By Abdul Adil
(AA, NNA, Al Jazeera, Wafa, The Muslim News):
GAZA
The Israeli army killed 184 Palestinians and injured dozens of others over the past three days, the Gaza Media Office said Saturday.
“In a dangerous and unethical escalation as usual, the Israeli occupation army carried out more than 94 strikes, bombardments, and crimes over the past 72 hours, targeting unarmed civilians and residential areas across Gaza governorates, particularly in Gaza City, in a brutal and deliberate manner,” the office said in a statement.
“The attacks killed more than 184 Palestinians, including dozens whose bodies have not been retrieved due to the destruction of infrastructure and the inability to reach them under the rubble,” the office added.
The Israeli attacks have been compounded by the army’s prevention of ambulances, civil defense, medical teams, and emergency relief crews from accessing these bodies and the injured, it highlighted.
“These crimes constitute blatant violations of all international laws and norms and fall under the category of war crimes and genocide targeting innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip,” the office further said.
It said that the “(Israeli) occupation is employing a scorched-earth policy, obliterating entire residential blocks with their inhabitants, leading to the destruction of dozens of homes and the deaths and injuries of large numbers of people, including women and children.”
The government media office also urged the UN to “send independent international investigation teams to document these heinous crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice.”
At least 59 more Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours, bringing the overall death toll since October 2023 to 45,717, the Health Ministry in the enclave said on Saturday.
A ministry statement added that some 108,856 others had been injured in the ongoing assault.
“Israeli forces killed 59 people and injured 273 others in four massacres of families in the last 24 hours,” the ministry said.
A medical source told Anadolu that 11 Palestinians were killed and others injured in an airstrike on a home in the Shujaiya neighborhood of eastern Gaza City.
Palestinian Civil Defense said in a statement that its teams retrieved the bodies of six people killed when an Israeli strike targeted a civilian vehicle in the eastern Satar area of Khan Younis.
In a separate attack, three members of the Shubaki family – a man, his wife, and their unborn child – were killed when Israeli airstrikes hit their home in western Gaza City, according to another Civil Defense statement.
Medics confirmed to Anadolu the death of a Palestinian man following an airstrike on the Intelligence Towers area in northwestern Gaza City.
Another statement said rescue teams managed to extract two injured individuals from the rubble of a home belonging to the Ghoula family in the Shujaiya neighborhood but were unable to recover 11 others trapped beneath the debris, who remain missing.
In Khan Younis, the death toll from a bombing that targeted the Sharif and Mujayda families’ home in the Mawasi area rose to three, including a child. Ten others were injured.
Two Palestinians were killed in Rafah’s northern district in a separate strike, and a man succumbed to injuries sustained in an earlier bombing in central Khan Younis.
Nine more Palestinians were injured in a separate airstrike on a home in Mawasi, Khan Younis, the source added.
The Israeli army also shelled the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza and continued demolishing structures in Beit Hanoun and Jabalia refugee camp.
Israel’s continued attacks on hospitals and other off-limits civilian facilities such as mosques, churches, and schools are a possible war crime.
Israeli warplanes bombed a residential block in Gaza City, killing five Palestinians and injuring dozens, the Gaza Civil Defense said Saturday.
The Civil Defense teams recovered the bodies of five Palestinians with a large number of injuries, the agency said in a statement.
Three more Palestinians were killed and others injured when an Israeli drone targetedP a vehicle in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, medics reported.
Palestinian Civil Defense said in a statement that its teams retrieved the bodies of six people killed when an Israeli strike targeted a civilian vehicle in the eastern Satar area of Khan Younis.
In a separate attack, three members of the Shubaki family – a man, his wife, and their unborn child – were killed when Israeli airstrikes hit their home in western Gaza City, according to another Civil Defense statement.
Medics confirmed to Anadolu the death of a Palestinian man following an airstrike on the Intelligence Towers area in northwestern Gaza City.
Medical sources reported that one civilian was killed and others were injured when the occupation fighter jets bombed a group of citizens at the Halabi roundabout in Jabalia al-Balad
Meantime, another Palestinian was killed and dozens of others were injured when Israeli warplanes targeted a group of citizens in the vicinity of Halima al-Sadia School in Jabalia al-Nazla, north of the Strip.
Three civilians were also killed and others were injured in Israel’s bombing of a civilian vehicle on Salah al-Din Street, east of Deir al-Balah, while a number of civilians were injured in the shelling launched by Israeli artillery on the vicinity of al-Sabra Girls’ School, south of Gaza City.
WEST BANK
16-year-old child was injured by live gunfire from Israeli occupation forces on Saturday evening in the town of Beit Ummar, located north of Hebron, according to medical sources.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society reported that its medical teams transported the child, who was shot in the thigh, to a hospital for treatment.
Local sources indicated that Israeli forces raided the Al-Dhahr area of Beit Ummar, leading to confrontations with local Palestinian residents.
During the confrontations, the soldiers fired live ammunition and tear gas canisters, resulting in the child’s injury and dozens of other residents suffering from suffocation due to the tear gas.
