In the north of the territory, where Israel continued to hit targets while battling Hezbollah in Lebanon, a broad Israeli military campaign has killed over 400 Palestinians in two weeks, according to a statement released on Saturday by Gaza’s civil defence service.
Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, has pledged to further up its attacks on Israel weeks after the full-scale conflict broke out on September 23. On Saturday, the group launched rocket barrages towards Israel’s north, where rescuers reported that one civilian had been killed by shrapnel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration claims that his home in the coastal town of Caesarea was the target of a drone strike from Lebanon, even though no one from the Netanyahu family was present and no casualties were sustained.
The latest attacks come as Hamas, Hezbollah and allied Iran-backed groups in the region have vowed to keep fighting after Israeli troops killed the Palestinian movement’s leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, more than a year into the war triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.
Analysts said Sinwar, accused of masterminding the October 7 attack on Israel, was pivotal to ending the Gaza war and securing the release of Israeli hostages.
Israel, vowing to stop Hamas from regrouping in northern Gaza, launched a major air and ground assault on October 6, tightening its siege on the war-battered area and sending tens of thousands of people fleeing.
Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that “we have recovered more than 400 martyrs from the various targeted areas in the northern Gaza Strip”, including Jabalia and its refugee camp, since the Israeli operation began.
According to Bassal, “there are dozens of bodies scattered in the streets of Jabalia,” therefore the true death toll might be greater.
When reached by AFP, the Israeli military stated it was investigating reports from the civil defence agency in Gaza, including the claim that 33 people were killed in an airstrike that occurred overnight on Jabalia.
Hopes that Sinwar’s death on Wednesday might lead to a closer end to the war have been crushed by the bloodshed.
“We always thought that when this moment arrived… our lives would return to normal,” 21-year-old Gazan Jemaa Abu Mendi said.
“But unfortunately,” Mendi said, “the war has not stopped, and the killings continue unabated.”
