Israel launches attacks across Gaza amid spike in regional tensions

TEL AVIV, Jan 05 (Agencies): The Israeli military said its forces launched air, land and sea attacks on more than 100 targets across the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, as regional tensions surge.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory said that 125 people were killed and 318 injured in a 24-hour period.
An Israeli strike flattened a home in an area of southern Gaza that the military had declared a safe zone, killing at least 12 people, most of them children, Palestinian hospital officials said.
The Israeli military operation has driven more than 85 per cent of Gaza's 2.3 million people from their homes, levelled much of northern Gaza, and pushed already displaced Palestinians into smaller slivers of the territory where there is no security, food, water or medicines.
Israeli defence minister unveils plan for post-war Gaza
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant presented on Thursday his plan for the post-war administration of the Gaza Strip, saying that neither Hamas nor Israel would govern the Palestinian territory after hostilities there conclude.
Gallant unveiled an outline of his plan to the press before submitting it to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war cabinet, which has been divided in recent weeks over the future of Gaza after the ouster of Hamas, which has ruled the strip since 2007.
Under the plan, Israel's war in the territory will continue until it has secured the return of the hostages taken on October 07, dismantled Hamas's "military and governing capabilities", and removed any remaining military threats.
Israeli military strikes south Lebanon stoking fears of widening conflict
Several Hezbollah members have been killed in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon in one of the deadliest days for the Iran-aligned group as cross-border fighting has escalated since the start of the Gaza war in October.
At least nine members of the group were killed in separate attacks on Wednesday, the Reuters news agency reported. The Israeli military released nighttime videos of the attacks, including those on Hezbollah military infrastructure and "observation devices" in the village of Yaroun in southern Lebanon's Nabatieh governorate, located across the border from the Israeli settlements of Yir'on and Avivim in northern Israel.
Israel's ground and air blitz has laid waste to Gaza. The total recorded Palestinian death toll had reached 22,438 by Thursday - almost 1 per cent of its 2.3 million population, the Gaza health ministry said.
Israeli shelling of Gaza on Thursday killed more than 20 Palestinians, including 16 in Khan Younis city in a southern coastal area packed with people who had fled from other parts of the enclave, Gaza health officials said.
Footage on Palestinian media showed several bodies wrapped in blankets inside a hospital morgue in Khan Younis.
"Nowhere is safe in Gaza. Wherever you go, there are strikes. In the country, next to the camps, in Al-Mawasi. There is no safe space," said Bahaa Abu Hatab, the brother of one of the dead.
Blinken heads to the Mideast again as fears of regional conflict surge
Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to the Middle East this weekend for the fourth time since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in October as once-abated fears about a regional conflagration are surging with attacks and assassinations in the Red Sea, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq.
The Biden administration had breathed a sigh of relief about the potential for a broader Mideast war in the immediate aftermath of Israel's military response to the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, when it counseled Israeli officials not to mount pre-emptive strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Two-and-a-half months later, though, the chances of a regional war have increased with Israel determined to strike Hamas operatives and leaders no matter where they are and Iranian proxies like Hezbollah, Yemen's Houthi rebels and pro-Iran militias stepping up attacks on U.S., Israeli and international interests in the Red Sea, Iraq and Syria.