Rocket fire from Lebanon kills 7 in Israel as US officials try to push
for cease-fires
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[November 01, 2024]
By MELANIE LIDMAN, JULIA FRANKEL and FADI TAWIL
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Rocket barrages from Lebanon into northern
Israel killed four foreign workers and three Israelis on Thursday,
Israeli medics said, the deadliest cross-border strikes in Israel since
it invaded Lebanon. Israel kept up airstrikes it says targeted Hezbollah
militants across Lebanon, where health authorities on Thursday reported
24 people killed.
U.S. diplomats were in the region pushing for cease-fires in both
Lebanon and Gaza, hoping to wind down the wars in the Middle East as the
Biden administration enters its final months. Pressure has been building
ahead of the U.S. election next week.
In northern Gaza, Israeli forces struck one of the last functioning
hospitals, destroying much-needed supplies that the World Heath
Organization had delivered to the facility, the U.N. agency said. The
strikes set off a fire that affected the dialysis unit, destroyed water
tanks, damaged the surgery building and injured four medics trying to
extinguish the blaze, said the hospital's director, Dr. Hussam Abu
Safiya.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment about a
strike on the hospital, which it stormed last week after alleging it was
harboring Hamas militants. Gaza's Health Ministry on Thursday condemned
Israeli attacks on the hospital and called on the international
community to safeguard medical facilities in Gaza.
Back-to-back deadly rocket attacks hit Israel
Projectiles from Lebanon crashed into an agricultural area in Metula,
Israel’s northernmost town, killing four Thai workers and an Israeli
farmer, officials said.
Hours later, the Israeli military reported another volley of some 25
rockets from Lebanon, striking an olive grove in a suburb of the
northern Israeli port city of Haifa. That strike killed a 30-year-old
man and 60-year-old woman while wounding two others, said Magen David
Adom, Israel’s main emergency medical organization.
Both Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by Iran, Israel’s regional
adversary. Hezbollah did not immediately claim responsibility for
Thursday’s rocket fire. Israel’s military said 90 projectiles were fired
from Lebanon on Thursday.
Hezbollah has been firing thousands of rockets, drones and missiles into
Israel — and drawing fierce Israeli retaliatory strikes — since Hamas’
Oct. 7, 2023, attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered Israel’s
devastating war in the Palestinian enclave.
The residents of Metula evacuated in October 2023, and only security
officials and agricultural workers remain.
In addition to the four Thais killed, another Thai agricultural worker
was injured by the rocket fire, Thailand’s Foreign Minister Maris
Sangiampongsa said in social media posts Friday. Maris urged all parties
to return to the path of peace in the name of the civilians harmed by
the continuing conflict.
The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an Israeli organization that
advocates for foreign workers, said authorities had put them in danger
by allowing them to work along the border without proper protection.
Agricultural areas near Israel’s border are closed military zones that
can only be entered with official permission. For the few remaining
residents, the thump of interceptions by Israel’s Iron Dome missile
defense system and wailing air raid sirens punctuate daily life.
Nonetheless, local officials largely support continuing a ground
operation in southern Lebanon.
“If the Israeli government accedes to an agreement brought by (the Biden
administration) ... we will not have it because for us this is
rehabilitating Hezbollah again on our borders,” said Eitan Davidi, the
mayor of the northern town of Margaliot.
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Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of
Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing
Hezbollah-Israel war, are reflected in a mirror inside a school
being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday,
Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Israeli bombs across Lebanon after evacuation warnings
Israeli strikes killed 24 people in Lebanon on Thursday, among them
13 people in the country’s eastern Bekaa Valley, according to
Lebanon’s state-run National News agency, a day after the Israel’s
military warned residents there to evacuate.
The warnings sent thousands of people fleeing and spread panic
across the city known for its colossal Roman ruins.
The Lebanese Health Ministry reported that over the last 24 hours,
Israeli bombardments killed 45 people and wounded 110 in various
parts of the country.
Jean Fakhry, a local official in the Deir al-Ahmar region in the
Bekaa Valley, said Israeli airstrikes pummeling the area turned the
main highway “a parking lot” of fleeing cars stuck in traffic.
Around 12,000 displaced people are staying in the area, he said,
with most taking refuge in private homes. At one of the shelters in
Deir al-Ahmar, families with luggage were still arriving Thursday.
“Our homes were destroyed,” said Zahraa Younis, from the village
near Baalbek. “We came with nothing — no clothes or anything else.”
US officials are in the region seeking a cease-fire
Senior White House aides Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein were in
Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior
officials about the conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah.
The meetings focused on efforts to secure a cease-fire deal in
Lebanon and to assess new proposals floated by mediators to free
Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, according to a U.S. official
familiar with planning for the talks who spoke on condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. The
meetings were attended by Netanyahu as well as Yoav Gallant, the
Israeli defense minister; David Barnea, the director of the Mossad,
Israel’s foreign intelligence agency; and other officials.
But with the U.S. election on Tuesday, hopes for immediate progress
appeared remote — particularly in Gaza where Israel has come under
criticism for not letting more humanitarian aid into the besieged
north.
The death toll from more than a year of war in Gaza passed 43,000
earlier this week, Palestinian health officials reported.
The Awda Hospital in central Gaza said late Thursday it had received
16 bodies of people killed by Israeli bombardment of two houses in
Nuseirat refugee camp. The hospital said more than 30 others,
including a medic and two journalists, were wounded.
Over the past year, the broadening Israeli campaign in Lebanon
against Hezbollah has killed 2,865 people there, wounded over 13,000
and devastated Lebanese towns near the border.
Some 1.2 million people in Lebanon have been displaced since Israel
escalated the conflict into a full-blown war last month, when it
launched a wave of heavy airstrikes that killed Hezbollah’s top
leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of his deputies.
A year of Hezbollah rocket attacks have also forced 60,000 Israelis
to evacuate from near the border.
___
Frankel reported from Jerusalem and Tawil from Deir al-Ahmar,
Lebanon. Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Matthew Lee in
Washington and Eleanor H. Reich in New York contributed to this
report.
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