Palestinian officials said two children were among three people killed in an Israeli air strike on the occupied West Bank on Wednesday (January 8, 2025) which the military said targeted militants.

Ahmad Asaad, governor of the northern West Bank city of Tubas, told AFP that the strike hit nearby Tammun village, killing a 23-year-old man and two children, aged eight and 10, all from the same family.

The Palestinian foreign ministry in Ramallah condemned the deadly strike, accusing Israel of harming civilians “under the pretext” of fighting militants.

The Israeli military said the air force “struck a terrorist cell” in the Tammun area.

The Tubas governor said Israeli forces, which have operated in Tammun in recent days, took the bodies of the three Palestinians killed.

They later handed them back, the Red Crescent said.

The governor identified the dead as Adam Bsharat, 23, Hamza Bsharat, 10, and Reda Bsharat, eight.

He said they were killed in front of their house, which an AFP journalist said was damaged by shrapnel.

Relative Jalal Bsharat said they had been at home when “the Israeli occupation army targeted them”.

He said the strike showed Palestinians are not safe, even in their own homes.

Ensure security

By midday, hours after the strike, Israeli forces were no longer seen in Tammun, the AFP journalist said.

It was the second Israeli air strike to hit Tammun in as many days.

On Tuesday, the military said it killed two people in a strike on an “armed terrorist cell” that opened fire on Israeli forces who were conducting a raid in the village.

Tammun residents told AFP that Israeli forces had taken one of the bodies.

Israeli forces carry out frequent raids on Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

Violence in the territory has soared since the war in Gaza broke out on October 7, 2023.

On Monday, three Israelis were killed when gunmen opened fire on vehicles on a road in the northern West Bank, the army and emergency services said.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said he had ordered an “increase” in military activities to “ensure the security of (Israeli) settlements and settlers”.

Katz said there were “growing efforts to promote Palestinian terrorism” and warned Israel would “continue to act with strength” against militants as well as “their handlers and those who shelter them”.

Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 825 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Palestinian attacks in the territory have killed at least 28 Israelis over the same period, according to Israeli official figures.

An overnight Israeli airstrike targeted Beiruts Basta neighbourhood on November 23, 2024.

Palestinians inspect the damage at the site of an overnight Israeli airstrike on the Tulkarem refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank on October 4, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

At least five people were killed and 20 others wounded in an Israeli air strike on a Gaza mosque early on Sunday (October 6, 2024), medics said.

The strike on the mosque, near the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, came as Israel’s war in the Palestinian enclave approaches its first anniversary.

Eyewitnesses said the number of casualties could rise as the mosque was being used to house displaced people.

The Israeli military said in a statement it “conducted a precise strike on Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command and control center embedded in a structure that previously served as the ‘Shuhada al-Aqsa’ Mosque in the area of Deir al Balah.”

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered when Palestinian Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It has also displaced nearly all of the enclave’s 2.3 million people, caused a hunger crisis and led to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.

Damaged cars at the site of Friday’s Israeli strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs, on September 21, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

The death toll from an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb has risen to 31, including seven women and three children, Lebanon’s Health Minister said on Saturday (September 21, 2024).

Firass Abiad told reporters 68 people were also wounded of whom 15 remain in hospital, adding that search and rescue operations were still ongoing, with the number of casualties likely to rise.

The rare strike — the deadliest targeting the Lebanese capital since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war — hit a densely populated southern neighbourhood on Friday (September 20, 2024) afternoon during rush hour as people returned home. Israel said it killed 11 Hezbollah operatives, including Ibrahim Aqil who was in charge of the group’s elite Radwan Force. The militant group members were in a meeting in the basement of the building that was destroyed.

Hezbollah announced overnight Friday (September 20, 2024) that 15 of its operatives were killed by Israeli forces, but did not elaborate on the location of these deaths.

Lebanese troops cordoned off the area preventing people from reaching the building that was knocked down as members of the Lebanese Red Cross stood nearby to take any recovered body from under the rubble. On Saturday morning, Hezbollah’s media office took journalists on a tour of the scene of the airstrike where workers were still digging through the rubble.

The Minister of Public Works and Transport Ali Hamie told reporters at the scene that 23 people are still missing.

The airstrike on the crowded Qaim street knocked out an eight-story building that had 16 apartments and damaged another one adjacent to it. The missiles destroyed the first building and cut through the basement of the second where the meeting of Hezbollah officials was being held, according to an Associated Press journalist at the scene.

In a nearby building, shops were badly damaged including one that sold clothes and had a sign in English that read: “DRESS LIKE YOU’RE ALREADY FAMOUS.” Friday’s deadly strike came hours after Hezbollah launched one of its most intense bombardments of northern Israel in nearly a year of fighting, largely targeting Israeli military sites. Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system intercepted most of the Katyusha rockets.

The militant group said its latest wave of rocket salvos was a response to past Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon. However, it came days after mass explosions of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies killed at least 37 people — including two children. Some 2,900 others were wounded in the assault which has been widely attributed to Israel.

The Lebanese Health Minister said on Saturday (September 21, 2024) hospitals across the country were filled with the wounded.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the attack which marked a major escalation in the past 11 months of simmering conflict along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire regularly since Hamas’ Oct 7 assault on southern Israel ignited the Israeli military’s devastating offensive in Gaza. But previous cross-border attacks have largely struck areas in northern Israel that had been evacuated and less-populated parts of southern Lebanon.

Earlier this week, Israel’s security cabinet said stopping Hezbollah’s attacks in the country’s north to allow residents to return to their homes is now an official war goal, as it considers a wider military operation in Lebanon that could spark an all-out conflict. Israel has since sent a powerful fighting force to the northern border.

The tit-for-tat strikes have forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes in both southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

Five health workers killed in Gaza

The Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday that five of its workers were killed, and five others injured, by Israeli fire that struck the ministry’s warehouses in the southern Musbah area.

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has already killed at least 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza-based Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between fighters and civilians. (AP) SCY SCY