Palestinian Hospital Official Says 17 Killed in Israeli Strike on Northern Gaza

 Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip November 10, 2024. (Reuters)
Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip November 10, 2024. (Reuters)
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Palestinian Hospital Official Says 17 Killed in Israeli Strike on Northern Gaza

 Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip November 10, 2024. (Reuters)
Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip November 10, 2024. (Reuters)

An Israeli strike early Sunday on a home sheltering displaced people in the northern Gaza Strip killed at least 17 people, according to the director of a nearby hospital that received the bodies.

Dr. Fadel Naim, director of the Al-Ahly Hospital in Gaza City, said the dead include nine women, and that the toll was likely to rise as rescue efforts continue.

He said they were killed in a strike on a home in the urban refugee camp of Jabalia, where Israel has been carrying out an offensive for over a month.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Israeli forces have encircled and largely isolated Jabaliya and the nearby towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun for the past month, allowing in only a trickle of humanitarian aid. Hundreds of people have been killed since the offensive began on Oct. 6, and tens of thousands of people have fled to nearby Gaza City.

On Friday, experts from a panel that monitors food security said famine is imminent in the north or may already be happening. The growing desperation comes as the deadline approaches for an ultimatum the Biden administration gave Israel to raise the level of humanitarian assistance allowed into Gaza or risk possible restrictions on US military funding.

The northern third of Gaza, including Gaza City, was the first target of Israel's ground invasion and has suffered the heaviest destruction of the 13-month-old war, which was triggered by Hamas' attack into southern Israel. As in other areas of Gaza, Israel has sent forces back in after repeated operations, saying Hamas has regrouped.

The military says it only targets fighters, whom it accuses of hiding among civilians in homes and shelters. Israeli strikes often kill women and children.

The war began when Hamas-led fighters blew holes in the border fence and stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.

At least 43,603 Palestinians were killed, with 102,929 injured, since Israel's military offensive on Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, Gaza's health ministry said on Sunday.

Israeli bombardment and ground invasions have left vast areas of Gaza in ruins and displaced around 90% of the population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of people are living in crowded tent camps with few if any public services and no idea of when they might return to their homes or rebuild.

Ceasefire talks mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt have repeatedly stalled since the start of the year.

Qatar, which has served as a key mediator with Hamas, said over the weekend that it had suspended its efforts and would only resume them when “the parties show their willingness and seriousness to end the brutal war and the ongoing suffering of civilians.”



An Israeli Strike that Killed 3 Lebanese Journalists Was Most Likely Deliberate

A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
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An Israeli Strike that Killed 3 Lebanese Journalists Was Most Likely Deliberate

A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)

An Israeli airstrike that killed three journalists and wounded others in Lebanon last month was most likely a deliberate attack on civilians and an apparent war crime, an international human rights group said Monday.
The Oct. 25 airstrike killed three journalists as they slept at a guesthouse in southeast Lebanon in one of the deadliest attacks on the media since the Israel-Hezbollah war began 13 months ago.
Eleven other journalists have been killed and eight wounded since then, Lebanon's Health Minister Firass Abiad said.
More than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon, and women and children accounted for more than 900 of the dead, according to the Health Ministry. More than 1 million people have been displaced since Israeli ground troops invaded while Hezbollah has been firing thousands of rockets, drones and missiles into Israel - and drawing fierce Israeli retaliatory strikes.
Human Rights Watch determined that Israeli forces carried out the Oct. 25 attack using an air-dropped bomb equipped with a US produced Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, guidance kit.
The group said the US government should suspend weapons transfers to Israel because of the military´s repeated "unlawful attacks on civilians, for which US officials may be complicit in war crimes."
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the report.
The Biden administration said in May that Israel’s use of US-provided weapons in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law but that wartime conditions prevented US officials from determining that for certain in specific airstrikes.
The journalists killed in the airstrike in the southeastern town of Hasbaya were camera operator Ghassan Najjar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida of the Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV, and camera operator Wissam Qassim, who worked for Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV.
Human Rights Watch said a munition struck the single-story building and detonated upon hitting the floor.
"Israel’s use of US arms to unlawfully attack and kill journalists away from any military target is a terrible mark on the United States as well as Israel," said Richard Weir, the senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Weir added that "the Israeli military’s previous deadly attacks on journalists without any consequences give little hope for accountability in this or future violations against the media."
Human Rights Watch said that it found remnants at the site and reviewed photographs of pieces collected by the resort owner and determined that they were consistent with a JDAM guidance kit assembled and sold by the US company Boeing.

The JDAM is affixed to air-dropped bombs and allows them to be guided to a target by using satellite coordinates, making the weapon accurate to within several meters, the group said.
In November 2023, two journalists for Al-Mayadeen TV were killed in a drone strike at their reporting spot. A month earlier, Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and seriously wounded other journalists from France´s international news agency Agence France-Presse and Qatar´s Al-Jazeera TV on a hilltop not far from the Israeli border.