Israeli attacks triggered explosions in Beirut suburbs and killed 14 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes hit a cafeteria and a house in Gaza, killing at least 14 people, health officials said. In Lebanon, Warplanes attacked the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut on Tuesday after the military ordered the evacuation of several homes.

The new bombardment on both fronts is imminent shortly before a deadline set by the United States that Israel drastically increases the humanitarian aid allowed in Gaza or Risk of possible restrictions on US military financing. A group of eight international aid organizations announced this in a report on Tuesday Israel has not complied with US demands.

In Lebanon, massive explosions rocked the southern suburbs of Beirut – an area called Dahiyeh where Hezbollah has a large presence – shortly after the Israeli military issued an evacuation order for 11 homes there.

There was initially no information on the number of victims. The military said Hezbollah facilities were located in the houses, but this claim could not be independently confirmed.

An attack occurred late Monday evening in the village of Ain Yaacoub in northern Lebanon, killing at least 16 people, the Lebanese Civil Defense said. Four of those killed were Syrian refugees, and another ten people were injured. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the attack.

Israel has been carrying out increased bombings of Lebanon since late September, promising to weaken Hezbollah and halt more than a year of cross-border shelling of northern Israel by the Lebanese militant group.

At the same time, Israel has continued its more than 13-month-long campaign in Gaza, triggered by the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

An Israeli strike late Monday hit a makeshift cafeteria used by displaced people in Muwasi, the center of a “humanitarian zone” declared by the Israeli military early in the war.

According to officials at Nasser Hospital, where the injured were taken, at least 11 people died, including two children. Video from the crime scene showed men dragging bloody wounded people out from between tables and chairs set up in the sand in a corrugated iron enclosure.

Another attack struck a house in the Nuseirat urban refugee camp in central Gaza early Tuesday, killing three people, including a woman, according to al-Awda Hospital, which received the injured. Eleven others were also injured in the attack, it said.

The Israeli military initially did not comment on the attacks.

Hours earlier, the Israeli military announced a small expansion of the humanitarian zone and urged Palestinians evacuating from other parts of the Gaza Strip to seek refuge. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are seeking refuge in sprawling tent camps in and around Muwasi, a largely deserted area of ​​dunes and agricultural fields with few facilities or services along the Mediterranean coast of the southern Gaza Strip.

Israeli forces have been besieging the northernmost part of the Gaza Strip since the beginning of October and are fighting there against supposedly newly formed Hamas fighters.

With virtually no food or aid allowed in for more than a month, the siege has raised fears of famine among the tens of thousands of Palestinians believed to still be seeking refuge there.

An Oct. 13 letter signed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin gave Israel 30 days to, among other things, allow at least 350 truckloads of goods into the Gaza Strip every day.

So far Israel has achieved nothing. According to Israeli data, an average of 57 trucks per day entered the Gaza Strip in October, and 70 per day in the ten days of November. The UN puts the number lower, at 37 trucks per day since the beginning of October.

Israel has announced a series of measures in recent days to increase aid, including the opening of a new border crossing into the central Gaza Strip. But so far the effects are unclear.

The military said Tuesday it had released hundreds of packages of food and water into Jabaliya and Beit Hanun, two besieged areas in the far north of the Gaza Strip. According to the Palestinian Civil Defense Authority, three trucks carrying flour, canned food and water reached Beit Hanoun.

It was only the second shipment allowed into the area since early October; According to the United Nations, a smaller shipment was allowed in last week, but not all of it reached shelters in the north

The military announced on Tuesday that four soldiers were killed in Jabaliya, bringing the number of soldiers killed there since the attack began to 24. According to Palestinian health authorities, hundreds of Palestinians were killed. However, the true figures are not known because rescue workers cannot reach buildings destroyed in strikes. Israel has asked residents in the area to evacuate. But the UN estimates that around 70,000 people remain.

Many Palestinians there fear that Israel is seeking to permanently depopulate the area in order to more easily maintain control over it. On Tuesday, witnesses told the Associated Press that Israeli troops had surrounded at least three schools in Beit Hanoun, forcing hundreds of displaced people seeking shelter inside to leave.

Mahmoud al-Kafarnah said drones could be heard urging people to move south to Gaza City as he spoke from one of the schools while gunfire could be heard. “The tanks are outside,” he said. “We don’t know where to go.”

Hashim Afanah, who sought refuge in his family’s home along with at least 20 other people, said forces had forced people out of homes and shelters.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. The count does not distinguish between civilians and militants, but more than half of the dead are women and children. Israel says it is targeting Hamas militants and blames the militant group for civilian deaths as it operates in residential areas and infrastructure and among displaced people.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping around 250 as hostages. Um 100 hostages are still in the Gaza StripAbout a third of them are considered dead.

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Associated Press reporters Samy Magdy in Cairo and Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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This story has been corrected to show that the duration of the war is now 13 months, not 19 months.