26 dead, 59 missing after Israeli air strike on Gaza

Pope calls for Gaza genocide probe

FE Team | Published: November 17, 2024 22:27:30

GAZA CITY, Nov 17 (AFP): Gaza's civil defence said 26 people were killed on Sunday, including children, and at least 59 were missing after an Israeli air strike hit a building in the Palestinian territory's north.
Following the strike early Sunday, 26 bodies were pulled from the rubble of the residential building in Beit Lahia, "including children and women", civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP. He added that at least 59 people were still trapped under the rubble.
Israel has been fighting on two fronts since September, ramping up attacks on Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah after nearly a year of cross-border clashes alongside its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
In the latest violence in Gaza, the civil defence service said Israeli air strikes killed at least 20 people, including four women and three children.
A year after the Gaza war was triggered by Hamas's October 7 attacks on its south, Israel vowed to stop the Islamist militants from regrouping in the north of the Palestinian territory and launched a major assault on them.
The deadliest strike on Sunday killed 10 people in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, where another strike on a house claimed the life of a woman, said civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal.
On Israel's second front in the north, AFPTV footage showed several strikes hit Hezbollah's south Beirut stronghold, shortly after the Israeli military warned people to evacuate.
Columns of smoke were seen rising over the capital's southern suburbs, where Lebanon's only international airport is located.
Further south, overnight Israeli air strikes and shelling hit the flashpoint town of Khiam, the Lebanese state-run National News Agency reported.
The bombardment came after Israel's military reported a "heavy rocket barrage" on Haifa late Saturday and said a synagogue was hit, wounding two civilians.