The Israeli army carried out new deadly bombings in the Gaza Strip and engaged Hamas in Rafah, as the United States warned Israel that a war against Lebanese Hezbollah could provoke a regional conflict.
In the north of the Palestinian territory devastated by nearly nine months of war, local civil defense said three children and a woman were killed early in the morning in an Israeli strike targeting a home in Beit Lahia. Tank fire was reported in Gaza City.
According to witnesses, fighting took place between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian Hamas in the west of Rafah (south).
But Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said Israeli bombing was less intense on Wednesday. “Only a few areas have been targeted and the rest of the areas of the territory are calm” for the moment.
The war in Gaza, triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas against Israel on October 7, has led to almost daily violence on the Israeli-Lebanese border, between Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian Islamist movement, and the Israeli army.
“All possible scenarios”
Although the exchange of fire has decreased in intensity in recent days, an escalation last week in cross-border attacks and bellicose rhetoric between Israel and Hezbollah has raised fears of a new war.
“A war between Israel and Hezbollah could easily become a regional war, with disastrous consequences for the Middle East,” warned American Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, receiving his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant at the Pentagon on Tuesday.
PHOTO JOHANNA GERON, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Lloyd Austin, US Secretary of Defense
On June 19, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah which exercises major influence in Lebanon, warned that “no place” in Israel would be spared by his movement’s missiles, the day after an announcement by the Israeli army according to which “operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon” had been “validated”.
Four days later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the “intense” phase of fighting was coming to an end in the Gaza Strip, saying that afterward, Israel could “redeploy some forces to the north” on the border. with Lebanon, “for defensive purposes”.
“It seems that Israel, which devastated Gaza, is now setting its sights on Lebanon. We see that Western powers support Israel behind the scenes,” accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday.
Speaking of an “unpredictable situation”, Canada called on its nationals to leave Lebanon as quickly as possible.
“Uproot Hamas”
Hezbollah opened the front with Israel in support of Hamas the day after the Palestinian movement’s attack on October 7 in southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to a count by the AFP established from official Israeli data.
Of 251 people kidnapped during the attack, 116 are still being held in Gaza, of whom 42 are dead, according to the army.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and launched a major offensive against Gaza that has so far killed 37,658 people, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas-led government’s Health Ministry.
By announcing that the “intense” phase of the fighting against Hamas, particularly in Rafah, was “about to end”, Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed that the war would continue against Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007 and considered terrorist by the United States and the European Union.
The objective, according to him, is “to recover the hostages” and “to uproot the Hamas regime”.
“Catastrophic level of hunger”
At 9e Months into the war, the Israeli army maintains a siege on some 2.4 million residents in the small Palestinian territory, where there is a “high and sustained risk” of famine according to a report by the Integrated Food Security Classification Framework (IPC), on which UN agencies base themselves.
According to this report, 495,000 people still suffer from hunger at “catastrophic” levels.
According to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), “every day 10 children lose one or both legs on average [à Gaza]. Ten a day means around 2,000 children after more than 260 days of this brutal war.”
PHOTO MOHAMMED SALEM, REUTERS
Palestinian children in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip.
Aid workers are not spared from war. Médecins sans Frontières claimed on his work “.
The army confirmed that it had eliminated Fadi al-Wadiya, presenting him as an “important agent” of Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group that fights alongside Hamas.