Israel’s war on Gaza raged on for the 89th consecutive day in a row with Israeli forces carrying out multiple airstrikes and ground attacks across the besieged Palestinian enclave. According to the latest report from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, over 22,300 have been killed in Gaza, over 57,296 have been wounded, and 7,000 are still missing. The UN and dozens of other aid agencies have repeatedly warned that in addition to the Israeli bombardment, the nearly 2 million displaced people in Gaza are at grave risk of famine and disease due to the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.
The already volatile situation in the region due to the devastating and unabated Israeli bombing of Gaza, escalated after Israel launched a drone attack on a Hamas office in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Six people were killed in the bombing including the Deputy Chief of Hamas’ Political Bureau and the co-founder of its military wing, the al-Qassam brigades, Saleh al-Arouri.
In response to the attack, Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah said in a declaration that it marked a “dangerous development in the course of the war between the Israeli occupation and the Axis of Resistance and a serious attack on Lebanon, its people, security, sovereignty, and resistance.” It added that the attack “will not go unanswered or without punishment.”
The Lebanese government also criticized the attack and called it a “new Israeli crime” and said it would file a complaint against Israel at the United Nations over violation of its territorial integrity and sovereignty.
Palestinians in the West Bank observed a general strike in protest of the killing of the Hamas leader, keeping all shops and other commercial establishments closed for the day.
The strike was observed even as Israeli security forces continued to carry out violent military raids across the occupied West Bank, invading towns such as Qalqilya, Hebron, Nablus, among others, resulting in a number of arrests. In Tulkarm, Israeli forces not only carried out raids but reports stated that they also bombed the Abu al-Foul neighborhood in the Tulkarm refugee camp and bulldozed the streets in several areas.
Israeli forces have already killed more than 324 Palestinians and injured close to 4,000 others in the occupied West Bank since October 7, according to the latest report from the Ministry of Health.
In Jerusalem today, dozens of illegal Israeli settlers reportedly stormed the holy al-Aqsa Mosque with protection from Israeli police.
Meanwhile, even as the news was dominated by the strike in Lebanon, the Israeli military continued to assault Gaza. An airstrike on the al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis run by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society reportedly killed five Palestinian civilians, including a five-day old child and several others were wounded. The United Nations denounced the attack on the hospital, saying that the “world should be ashamed”, while the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Ghebreyesus, called it “unconscionable”, adding that more than 14,000 civilians were using the hospital to take refuge from the Israeli bombardment.
Israeli forces also targeted the Nuseirat, Bureij, and Maghazi camps in the central Gaza Strip, hitting residential buildings and neighborhoods.