Illegal Israeli settlers Saturday evening forcibly expelled the community of Khirbet Tana, a part of Beit Furik town, east of the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, according to an activist.
Taher Hanani said that dozens of settlers, under army protection, attacked the community, opening barrages of live gunfire, tear gas and concussion bombs towards the villagers.
The attack forced 12 families to evacuate the community along with their cattle.
Hanani added that the occupation forces held two youths from the community for over an hour and brutally assaulted them.
He pointed out that two other families were very concerned about the fate of their livestock left behind in the community.
Israeli occupation forces Saturday sealed off a road at the entrance of the western countryside of the southern occupied West Bank governorate of Bethlehem, according to local sources.
They said that occupation forces set up a checkpoint at the Aqbet Hasna Road, which leads to the cluster of villages in the western countryside of the governorate, preventing the movement of Palestinian-registered vehicles and causing a heavy traffic jam.
Israel severely restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement through a complex combination of over 100 fixed checkpoints, flying checkpoints, settler-only roads and various other physical obstructions.
Closures besides other measures, taken under the guise of security, are intended to entrench Israel’s 57-year-old military occupation of the West Bank and its settler colonial project which it enforces with routine and frequently deadly violence against Palestinians.
Israeli settlers launched an attack this evening on the outskirts of the village of al-Mughayer, northeast of Ramallah according to local sources.
Amin Abu Aliya, the head of al-Mughayer Village Council, reported that colonists targeted the western edge of al-Mughayer, setting fire to agricultural rooms belonging to residents of the nearby village of Abu Falah and the town of Turmus Ayya.
Abu Aliya further stated that Israeli occupation forces were deployed at the eastern entrance of the village to provide protection for the settlers during the attack.
Israeli settlers cut down several olive trees in the town of Battir, west of Bethlehem.
Omar Al-Qabsi said that a group of Israeli settlers stormed his land in the Al-Khamar area and cut down around six olive trees and an apple tree, after destroying part of the wires that fence his land.
Al-Qabsi pointed out that this is the third time that settlers have attacked his land and cut down his trees, and they forcibly established an illegal outpost opposite his land.
LEBANON
Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem warned on Saturday that his group’s patience “might run out” over Israeli violations of the cease-fire agreement.
Addressing critics of Hezbollah’s silence on Israel’s violations of the cease-fire agreement, Qassem said in a televised speech that the group’s leadership “is the one that decides when to resist, how to resist, the method of resistance, and the weapons to use.”
Warning further, he said: “Our patience (regarding these violations) might run out … and when we decide to act, you will see it immediately.”
In this context, Qassem said that the cease-fire agreement “exclusively applies to the area south of the Litani River, and the (Lebanese) state is responsible, along with the sponsors, for restraining Israel and ensuring the agreement’s implementation.”
Under the cease-fire terms, Israel is required to withdraw its forces south of the Blue Line – a de facto border – in phases, while the Lebanese army is to deploy in southern Lebanon within 60 days.
Lebanese authorities reported on Saturday 12 more Israeli violations of the cease-fire agreement that was meant to end hostilities between the Israeli army and the Hezbollah group on Nov. 27.
According to Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA), the violations occurred in the districts of Marjayoun, Nabatieh, and Bint Jbeil in the Nabatieh Governorate, as well as in the Tyre district in the South Governorate.
In the Marjayoun district, Israeli military personnel advanced toward the town of Burj Al-Muluk and stationed near the Farah gas station before blocking the road with barbed wire.
Israeli incursions were also observed in the area between the towns of Odaisseh and Taybeh.
In the same district, Israeli artillery fired a shell near the Imam Al-Sadr Sports Complex in the Dubieh area west of the town of Mais Al-Jabal.
Additionally, the Israeli military carried out demolitions of homes and buildings in the area extending between the towns of Taybeh and Rab Thalathin.
In the Nabatieh district, intensive low-altitude flights of Israeli drones were reported over the towns of Doueir, Jebchit, Harouf, and Aabba, with medium-altitude flights observed over the Zahrani area north of the Litani River.
In the Bint Jbeil district, Israeli Merkava tanks and a bulldozer advanced into the town of Maroun Al-Ras and the Aqabat Maroun neighborhood in the city of Bint Jbeil, where a shell was fired at a house in this neighborhood.
In the Tyre district, the Israeli military conducted demolitions of homes and buildings in the area extending between the towns of Alma Al-Shaab and Tayr Harfa.
Continuous low-altitude reconnaissance flights by Israeli drones were also reported over the city of Tyre and its surroundings, as well as the towns of Abbassiyeh, Tura, Burj Rahal, and Deir Qanoun Al-Nahr.
Under the cease-fire terms, Israel is required to withdraw its forces south of the Blue Line – a de facto border – in phases, while the Lebanese army is to deploy in southern Lebanon within 60 days.
[Photo: Civil defense teams launch a search and rescue operation in the rubble after the Israeli army attacked the building where the Al-Ashi family was sheltering in Gaza City, Gaza on January 04, 2024. Photojournalist: Hasan N. H. Alzaanin/AA]
