Gaza bombed as fallout brings surging tensions to Lebanon, Yemen

AFP | Palestinian Territories 

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

I srael bombed and shelled Gaza yesterday, witnesses and first responders said, with fallout from the war bringing a resurgence of tensions to the Lebanon border and Yemen.

In the ninth month of war between Palestinian Hamas militants and Israeli forces, the Civil Defence agency in Gaza City, in the territory ’s north, reported 10 bodies recovered from Israeli strikes on three separate homes.

In Rafah, in Gaza’s far south near Egypt, witnesses reported clashes between Hamas and Israeli troops in the city’s west, and artillery fire towards a refugee camp in the city centre.

AFPTV images showed streets largely deserted. The United Nations says about one million people have been displaced from Rafah since early May, when Israel began ground operations in pursuit of Hamas militants.

Israel’s military has also been operating in central Gaza, where on Friday at a hospital in Deir al-Balah city a middle-aged man wept over the body of a younger man. Blood soaked through a white cloth around his neck.

The war began after Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures. Hamas also seized 251 hostages.

Of these, 116 remain in Gaza, although the army says 41 are dead. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,266 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

Fear so fabroader Middle East conflict have surged again, with Lebanon-based Hezbollah fighters, who are backed by Iran and allied with Hamas, launching waves of rockets and drones against Israeli military targets.

Hezbollah said intense strikes since Wednesday were retaliation for Israel’s killing of one of its commanders.

Israeli forces responded with shelling, the military said, also announcing air strikes on Hezbollah infrastructure across the border.

Two women were killed in a strike on Jannata in southern Lebanon, village official Hassan Shur said, the latest deaths in near-daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and the Israeli military since the Gaza war began.

On Friday plumes of smoke still billowed over the village. As Muslims worldwide prepare to mark Eid al-Adha starting Sunday, Gazans lamented the shortages of essential goods and lack of an Eid spirit.

G7 leaders called for the “rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief for civilians in need”, and said the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, must be allowed to work in Gaza unhindered.