• Three hospitals told to evacuate
• Airstrike targets senior Hezbollah figure in Beirut
• Israeli forces fire on UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon

CAIRO: An Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced people in central Gaza killed at least 28 people, including women and children, on Thursday, while 22 people were killed in an attack that targeted a senior Hezbollah figure in central Beirut.

Israel has repeatedly pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs, the bastion of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, over the last two weeks but Thursday’s raid was only the third time the city centre has been targeted.

Medics in Gaza said three hospitals in the north were told to evacuate, putting patients’ lives at risk. The strike, in which many more were wounded, occurred in the city of Deir Al-Balah where a million people have taken shelter after fleeing fighting elsewhere after more than a year of war.

The Israeli military said it had carried out a “precise strike’ on the fighters who allegedly had a command and control centre embedded in a school.

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Palestinian group Hamas denies such accusations. Medics said 54 other people were injured at the school.

The health officials said the Israeli military on Wednesday gave patients and medics 24 hours to leave the Indonesian, Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals or risk being stormed as happened earlier in the war at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

Strike in Beirut

At least 22 people were killed in Israeli strikes on a densely populated area of central Beirut on Thursday, the Lebanese health ministry said, with a security source saying a Hezbollah figure was the target.

“The Israeli enemy’s attacks on the capital Beirut this evening resu­lted in a new toll of 22 people killed and 117 injured,” the ministry said in an updated toll statement.

A Lebanese security source, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, told AFP that Israel had attempted to kill a Hezbollah official who often frequented the locations targeted.

Peacekeepers attacked

Israeli forces fired on positions used by UN peacekeepers in Lebanon on Wednesday and Thursday, the UN force said, as Israel warned Lebanese civilians not to return to homes in the south and pursued a widening offensive against Hezbollah.

The UNIFIL force said two of its peacekeepers were injured in one of the incidents when an Israeli tank fired at a watchtower at the force’s main headquarters in Ras al-Naqoura, hitting the tower and causing them to fall. There were no casualties in the other two incidents, a UN source said.

A White House National Security Council spokesperson said on Thursday that the United States is deeply concerned about reports that Israeli forces fired on UN peacekeepers’ positions in southern Lebanon and is pressing Israel for details on the incidents.

Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2024