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Israeli Military Says Tuesday’s Strike on Gaza Building Was Targeted

People search the rubble for missing persons at the site of an Israeli strike a day earlier that hit the Al-Loh family home in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip on October 30, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
People search the rubble for missing persons at the site of an Israeli strike a day earlier that hit the Al-Loh family home in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip on October 30, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
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Israeli Military Says Tuesday’s Strike on Gaza Building Was Targeted

People search the rubble for missing persons at the site of an Israeli strike a day earlier that hit the Al-Loh family home in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip on October 30, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
People search the rubble for missing persons at the site of an Israeli strike a day earlier that hit the Al-Loh family home in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip on October 30, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)

An Israeli military official says the target of Tuesday’s attack on a five-story building that Gaza health officials reported resulted in scores of deaths was a spotter with binoculars in the building, and that the intent was not to destroy the structure.

The military official agreed to provide details only on condition of anonymity, citing military protocol and the ongoing investigation into the incident.

The official said Wednesday the building was not known to be a shelter for civilians, and that it collapsed as a result of the strike on the spotter.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday that at least 70 people were killed in the first of two strikes on the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahia, and that more than half of the victims were women and children. The Israeli military had earlier said it was investigating the strike. The Gaza Health Ministry’s casualty tolls do not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

The official said there were discrepancies between the numbers of victims reported by authorities in Gaza and what Israeli intelligence indicates, and that the victims included known fighters. The official did not provide detailed evidence to support that assertion.

The Israeli military has repeatedly struck shelters for displaced people in recent months. It says it carries out precise strikes targeting Palestinian fighters and tries to avoid harming civilians, but the strikes often kill women and children.

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US Troops Need to Stay in Syria to Counter ISIS, Austin Says

FILE - US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin makes a speech at Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
FILE - US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin makes a speech at Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
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US Troops Need to Stay in Syria to Counter ISIS, Austin Says

FILE - US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin makes a speech at Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
FILE - US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin makes a speech at Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

The US needs to keep troops deployed in Syria to prevent the ISIS group from reconstituting as a major threat following the ouster of Bashar Assad's government, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told The Associated Press.
American forces are still needed there, particularly to ensure the security of detention camps holding tens of thousands of former ISIS fighters and family members, Austin said Wednesday in one of his final interviews before he leaves office.
According to estimates, there are as many as 8,000-10,000 ISIS fighters in the camps, and at least 2,000 of them are considered to be very dangerous.
If Syria is left unprotected, “I think ISIS fighters would enter back into the mainstream,” Austin said at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he traveled to discuss military aid for Ukraine with about 50 partner nations.
“I think that we still have some work to do in terms of keeping a foot on the throat of ISIS," he said.
President-elect Donald Trump tried to withdraw all forces from Syria in 2018 during his first term, which prompted the resignation of former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. As the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, advanced against Assad last month, Trump posted on social media that the US military needed to stay out of the conflict.
The US has about 2,000 troops in Syria to counter ISIS, up significantly from the 900 forces that officials said for years was the total number there. They were sent in 2015 after the militant group had conquered a large swath of Syria.
The continued presence of US troops was put into question after a lightning insurgency ousted Assad on Dec. 8, ending his family’s decades long rule.
US forces have worked with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces on operations against ISIS, providing cover for the group that Türkiye considers an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which it identifies as a terror organization.
The Syrian transitional government is still taking shape, and uncertainty remains on what that will mean going forward.
The SDF “have been good partners. At some point, the SDF may very well be absorbed into the Syrian military and then Syria would own all the (ISIS detention) camps and hopefully keep control of them,” Austin said. "But for now I think we have to protect our interests there.”