A senior military official from pro-Iranian Hezbollah, Commander Wissam Hassan Tawil, was killed in an Israeli strike on Monday January 8 in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese terrorist movement announced. He is the highest-ranking Hezbollah military official killed since clashes between the Hamas-allied terrorist organization and Israel began. Follow our live stream.
The town of Khan Younes targeted by new airstrikes. The Israeli army claimed to have killed “ten terrorists preparing to fire rockets at Israel”, in this besieged city and new epicenter of the fighting, in the Gaza Strip. The Hamas Ministry of Health, for its part, announced that 23,084 people had been killed in the Palestinian enclave since the start of military operations launched by Israel in retaliation for Hamas attacks on October 7. This assessment could not be confirmed from an independent source.
Two Al Jazeera journalists killed in the Gaza Strip. The Qatari channel reported that two of its reporters were killed in a strike on their vehicle on Sunday in Rafah. Moustafa Thuraya – a videographer also working with AFP – and Hamza Waël Dahdouh were returning from a report on the site of a home hit by airstrikes. The second is the son of the head of the Al Jazeera bureau in the Palestinian territory, Waël Dahdouh, who had already lost his wife and two of his children at the end of October in an Israeli strike.
The Israeli army says it has discovered a “weapons production site”. The IDF said on Sunday it had killed “terrorists” in the center of the Gaza Strip, notably using drones targeting the Bureij refugee camp. The Israeli army also claimed to have discovered a “arms production site” underground, operated by Hamas, in the north of the Palestinian enclave.
Blinken expected in Tel Aviv. The head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, is expected in Israel on Monday evening for tough talks on the war in the Gaza Strip. On Sunday, the diplomat described “tragedy” the deaths of thousands of civilians, and warned that the conflict could “easily metastasize” as tensions rise a notch between Israel and Lebanon.