Israel killed a senior commander in the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah on Wednesday, the second top field leader killed in less than a month, and the group said it retaliated by firing scores of rockets at Israeli military positions near the border.
The Israeli military estimated that around 100 rockets were fired, and said there were no reports of casualties.
International diplomats are scrambling to prevent the near-daily clashes between Israel and Hezbollah from spiraling into an all-out war that could possibly lead to a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran, which is Hezbollah’s main backer. Hezbollah says it will stop its attacks once Israel agrees to a cease-fire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Some Israeli officials have said they are seeking a diplomatic solution to the standoff and hope to avoid war. At the same time, they have warned that the scenes of destruction seen in Gaza will be repeated in Lebanon if war breaks out. Hezbollah, meanwhile, is far more powerful than Hamas and believed to have a vast arsenal of rockets and missiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel.
The nearly nine-month war in Gaza has caused massive devastation across the besieged territory and displaced most of its 2.3 million people, often multiple times. Israel’s military estimated Tuesday that around 1.9 million people — more than 80% of all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip — are now clustered into the territory’s central region.
Evacuees have been told by Israel to seek refuge in an overcrowded coastal area filled with sprawling tent camps where there are few basic services. Israeli restrictions, the ongoing fighting and the breakdown of law and order have curtailed humanitarian aid efforts, causing widespread hunger and sparking fears of famine. The top U.N. court has concluded there is a “plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza — a charge Israel strongly denies.
Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.
Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 37,900 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Currently:
— Israel turbocharges West Bank settlement expansion with largest land grab in decades.
— Israeli strike kills another senior Hezbollah commander as diplomats scramble for calm in Lebanon.
— A strike kills a family in Gaza as an Israeli evacuation order sparks panicked flight from Khan Younis.
— Hezbollah’s deputy leader says the group would stop fighting with Israel after a Gaza cease-fire.
— Lebanese authorities charge U.S. Embassy shooter with affiliation to militant Islamic State group.
— Iran’s presidential candidates talk economic sanctions and nuclear deal ahead of their runoff election.
— Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Gaza at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Here’s the latest:
UN is talking with Israel about aid teams’ communication needs in Gaza, but won’t confirm reports about using Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service
UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations says it’s talking to Israel about its communications needs in Gaza and is looking for a system that doesn’t rely on cellular networks.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told The Associated Press on Wednesday that communications “are vital to the safety of our operations” in Gaza, where war between Israel and Hamas has raged for nearly nine months.
Dujarric would not confirm a report in Axios that the U.N. and Israel are negotiating the deployment of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service in Gaza.
“We are agnostic on the platform, we are looking to have some communications system that does not rely on cell towers,” Dujarric said.
Andrea De Domenico, head of the U.N. humanitarian office in Gaza and the West Bank, also didn’t confirm the Axios report during a press conference with U.N. journalists earlier Wednesday from Jerusalem.
But he said: “Communication equipment has been a longstanding request of the humanitarian community as a whole.”
“It is very simple,” De Domenic said. “Every time there is a military operation, we lose completely communication with our teams.”
He said the internet and simple phone connections are “fundamental to the way we operaate and function in these days.”
De Domenico said the U.N. needs ways to communicate with its teams to plan and conduct humanitarian operations, as well as to communicate with U.N. partners on the ground and the Israeli military to make sure the operations can be carried out safely. He said he didn’t care about the service — as long as it works.
Hezbollah fires rocket barrages against Israeli military positions in retaliation for killing a senior commander
BEIRUT — The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said it fired scores of rockets at Israeli military positions near the border on Wednesday in retaliation for Israel’s killing a senior commander in a airstrike hours earlier.
The Israeli military estimated that around 100 rockets were fired, and said there were no reports of casualties.
Hezbollah said it launched Falaq rockets with heavy warheads targeting the headquarters of the Israeli military’s 769th Brigade in Kiryat Shmona, as well as 100 salvos of Katyusha rockets targeting the headquarters of Israel’s 210th division and the Kilaa air base in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
Later, the group said it attacked the Zaarit barracks near the border with Burkan rockets, another type of rocket with heavy warheads like the Falaq.
A Hezbollah statement identified the commander killed Wednesday as Mohammad Naameh Nasser, who went by the name “Abu Naameh,” his nom de guerre. He is the most senior leader from the group killed since Taleb Sami Abdullah, who was killed in an airstrike June 11.
