against Gaza’s Hamas militants, the Israeli military said it traded fire with Hezbollah in at least four different areas along the Lebanese border. The hostilities have forced residents on both sides to flee their homes. Israel’s military says seven soldiers have been killed since Oct. 7. Hezbollah says 19 of its fighters have died, including the six on Saturday.
The Associated Press has the story:
Israel-Lebanon violence flares; Israel strikes a Mosque at West Bank
Newslooks- (AP)
Israel said its aircraft struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon on Sunday and that one of its soldiers was hit by an anti-tank missile, in cross-border fighting that the Iran-backed group said killed six of its fighters. With the frontier region seeing its worst violence in years as Israel wages war against Gaza’s Hamas militants, the Israeli military said it traded fire with Hezbollah in at least four different areas along the Lebanese border.
The hostilities have forced residents on both sides to flee their homes. Israel’s military says seven soldiers have been killed since Oct. 7. Hezbollah says 19 of its fighters have died, including the six on Saturday.
A security source in Lebanon said one Hezbollah fighter was killed in the Lebanese area of Hula, opposite the Israeli community of Margaliot, which Israel said was the target of an anti-tank missile attack. The Israeli army said it fired back.
Hezbollah, which claimed attacks on Israeli military positions throughout Saturday, later said five other members were killed. Israel said its soldiers struck a cell attempting to launch anti-tank missiles toward the area of Shlomi, an Israeli town some 70 km (44 miles) from Margaliot.
Hezbollah and Israel’s military have been trading fire at the frontier almost daily since Palestinian group Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel retaliated with fierce air strikes on Gaza.
It is the worst escalation in violence along the Israeli-Lebanese border since a 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel. Sources have previously said Hezbollah’s attacks were designed to keep Israel’s military occupied without provoking a major war.
SYRIAN MEDIA REPORTS ISRAELI AIRSTRIKES HIT AIRPORTS IN DAMASCUS AND ALEPPO
Syrian state media reported that Israeli airstrikes early Sunday targeted the international airports of the Syrian capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo, killing one person. The runways were damaged and put out of service.
The attack is the second this month on the Damascus International airport and the third on Aleppo’s airport as tensions increases in the Middle East over the Israel-Hamas war.
Syrian state media quoted an unnamed military official as saying the airports were struck by the Israeli military from the Mediterranean to the west and from Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in the south. It said one employee was killed and another wounded in Damascus in addition to material damage.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
Since the war between Israel and Hamas started on Oct. 7, Israel has carried out several strikes in Syria including one on the Damascus airport and two on Aleppo’s airport putting them out of service.
Flights were directed in the past to an international airport in the coastal province of Latakia.
Israel has targeted airports and sea ports in the government-held parts of Syria in an apparent attempt to prevent arms shipments from Iran to militant groups backed by Tehran, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Thousands of Iran-backed fighters from around the region joined Syria’s 12-year conflict helping tip the balance in favor of President Bashar Assad’s forces.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, including attacks on the Damascus and Aleppo airports, but rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations.
ISRAEL STRIKES UNDERGROUND COMPOUND AT WEST BANK MOSQUE, MILITARY SAYS
Israeli Defense Forces said a military aircraft launched a strike early Sunday on the Al-Ansar mosque at the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
The IDF said via X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants had been using an “underground terror route” beneath the mosque. One Palestinian was killed in the shelling, Palestinian Red Crescent said.
Tensions have risen in the West Bank, where dozens of Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli troops, arrest raids and attacks by Jewish settlers.
PALESTINIAN HEALTH MINISTRY SAYS ISRAELI FORCES KILLED FOUR EARLY SUNDAY IN WEST BANK
The Palestinian Health Ministry in the occupied West Bank said at least four people were killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank early Sunday.
The ministry said two were killed in the Jenin refugee camp, which includes the Al-Ansar mosque where Israel’s military said it launched an airstrike. The two fatalities have yet to be identified. It also said Israeli forces shot and killed two men in northern cities of the West Bank: a 19-year-old in Tubas and a 26-year-old in Nablus.
Sunday’s fatalities brought the death toll in the West Bank to 89 Palestinians since the latest Israel-Hamas war broke out on Oct. 7, according to the Health Ministry.
EGYPTIAN MEDIA REPORT A SECOND CONVOY HAS ENTERED GAZA
A convoy of 17 trucks bringing aid to besieged Palestinians crossed into Gaza on Sunday, Egypt’s state-run media reported.
The delivery would be the second shipment into the territory in the past two days.
Residents of Gaza have been under an Israeli blockade that cut off food, water, medicine and electricity since Hamas militants rampaged through southern Israel on Oct. 7.
The more than 2 million residents of the territory have been struggling under Israeli airstrikes and with dwindling resources since then.
UNRWA SAYS THERE WILL BE NO HUMANITARIAN RESPONSE WITHOUT FUEL
AMMAN, Jordan — The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees says it will run out of fuel in Gaza in three days.
“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries. Without fuel, aid will not reach many civilians in desperate need. Without fuel, there will be no humanitarian assistance,” Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA Commissioner General, said in a statement Sunday.
A first delivery of aid that was allowed to cross into Gaza from Egypt on Saturday did not include any fuel.
