Israel pummels Gaza and Lebanon, killing dozens in latest waves of deadly airstrikes

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel launched waves of deadly airstrikes across Lebanon and Gaza that killed at least 24 people in Lebanon’s northeast on Friday, according to the state-run National News Agency, and transformed once-bustling neighborhood blocks in Beirut into smoldering ruins.

Meanwhile in central Gaza, Palestinians recovered the bodies of 25 people killed in a barrage of Israeli attacks that began Thursday, hospital officials said. Israel said it targeted Hamas infrastructure near the Nuseirat refugee camp.

The latest violence comes against the backdrop of the Biden administration’s renewed diplomatic push days before the U.S. election to reach temporary cease-fire deals. Israel has stepped up its war against Hamas’ remining fighters in Gaza, pulverizing areas in the north and raising fears of worsening humanitarian conditions for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still there.

Israel has broadened its strikes in Lebanon to bigger urban hubs in recent weeks after initially targeted smaller border villages the country’s south, where the Iran-backed Hezbollah draws deep support. Hezbollah doubles as a major political party and provider of social services in Lebanon.

Hezbollah began firing rockets, drones and missiles from Lebanon into Israel in solidarity with Hamas immediately after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza. The yearlong cross-border fighting boiled over on Oct. 1, when Israeli forces launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon for the first time since the monthlong 2006 war with Hezbollah.

In Lebanon’s capital, Israeli planes also pounded the southern suburb of Dahiyeh overnight and early Friday for the first time in four days, spreading panic after a rare lull, according to the country’s National News Agency. The Israeli military said those attacks hit Hezbollah weapons manufacturing sites and command centers, and had warned residents to evacuate at least nine locations in Dahiyeh. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Bulldozers rumbled through clouds of dust and smoke Friday, clearing rubble from the pulverized roads where Israeli warplanes had reduced dozens of buildings to their skeletal remains in at least three different areas. Once filled with families and businesses, the mid-rise apartment blocks were left open to the breeze, the walls blown off and furniture buried. Hezbollah supporters in several locations raised the group’s bright yellow banner atop the rubble.

Strikes on and around the northeastern city of Baalbek this week have prompted roughly 60,000 people to flee their homes, emptying many small villages in the area, said Hussein Haj Hassan, a Lebanese lawmaker representing the region.

Overall, U.N. agencies estimate that Israel’s ground invasion and bombardment of Lebanon have displaced 1.4 million people there. Residents of Israel’s northern communities near Lebanon, roughly 60,000 people, have also been displaced for more than a year.

Back-to-back rocket attacks from Lebanon killed seven people near the northern city of Haifa on Thursday, including four Thai farm workers.

Since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted in October of last year, more than 2,800 people have been killed and 13,000 wounded in Lebanon, the Health Ministry says.

On Friday, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported four airstrikes in different villages across the northeast — areas that had largely been spared the worst of Israeli bombardment until last month.

The agency reported rescuers were still searching for survivors after airstrikes killed seven people in Younine, a town in the Bekaa Valley. Emergency workers were combing through the rubble of a targeted building that was believed to have housed 20 people. Further Israeli strikes in the Baalbek-Hermel area killed four people in the town of Nahleh, 11 people in the village of Amhaz and another two in the village of Taraya.

A barrage of Israeli airstrikes on central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp killed at least 21 Palestinians — including an 18-month-old and his 10-year-old sister — according to health officials at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Israeli strikes also hit a motorcycle in Zuwaida and a house in Deir al-Balah, killing four more people, hospital officials said, bringing the overall death toll in Gaza to 25 on Friday.

The Israeli military did not comment on the strikes outside Nuseirat camp. It said it was aware of reports of civilian casualties and was investigating.

In the last 24 hours, Gaza-based Health Ministry reported that 55 people had been killed and another 196 had been wounded in the battered enclave.

As U.S. diplomats left the region after a flurry of meetings with Israeli officials, there were no signs of a breakthrough in either conflict.

Hamas on Friday doubled down on its long-standing demands for a permanent cease-fire and complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, saying Israel has offered only a temporary pause in the war and increase in aid shipments in the latest negotiations. There was no immediate comment from Israel.

“The proposals do not meet the comprehensive needs of the Palestinian people in terms of security, stability, relief, and reconstruction,” said senior Hamas official Bassem Naem, speaking first to the Hamas-run Al Aqsa TV before confirming the group’s position to The Associated Press.

Israel’s blistering offensive on the Gaza Strip has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel and took some 250 hostages back to Gaza.

Health officials inside Hamas-run Gaza do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of the dead in the enclave are women and children.