The Israeli military acknowledged the attack, saying that Nasser alongside Abdullah are “two of the most significant Hezbollah” militants in southern Lebanon. It said Nasser led attacks from southwestern Lebanon.
International diplomats are scrambling to prevent the near-daily clashes between Israel and Hezbollah from spiraling into an all-out war that could possibly lead to a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran, which is Hezbollah’s main backer. Hezbollah says it will stop its attacks once Israel agrees to a cease-fire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Some Israeli officials have said they are seeking a diplomatic solution to the standoff and hope to avoid war. At the same time, they have warned that the scenes of destruction seen in Gaza will be repeated in Lebanon if war breaks out. Hezbollah, meanwhile, is far more powerful than Hamas and believed to have a vast arsenal of rockets and missiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel.
Tens of thousands of people on both sides of the tense frontier have been displaced in the monthslong war.
Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon since October have killed over 450 people, most of them Hezbollah fighters, but the dead also include more than 80 civilians and non-combatants. On the Israeli side, 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed.
Israeli strike kills another senior Hezbollah commander as diplomats scramble for calm in Lebanon
BEIRUT — An Israeli strike in southern Lebanon killed a senior Hezbollah commander on Wednesday as tensions between the two sides boil, a Hezbollah official told The Associated Press.
The strike near the southern coastal city of Tyre took place as global diplomatic efforts have intensified in recent weeks to prevent escalating clashes between Hezbollah and the Israeli military from spiraling into an all-out war that could possibly lead to a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran.
A Hezbollah statement identified the commander as Mohammad Naameh Nasser, who went by the name “Abu Naameh,” his nom de guerre. A Hezbollah official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said Nasser was the head of the group’s Aziz Unit, one of three regional divisions in southern Lebanon.
Nasser was the most senior official from the Iran-backed group killed since Taleb Sami Abdullah, who was killed in an airstrike June 11.
In a video circulated by local media, residents rushed toward a charred vehicle with a large plume of smoke. Civil Defense said its first responders transported an unnamed wounded person to a hospital.
The Israeli military acknowledged the attack, saying that Nasser alongside Abdullah are “two of the most significant Hezbollah” militants in southern Lebanon. It said Nasser led attacks from southwestern Lebanon.
Hezbollah has launched rockets into northern Israel since a day after the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which sparked the war in Gaza. There have been limited clashes along the tense Israel-Lebanon border almost every day that have gradually escalated, with Hezbollah introducing new weapons in their attacks and Israel striking deeper into Lebanon.
Hezbollah maintains that it will stop its attacks once there is a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. Until then, it says it will keep up the attacks to exert pressure on Israel and the international community. Israeli officials have threatened to launch a larger military operation if Hezbollah doesn’t halt its attacks.
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Associated Press writer Kareem Chehayeb contributed to this report.
Israel approved largest land seizure in West Bank in decades, watchdog says
An anti-settlement watchdog says Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades.
The Israeli group Peace Now said Wednesday that authorities recently approved the appropriation of 12.7 square kilometers (nearly 5 square miles) of land in the Jordan Valley. The group’s data indicate it was the largest single appropriation approved since the 1993 Oslo accords at the start of the peace process.
The land seizure, which was approved late last month but only publicized on Wednesday, comes after the seizure of 8 square kilometers (roughly 3 square miles) of land in the West Bank in March and 2.6 square kilometers (1 square mile) in February.
That makes 2024 by far the peak year for Israeli land seizure in the West Bank, Peace Now said.
The Palestinians view the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank as the main barrier to any lasting peace agreement and most of the international community considers them illegal or illegitimate. Israel’s government considers the West Bank to be the historical and religious heartland of the Jewish people and is opposed to Palestinian statehood.
1 killed, another wounded in stabbing attack at northern Israel mall
JERUSALEM — One person was killed and another was wounded in a stabbing attack at a shopping mall in northern Israel in what Israeli police say was a terrorist attack.
Gal Zeid, the spokesperson for Israel’s Galilee Medical Center, said doctors pronounced one man dead after failing to resuscitate him. He said another man was admitted to a hospital intensive care unit. The attack took place in the Israeli town of Karmiel.
The police say the assailant was killed. They did not provide details about the suspect.
Palestinians have carried out a number of stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks in Israel in recent years, while Israeli forces have launched frequent, deadly military raids in the occupied West Bank. Tensions have soared since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack ignited the war in Gaza.
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