“Without fuel, we will fail the people of Gaza whose needs are growing by the hour, under our watch. This cannot and should not happen,” Lazzarini said.
He called on “all parties and those with influence” to allow fuel into Gaza immediately, while ensuring that it is only used for humanitarian purposes.
TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PREGNANT WOMEN IN GAZA ARE IN DANGER, AID WORKERS SAY
Thousands of pregnant women in the Gaza Strip who are expected to give birth this month are in grave danger because they are not able to reach a medical facility to deliver, an aid agency says.
Guillemette Thomas, medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in the Palestinian territories, said women have already given birth in UNRWA schools that have turned into shelters housing tens of thousands of displaced people.
“These women are in danger and the babies are in danger right now,” she said. “That’s a really critical situation.”
According to the U.N. population fund, there are 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza. Some 5,500 of them are due to give birth in the coming month, meaning 166 births per day, the U.N. agency said.
Earlier Sunday the U.N. health agency said that at least 130 premature babies are at “grave risk” because of a lack of fuel at Gaza hospitals. Thomas said some of them could die within hours.
AID ORGANIZATIONS WARN OF RISK TO PREMATURE BABIES FROM FUEL SHORTAGE
CAIRO — At least 130 premature babies are at “grave risk” because of lack of fuel at Gaza hospitals, the U.N. health agency said Sunday.
The babies are being cared for at six neonatal units, according to Medical Aid for Palestinians, an aid group working in Gaza. Doctors have warned that the babies are in imminent danger if fuel does not reach hospitals soon.
In a statement to The Associated Press, the World Health Organization called for “immediate and sustained” access of fuel into Gaza to keep health facilities operating.
Melanie Ward, chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians, urged world leaders to press Israel to allow the delivery of fuel to Gaza.
“The world cannot simply look on as these babies are killed by the siege on Gaza. … A failure to act is to sentence these babies to death,” she said.
Hospitals in Gaza have been struggling with the large number of wounded from the ongoing war between Israel and Palestinian militants which was triggered by an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon working with Doctors without Borders in Shifa hospital, said the hospital’s generators “are cutting out more regularly now than before.”
He said hospitals in the territory are facing severe shortages of medical supplies, including bandages, medication and other supplies.
“You can imagine the amount 14,000 severely wounded patients would consume,” he told the AP.
‘HEARTBREAKING’ LIFE-OR-DEATH DECISIONS FOR GAZA’S DOCTORS
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Hospitals across the Gaza Strip are scrounging for fuel stocks to keep the lights on in critical wards and continue to save the lives of the relentless stream of wounded patients.
Serious shortages in other supplies, including ventilators, are forcing medical teams to prioritize the lives of those who can be saved for certain over severe cases that require complex care, said Dr. Mohammed Qandeel, who works in the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
“It’s heartbreaking,” he told The Associated Press. “Every day, if we receive 10 severely injured patients, we have to manage with maybe three or five ICU beds available. We have to choose who must face death, or manage them in regular wards or do some limited care because we think as a medical team, between two patients in a life-threatening situation, we have to give the ventilator to the patient who has a higher chance of improving in 24 hours.”
Many departments in the hospital are plunged in darkness as medical staff allow electricity only in critical departments where patients risk death without it. On Friday the hospital was on its last stock of fuel, but managed to get another tank from UNRWA’s existing stock on Saturday, said Qandeel. “This amount should last for three to five days,” he said.
The World Health Organization says Gaza’s Health Ministry is reporting that its daily use of medical consumables during the war is equivalent to its monthly consumption before the war. The report said “an imminent public health catastrophe looms” in the setting of mass displacement, overcrowding of shelters and damage to the water and sanitation infrastructure.
BODIES OF 3 NEPALI STUDENTS REPATRIATED
KATHMANDU — Nepal has repatriated the bodies of three of 10 Nepali students who were killed during the Hamas attack in Israel two weeks ago.
Nepal’s Foreign Minister Narayan Prakash Saud and Israeli Ambassador Hanan Goder received the bodies at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport. The bodies will be flown to the students’ home district of Kailai.
Another body of a Nepali student is expected to be flown to Kathmandu later Sunday. One Nepalese student is missing and believed to be held captive by Hamas, officials said.
Israeli authorities have so far handed over four bodies to the Nepalese Embassy in Tel Aviv. They are in the process of identifying the remaining six bodies, a statement from the embassy said. More than 200 Nepalese nationals returned home from Israel on Oct. 13. As many as 265 Nepali students were in Israel attending a program launched by the Israeli government.
INDIA SENDS MEDICAL AID AND RELIEF SUPPLIES TO PALESTINIANS
NEW DELHI — India on Sunday sent nearly 6.5 tonnes (7.1 tons) of medical aid and 32 tonnes (35 tons) of disaster relief supplies to Palestinians.
An Indian air force plane carrying the materials left New Delhi for Egypt’s El-Arish airport, said Arindam Bagchi, an External Affairs Ministry spokesman. The aid includes essential life-saving medicines, surgical items, tents, sleeping bags, tarps and water purification tablets among other items, he said.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed condolences and sympathy for those killed and wounded as a result of the attacks in Israel and said that Indian people stand in solidarity with Israel. India has reiterated its position in favor of direct negotiations for establishing a two-state solution.
