Alex Croft
The Independent / November 17, 2024
It comes as an Israeli strike on Beirut kills the chief of media relations for Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Dozens of Palestinians were killed and injured in an Israeli strike on a residential building housing at least six families in Gaza, medics and residents said.
The strike in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya killed 72 people, according to the Gaza government media office. The Palestinian Civil Emergency said around 70 people lived in the property.
Video footage of the strike seen by Reuters shows locals pulling bodies from large piles of rubble, with surrounding houses heavily damaged following the strike.
It comes weeks after Israeli tanks were sent into the Beit Lahiya and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia in northern Gaza, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, which has raised fears that Israel intends to force civilians from the region.
Meanwhile, the bombing campaign across the rest of Gaza has intensified in recent days.
Earlier on Sunday, an Israeli airstrike on a house killed at least 10 people in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. Later in the day, a strike killed five Palestinians who were tasked with escorting aid trucks which entered the enclave, according to residents in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza strip.
The Israeli military said it conducted strikes on “terrorist targets” overnight and had done what it could to avoid civilian harm.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said 43,800 people have been confirmed killed since 7 October 2023, following the Hamas attacks which killed around 1,200 Israelis, according to Israel, with dozens of hostages remaining in Gaza.
Meanwhile, an Israeli strike in Beirut, Lebanon, has killed Hezbollah’s chief of media relations, Mohammad Afif, two Lebanese security sources told Reuters. There has been no immediate confirmation from Hezbollah.
There was no prior warning on the Israeli military spokesperson’s X (Twitter) account before the strike on the Ras al-Nabaa neighbourhood, where many displaced people from Beirut’s southern suburbs were seeking refuge. The Lebanese health ministry said the strike killed one and injured three.
The missiles struck the headquarters of the Syrian Ba’ath Party. Ali Hijazi, the head of the party in Lebanon, told Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed that Afif was in the building. The broadcaster later said he had been killed.
Afif was a long-time media advisor to Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s former secretary general who was killed in an Israeli strike in late September.
Following Israel’s major escalation of its conflict with Hezbollah with a heavy bombardment and invasion in late September – following months of tit-for-tat strikes since last October – Afif had hosted several press conferences for journalists amid the rubble in Lebanon’s capital.
In his last comments on 11 November, he said Hezbollah had sufficient weaponry to fight a “long war”.
Alex Croft is a freelance reporter
