More than 90 Palestinians have been killed in a series of deadly Israeli attacks in Gaza overnight, Al Jazeerareports.
At least 66 were killed and dozens wounded in Beit Lahiya, the outlet said.
In Sheikh Radwan, 10 children were among 22 Palestinians killed, and seven people, including a child, lost their lives in the Al-Mawasi area as Israeli strikes continued.
Al Jazeera‘s Tareq Abu Azzoum called it “an incredibly bloody night”, noting that the morgue at Deir el-Balah’s Al-Aqsa Hospital is overwhelmed.
“The place has turned into a landscape of rubble, no longer recognisable, as human misery compounds.”
Dozens of people have been killed or unaccounted for after Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip, a hospital director and the civil defence agency said.
One strike on a residential area near the Kamal Adwan hospital in the territory left “dozens of people” dead or missing, the facility’s director Hossam Abu Safiya told AFP.
The process of retrieving the bodies and wounded continues, he said, adding: “Bodies arrive at the hospital in pieces.”
Gaza’s Civil Defence has released a statement detailing 87 personnel killed and 304 staff injured in Israeli attacks, while 21 were detained, Al Jazeera reports.
Israeli attacks have hit 17 civil defence centres and headquarters, of which 14 were destroyed, the statement said.
In addition, 56 vehicles were either destroyed or damaged, while critical firefighting, rescue, and ambulance equipment worth $1.3 million has been lost. Fuel shortages have rendered most civil defence vehicles nonoperational for the past 15 days, further crippling emergency response efforts, Al Jazeera said.
Israeli warplanes have hit the building that the army had threatened to bomb in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, according to the country’s National News Agency (NNA).
The building was located on Abu Dheeb Street and the attack caused severe material damage, the agency reported.
Al Jazeera reports that at least three were killed when the Israeli army bombed the Miraj area in the north of Rafah. Several others were wounded in this attack, they said.
Elsewhere in the Strip, a number of Palestinians were wounded in an Israeli drone attack in the east of Gaza City.
Sixty-eight pro-Iran militants were killed in Israeli air strikes on the Syrian city of Palmyra, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said according to AFP.
Those killed in yesterday’s strikes included 42 fighters from pro-Iran Syrian groups, 26 foreign fighters, most of them from the Iraqi Al-Nujaba movement, and four from Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighter group, the monitor said.
US envoy Amos Hochstein, seeking to broker a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the premier’s office said, AFP reports.
The announcement by spokesman Omer Dostri came after Israeli media outlets reported that Hochstein had arrived in Israel on Wednesday evening and held talks with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said 22 people were killed in an Israeli strike on Gaza City, while medical sources reported dozens of deaths in another overnight air raid, AFP reports.
“We can confirm that 22 martyrs were transferred (to hospital) after a strike targeted a house… in Sheikh Radwan” neighbourhood of Gaza City, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.
Dozens more were killed in another strike at around midnight in northern Gaza, medical sources said. The civil defence has yet to announce a death toll from that strike.
Israeli authorities have filed charges against three Palestinians who allegedly planned to assassinate Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Al Jazeera reports, citing Israeli media.
A joint statement by Israel’s police and Shin Bet security service claimed the trio from the occupied West Bank’s Hebron city sought assistance from Hamas and Hezbollah in orchestrating the plot, according to The Times of Israel newspaper.
The accused monitored Ben-Gvir and his sons, who reside in the nearby illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, AJ quoted the statement as saying.
In April, Shin Bet said it had thwarted a cell plotting to wage attacks in Israel and the West Bank, including one to assassinate Ben-Gvir.
Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reports that Israeli warplanes bombarded several towns and villages in the Nabatieh region of southern Lebanon overnight.
One person was killed in an attack on the town of Rumin, while a young man was killed in an attack on the village of Kfarchouba, NNA reported.
Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee has ordered the residents of the Burj al-Shamali, Mashouq and al-Hawsh villages in southern Lebanon’s Tyre district to flee their homes immediately and move to the north of the Awali River, Al Jazeera reports.
In a statement on X, he said that the Israeli army was planning to hit the areas.
Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) says Israeli forces launched three raids on Haret Hreik in the capital’s southern suburbs overnight, destroying a number of buildings.
According to Al Jazeera, the predawn attacks came as Israel’s military continued its bombardment of southern Lebanon, with raids reported in Khiam, Jdeidat Marjayoun, al-Qalaa and Burj al-Muluk.
Hamas’s acting Gaza chief Khalil al-Hayya has said in broadcasted remarks that there would be no hostages-for-prisoners swap deal with Israel unless the offensive in the Palestinian enclave ended, Reuters reports.
“Without an end to the war, there can be no prisoner swap,” Hayya said in a televised interview with the group’s Al-Aqsa television channel, reiterating the group’s position on how to bring the conflict to an end.
“If the aggression is not ended, why would the resistance and in particular Hamas, return the prisoners (hostages)?” he said. “How would a sane or an insane person lose a strong card he owns while the war is continuing?”
Hayya, who led the group’s negotiating team in talks with Qatari and Egyptian mediators, blamed the lack of progress on Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in turn holds the group responsible for the stalled talks.
A boy reacts during the funeral of Palestinian Anas Al-Masri, who succumbed to wounds sustained from an Israeli strike, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, on Nov 19, 2024. — Reuters
“There are contacts under way with some countries and mediators to revive this file (negotiation). We are ready to continue with those efforts but it is more important to see a real will on the side of the occupation to end the aggression,” said Hayya. “The reality proves that Netanyahu is the one who undermines it (negotiations),” he added.
