At least 12 Palestinians, including several women and children, were killed on Saturday in Israeli attacks targeting areas in both the northern and southern Gaza Strip, Anadolu reports.
Medical sources told Anadolu that 11 Palestinians, including three women and four children, were killed and many others injured in Israeli shelling targeting a house in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood in eastern Gaza city.
Separately, medical sources reported that one Palestinian was killed and six others were injured in an Israeli bombing of a tent sheltering displaced people in the Al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, an area classified as a “humanitarian safe zone” by the Israeli army.
Since beginning its Gaza offensive last October, Israel has followed a pattern of declaring certain areas to be “safe zones,” pushing Palestinians to relocate there, yet still attacking them in the zones or even en route to promised safety.
Israel has continued its brutal offensive on Gaza since a Hamas attack last October despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.
More than 41,000 people, mostly women and children, have since been killed and over 95,000 injured, according to local health authorities. The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the entire population of the territory amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water, and medicine. Hezbollah warns of ‘large losses’ if Israel expands conflict in Lebanon Hezbollah’s deputy leader has warned Israel that a full-scale war on Lebanon would cause “large losses on both sides” and displace hundreds of thousands of more Israelis in the country’s north.
Naim Qassem’s comments on Saturday came as Israel’s Channel 13 reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “on the verge” of launching a “broad and strong operation” on the country’s northern border with Lebanon.
Hezbollah and the Israeli military have been trading near-daily fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since Israel launched its deadly war on Gaza in October. The Lebanese armed group said its attacks on Israel are in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and would end as soon as Israeli troops end their war and withdraw from the coastal enclave.
The Hezbollah-Israel conflict has killed dozens of people in Israel, hundreds in Lebanon and displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the border.
Qassem, speaking in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, said Hezbollah has no intention of going to war, “as we consider that this would not be useful”, according to the AFP news agency. “However, if Israel does unleash a war, we will face up to it – and there will be large losses on both sides,” he said.
