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Israel Presses Gaza Offensive Amid Deadly Airstrikes

A Palestinian girl walks at the site of an Israeli strike, outside a school sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip July 10, 2024. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
A Palestinian girl walks at the site of an Israeli strike, outside a school sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip July 10, 2024. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
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Israel Presses Gaza Offensive Amid Deadly Airstrikes

A Palestinian girl walks at the site of an Israeli strike, outside a school sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip July 10, 2024. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
A Palestinian girl walks at the site of an Israeli strike, outside a school sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip July 10, 2024. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled

Israeli forces pressed their offensive in north and central Gaza on Wednesday, hours after an airstrike on a tent encampment that Palestinian officials said killed more than two dozen people.

Leaflets were dropped on Gaza City, this time with a map marking "safe routes" for the evacuation of the whole city, not just certain districts. The Israeli leaflets urge civilians to head south along two routes to the central Gaza Strip.

Hamas said the renewed Israeli campaign killed more than 60 Palestinians across the enclave on Tuesday and threatened to derail efforts to secure a ceasefire in the nine-month-old war with talks to resume in Doha on Wednesday.

The airstrike hit the tents of displaced families outside a school in the town of Abassan east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killing at least 29 people, most of them women and children, Palestinian medical officials said.

On Wednesday, Israeli forces deepened their incursion into two Gaza City districts. Soldiers carried out house-to-house searches in some areas and tanks shelled several homes, according to residents.

Israeli forces patrolled the main road to the coast, snipers commandeered rooftops of some high-rise buildings still standing and tanks were stationed inside the headquarters of the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, residents said.

The Israeli military said in a statement its forces were continuing operations in Gaza City against militants of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who they said had operated from inside the UNRWA facilities, using it as a base for attacks.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said it had received dozens of desperate calls from residents in Gaza City trapped in their homes but their teams were unable to reach them because of the intensity of the bombing.
The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said fighters fought with Israeli forces operating in the area with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs, and sometimes in close-range combat.

In the central Gaza camp of Al-Nuseirat, medics said six Palestinians, including children, were killed in an airstrike on a house early on Wednesday, while another airstrike killed two people and wounded several others in Khan Younis.

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Arab World

Israel Takes Advantage of Hezbollah’s Security Gap to Carry Out Assassinations

Lebanese citizens remove the debris of the car of a leader of Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya who was targeted by Israel in eastern Lebanon. (AFP)
Lebanese citizens remove the debris of the car of a leader of Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya who was targeted by Israel in eastern Lebanon. (AFP)
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Israel Takes Advantage of Hezbollah’s Security Gap to Carry Out Assassinations

Lebanese citizens remove the debris of the car of a leader of Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya who was targeted by Israel in eastern Lebanon. (AFP)
Lebanese citizens remove the debris of the car of a leader of Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya who was targeted by Israel in eastern Lebanon. (AFP)

The ongoing Israeli assassinations of Hezbollah fighters and leaders highlight a security and technological gap that the party has been unable to address.
On Thursday morning, Israeli drones killed a leader in Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya, Mohammad Hamid Jabara from the town of Qaraoun, in a raid on the town of Gaza in the Bekaa region. Hours later, a member of Hezbollah was killed in an attack on his vehicle, shortly after he had left his mother’s house in the town of Jabal al-Butm in the South. The party mourned him in the afternoon.
Mostafa Asaad, a researcher in military and strategic affairs, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the two assassinations were part of a long series of Israeli attacks against leaders of Hezbollah, Al-Jamaa al-Islamiya, and the Hamas movement, throughout southern and eastern Lebanon.
But he added that the assassinations “are not linked to a political dimension”, although their pace decreases at times and intensifies at others. They are rather “a purely military calculation”, he said.
Asaad stressed that Hezbollah has not yet been able to “stop the breaches despite the encrypted transmission devices it uses, which are mostly Iranian devices developed using Chinese, Russian and North Korean models.”
Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya, which is close to the Hamas movement, was the target of several Israeli strikes. On June 22, the Israeli army killed a member whom it said was responsible for supplying weapons to his faction and its ally, the Hamas movement. The faction had mourned nine of its members, including senior officials, since the start of the escalation.
In a statement, the Israeli army said that it killed Mohammad Jabara, who has links with the Hamas organization in Lebanon and was assigned to promote and implement terrorist plans and launch operations from Lebanon towards Israeli territory, some of which in cooperation with Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya.
In the afternoon, Hezbollah mourned Hassan Muhanna, who was targeted by an Israeli drone in the Butm Mountains. Local media reported that a drone attacked his vehicle, before he got out of the car and hid among the trees, where he was hit by another missile that killed him.
On the other hand, Hezbollah announced that it had bombed the spy equipment at the Hadab Yarin site with appropriate weapons, which led to its destruction.
The Israeli army said that it carried out a raid on Hezbollah’s military infrastructure in the Ain al-Tineh area, and another attack on two of the party’s military sites in Qusayra and Maryamin.