Early on Saturday, Israel launched bombs on the southern part of Gaza, triggering warnings from the UN that three months of fighting had left the embattled Palestinian territory “uninhabitable”.
As the conflict enters its fourth month on Sunday, emotions in the region are at an all-time high due to the fighting, which was sparked by Hamas militants’ strikes on southern Israel on October 7.
Under Hamas leadership, the Gaza Strip’s civilian population has been hit most by the violence, which has resulted in massive displacement, devastation, and a worsening humanitarian crisis.
With much of the territory already reduced to rubble, UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said Friday that “Gaza has simply become uninhabitable”.
AFP correspondents reported Israeli strikes early Saturday on the southern city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter from the fighting.
Hezbollah in Lebanon claimed to have launched its “initial response” on Saturday to the killing of the deputy commander of Hamas in Beirut, which, according to a US defense official who spoke to AFP, was carried out by Israel. The killing occurred on Israel’s northern border.
The Israeli army reported “approximately 40 launches from Lebanon” early on Saturday, prompting sirens to sound throughout the Galilee region. Meanwhile, the Iran-backed militia claimed to have launched 62 missiles against the Israeli military’s Meron air control base.
Since early October, Israeli forces and the Hamas-allied Lebanese organization have engaged in almost daily artillery combat. The Lebanese movement said that Tuesday’s attack on a Hezbollah base in the Lebanese capital resulted in Saleh al-Aruri’s death.
The army said it had responded with a strike on a Hezbollah “cell that took part in the launches”.
Military spokesman Daniel Hagari said late Friday that Israeli forces were maintaining a “very high state of readiness” along the border with Lebanon following Aruri’s killing, which Israel has not claimed.
In Gaza, Hagari said, the army continues “to fight … in the north, centre and south”.Palestinian man Abu Mohammed, 60, who fled to Rafah from the central Bureij refugee camp, told AFP that as the war nears its fourth month, Gaza’s future appeared “dark and gloomy and very difficult”.
