Hezbollah Says it Struck Explosives Factory South of Haifa

A street in Haifa in northern Israel is nearly deserted as Yom Kippur begins at sunset on October 11, 2024. (Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)
A street in Haifa in northern Israel is nearly deserted as Yom Kippur begins at sunset on October 11, 2024. (Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)
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Hezbollah Says it Struck Explosives Factory South of Haifa

A street in Haifa in northern Israel is nearly deserted as Yom Kippur begins at sunset on October 11, 2024. (Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)
A street in Haifa in northern Israel is nearly deserted as Yom Kippur begins at sunset on October 11, 2024. (Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)

Lebanon’s Hezbollah said on Saturday that it launched a salvo of missiles at an Israeli military base to the south of the city of Haifa.
Hezbollah fighters were "targeting the explosives factory there with a salvo of... missiles," the group said in a statement.
Air raid sirens sounded in northern Israel, with the Israeli military saying it had intercepted a projectile launched from Lebanon.
This came as the Israeli military made more evacuation orders to southern Lebanon residents.
The military has ordered residents of 22 southern Lebanese villages to evacuate to areas north of the Awali River, according to a statement released on Saturday.

Lebanese authorities said Friday that 60 people were killed and 168 wounded in the past 24 hours, raising the total toll over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah to 2,229 dead and 10,380 wounded.
Israel has been escalating its campaign against Hezbollah with waves of heavy airstrikes across Lebanon and a ground invasion at the border, after a year of exchanges of fire.



Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes 'Cruelty'

A Palestinian mourns as he carries the shrouded body of a child, killed in an Israeli strike the previous night, during a funeral in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on December 21, 2024, as the war between Israel and Hamas militants continues. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
A Palestinian mourns as he carries the shrouded body of a child, killed in an Israeli strike the previous night, during a funeral in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on December 21, 2024, as the war between Israel and Hamas militants continues. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes 'Cruelty'

A Palestinian mourns as he carries the shrouded body of a child, killed in an Israeli strike the previous night, during a funeral in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on December 21, 2024, as the war between Israel and Hamas militants continues. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
A Palestinian mourns as he carries the shrouded body of a child, killed in an Israeli strike the previous night, during a funeral in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on December 21, 2024, as the war between Israel and Hamas militants continues. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.

Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican's various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza, Reuters reported.

"Yesterday, children were bombed," said the pope. "This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart."

The pope, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel's military campaign against Palestinian militant group Hamas.

In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that "what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”

Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli sharply criticized those comments in an unusual open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the pope's remarks amounted to a "trivialization" of the term genocide.

Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there, but was denied entry.

The patriarch's office told Reuters it was not able to comment on the pope's remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.