Hamas wants a deal that ends the operation and sees the release of Israeli and foreign hostages held captive in Gaza as well as Palestinians jailed by Israel, while Netanyahu vowed the conflict can only end once Hamas is eradicated.
Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the UN, told reporters that several bakeries in Gaza have shut down due to a lack of flour and fuel, while the remaining are at risk of imminent closure, Al Jazeera reports.
Just seven of the 19 bakeries supported by humanitarian organisations in Gaza are still running, he said, but they are “on the verge of shutting down” because they are running out of flour and fuel.
“This comes at a time when parts of northern Gaza are at imminent risk of famine” while there has been a “stark increase” in severe hunger in central and southern Gaza, Dujarric said.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) says more than one million Palestinians in Gaza do not have sufficient shelter as winter approaches and brings cold and rainy weather, Al Jazeera reports.
This winter, fewer buildings remain standing in Gaza.
This means most Palestinians, who have been forced to flee Israeli attacks over and over, are being forced to live in tents and makeshift shelters that provide considerably less protection against the cold wind and the rain.
“Some have sewn together old rice sacks to ensure they have something, at least, between them and the sky,” said Alison Ely, the NRC’s shelter specialist in Gaza.
“When winter comes, these shelters will not keep them safe from strong winds, heavy rains and cold temperatures.”
The NRC noted that temperatures in Gaza can fall to 6 degrees Celsius during the winter.
The Israeli military said three soldiers, including a 70-year-old, were killed in south Lebanon, where its troops have battled Hezbollah since late September after a year of cross-border exchanges of fire.
According to AFP, the army announced two soldiers were killed in the same incident including 70-year-old reservist Ze’ev ‘Jabo’ Hanoch Erlich, after it had said that a 22-year-old soldier from Jerusalem “fell during combat in southern Lebanon”.
The deaths bring to 52 the army’s losses in Lebanon since the start of ground operations.
Another soldier was heavily injured during the same incident that killed the two soldiers including Erlich, the military said, adding he had been taken to hospital.
The Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, described Erlich as a “pioneer of research in geography, archaeology and Jewish history of Judea and Samaria” — as Israel calls the West Bank.
He lived in Ofra, one of the first settlements in the area.
The US Senate blocked legislation that would have halted the sale of some US weapons to Israel, which had been introduced out of concern about the human rights catastrophe faced by Palestinians in Gaza.
According to Reuters, 79 of the 100 senators opposed a resolution that would have blocked sales of tank rounds to Israel, while 18 approved it and one voted present.
The Senate was due to vote later on two other resolutions that would stop shipments of two other types of offensive military equipment.
All of the votes in favour of the measure came from Democrats, while “no” votes came from both Democrats and Republicans. Approval would have been a marked departure from decades of US congressional support for Israel, which for years was the biggest recipient of US military assistance.
The “resolutions of disapproval” were filed by Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, and co-sponsored by a handful of Democrats.
Backers hoped that forcing a vote would encourage Israel’s government and President Joe Biden’s administration to do more to protect civilians in Gaza.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a ceasefire in Gaza, as he visited Brazil’s capital, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Xi expressed concerns about the spread of the conflict in Gaza, and “called for a ceasefire and an end to the war at an early date,” the agency said according to AFP, as he met with his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The Chinese president’s appeal for a halt to fighting in Gaza echoed one he and other G20 leaders made during a summit held in Rio.
That summit’s joint statement called for a “comprehensive” ceasefire in both Gaza and Lebanon, where Israel is also waging an offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.
The Palestinian Authority has condemned the United States for vetoing a call for a ceasefire in Gaza at the UN Security Council, saying it “emboldens Israel to continue its crimes”, AFP reports.
“The US decision to exercise its veto for the fourth time emboldens Israel to continue its crimes against innocent civilians in Palestine and Lebanon,” it said in comments carried by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Jordan’s army says it has sent eight helicopters loaded with more than 7 tonnes of aid to Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.
The helicopters carrying food, medicine and supplies for children took off from Jordan, the army said in a statement. It is the first time Jordanian aircraft have landed in Gaza with aid since Israel launched their offensive in October last year.
The army said the aid was being delivered to al-Qarara, an area near Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis, where it would be handed over to the UN World Food Programme.
“The total amount of aid sent from the kingdom to the Gaza Strip is about 56,573 tonnes,” it added, noting the aid had been delivered through Egypt by plane, truck and dozens of airdrops.
Hamas has accused the United States of being “directly responsible” for Israel’s “genocidal war” in Gaza after it vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire, AFP reports.
“Again, the United States demonstrates that it is a direct partner in the aggression against our people, that it is a criminal, kills children and women and destroys civilian life in Gaza, and that it is directly responsible for the genocidal war and ethnic cleansing, just like the occupation (Israel),” Hamas said in a statement.
The Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, Majed Bamya, has said that there was “no justification” for Washington’s veto of a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, AFP reports.
“There’s no justification, no justification whatsoever for vetoing a resolution trying to stop atrocities,” he said after the vote.
The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution for a ceasefire in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, accusing council members of cynically rejecting attempts at reaching a compromise, Reuters reports.
The 15-member council voted on a resolution put forward by its 10 non-permanent members in a meeting that called for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” and separately demanded the release of hostages.
Only the US voted against it, using its veto as a permanent council member to block the resolution.
