Drone attack in Israel injures nearly 40 people as Hezbollah claims responsibility

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) – Israeli emergency services said nearly 40 people were injured Sunday in a drone strike in the central city of Binyamin, including three in critical condition. The Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group claimed responsibility for one of the most serious attacks on Israel in a year of war.

Thanks to Israel’s advanced air defense systems, it is rare for so many people to be injured by drones or missiles. Israeli media reported that two drones were launched from Lebanon, and the military said one was intercepted.

It was not immediately clear who was injured, military or civilians, or what was hit.

Hezbollah said in a statement that it targeted an Israeli military training camp in retaliation for two Israeli attacks in Beirut on Thursday that killed 22 people.

This is the second time in two days that a drone has hit Israel. On Saturday, during the Israeli holiday of Yom Kippur, a drone struck a suburb of Tel Aviv, causing damage but no injuries.

The latest attack came on the same day the United States announced it would send a new air defense system to Israel to help strengthen its defense against missiles.

Israel is currently at war with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon – both Iran-backed militant groups – and is expected to strike against Iran in retaliation for a rocket attack that occurred earlier this month, although it did not specify how how and when. Iran has said it will respond to any Israeli attack.

A year after entering the war with Hamas, Israel continues to strike almost daily against targets it considers militants in Gaza. One of the strikes late Saturday hit a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing parents and six of their children, aged 8 to 23, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah. An Associated Press reporter counted the bodies there.

“They were safe while he was sleeping and he and all his children were killed,” said the man’s brother, Mohammad Abu Ghali. Women stroked the body bags with tears in their eyes.

The Israeli military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames Hamas and other armed groups for their deaths because they operate in densely populated areas.

Netanyahu calls UN peacekeepers Hezbollah’s “human shield.”

International criticism is mounting after Israeli forces repeatedly shot at UN peacekeepers since the start of the ground operation in Lebanon. The military says Hezbollah is operating near peacekeepers, without providing evidence.

The peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL said Israeli tanks stormed through the gate of one of its posts early Sunday morning and destroyed the main gate, then fired smoke shells near peacekeepers at the site, causing skin irritation. UNIFIL said the incident was “another gross violation of international law.”

In recent days, Israeli attacks have injured five peacekeepers.

The Israeli military said a tank trying to evacuate wounded soldiers retreated under fire into a UN facility. It is said that a smoke screen was used to provide cover.

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said Israel tried to maintain constant contact with UNIFIL and that any incident of harm to UN forces would be investigated “at the highest level.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on UNIFIL to heed Israel’s warnings to evacuate, accusing it of “providing a human shield” to Hezbollah.

“We regret the injuries to UNIFIL soldiers and are doing everything in our power to prevent them. But the simple and obvious way to ensure this is to simply get them out of the danger zone,” he said in a video addressed to the UN Secretary-General, who has been banned from entering Israel.

Israel has long accused the United Nations of bias against it, and relations have deteriorated further since the start of the Gaza war. Israel has accused the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees of infiltration by Hamas, which the agency denies.

Bodies rot in the streets of northern Gaza

In northern Gaza, Israeli air and ground forces attack Jabaliya, where the military says militants have regrouped. Over the past year, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to the built-up refugee camp, which dates back to the 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel, and to other areas.

Israel ordered a full evacuation of northern Gaza, including Gaza City. It is estimated that about 400,000 people remained in the north after the mass evacuation ordered in the first weeks of the war. Palestinians fear that Israel intends to permanently depopulate the north in order to establish military bases or Jewish settlements there.

The United Nations says no food has arrived in northern Gaza since October 1.

The military confirmed that evacuation orders included hospitals, but said it had not set a timeline and was working with local authorities to facilitate the transport of patients.

Fares Abu Hamza, an emergency services official at Gaza’s Health Ministry, said the bodies of “a large number of martyrs” had not been recovered from the streets and under the rubble.

“We are unable to reach them,” he told the AP, adding that dogs were eating some of the remains.

The war began when Hamas-led militants entered southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping about 250. About 100 hostages are still held in Gaza, and a third are presumed dead.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, Israeli bombing and ground invasion of Gaza killed more than 42,000 Palestinians and left much of the territory in ruins. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but says more than half of the fatalities are women and children. Israel claims to have killed more than 17,000 fighters without providing evidence.

Israeli airstrikes destroy an Ottoman-era market in Lebanon

Israeli airstrikes overnight destroyed an Ottoman-era market in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh, killing at least one person and injuring four others. Lebanon’s Civil Defense said it fought fires in 12 residential buildings and 40 shops in the market square, dating back to 1910.

“All our livelihoods have been equalized,” said Ahmad Fakih, whose shop was destroyed.

The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah targets, without providing details.

Rescuers searched damaged buildings as Israeli drones buzzed overhead. Nabatiyeh was one of dozens of communities in southern Lebanon that Israel warned to evacuate.

Lebanese Hezbollah, allied with Hamas, began firing rockets into Israel on October 8, 2023, triggering retaliatory airstrikes. The conflict escalated dramatically in September with Israeli attacks that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and most of his senior commanders. Israel launched ground operations earlier this month.

The Lebanese Red Cross also said paramedics were searching for victims at a house destroyed on Sunday by an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon, when a second strike left four paramedics with concussions and damaged two ambulances.

The Red Cross reported that the operation was coordinated with UN peacekeeping forces, which informed the Israeli side.

The Israeli military said it continued to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon on Sunday and reported rocket fire on northern Israel throughout the day, with at least 115 rockets fired from Lebanon. It also said two soldiers were seriously injured by anti-tank rocket fire in Lebanon.

At least 2,255 people have been killed in Lebanon since the beginning of the conflict, including more than 1,400 since September, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health, which does not say how many were Hezbollah fighters. At least 54 people were killed in rocket attacks on Israel, almost half of them soldiers.

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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut and Natalie Melzer in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.

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Find more AP coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.

Wafaa Shurafa and Samy Magdy, Associated Press