Region

BEIRUT — Hamas fighters on Monday fired 16 rockets from Lebanon towards northern Israel, the Palestinian group's armed wing announced, saying they targeted areas south of the Israeli coastal city of Haifa.

The Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said the strikes came "in response to the occupation's [Israel's] massacres and its aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip".

The Israeli army, meanwhile, reported about 30 projectiles had been fired at northern Israel from Lebanon, adding that it fired back at the direction they had been launched from.

Hamas, which is allied with Lebanon's Iran-backed Shiite group Hizbollah, has a number of fighters in south Lebanon and has previously claimed attacks on Israel from there.

Tensions have run high at the border between Israel and Lebanon, which remain technically at war, since the October 7 surprise attack, with Hizbollah and Israel regularly exchanging attacks.

Since October 7, at least 81 people have been killed on the Lebanese side in cross-border skirmishes, according to an AFP tally, including 59 Hizbollah fighters.

Six soldiers and two civilians have been killed on the Israeli side.

Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine — The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 10,000 people, the health ministry said on Monday after nearly one month of Israeli heavy bombardment of the besieged coastal enclave. 

The total included 292 killed in the overnight barrage which hit two paediatric hospitals and Gaza's only psychiatric hospital, the ministry said.

"These are massacres! They destroyed three houses over the heads of their inhabitants, women and children," Mahmud Meshmesh, resident of Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza, told AFP.

"We have already taken 40 bodies out of the rubble," he said as crowds prayed around corpses wrapped in white shrouds.

Ground forces with tanks have flooded the northern half of the Gaza Strip and tightened an encirclement of Gaza City, effectively splitting the territory in two.

Israel’s ally the United States sent its top diplomat Antony Blinken on a whirlwind Middle East tour that wrapped up on Monday in Turkey, where again his host pressed for an Israeli ceasefire, which Washington has declined to endorse.

The heads of major United Nations agencies issued a joint statement also calling for a ceasefire inside the territory of 2.4 million people where an Israeli siege has cut off most water, food and fuel supplies.

“It’s been 30 days. Enough is enough. This must stop now,” the statement said.

The Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt reopened on Monday to allow the evacuation of foreigners and dual nationals, the government said, ending a two-day closure prompted by a dispute over the passage of ambulances.

Six ambulances carrying wounded Gazans arrived in Egypt on Monday as evacuations resumed, a border official said.

On his regional tour, Blinken called for “humanitarian pauses” while rejecting Arab countries’ demands for a ceasefire.

After meeting his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan on Monday, Blinken said Washington was working “very aggressively” to expand aid for trapped civilians in Gaza, but he did not provide details before boarding a flight to Japan.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was travelling across his country’s remote northeast on Monday, apparently snubbing Blinken.

NATO member Turkey, which is allied to the Palestinians but also has ties with Israel, has said it is recalling its ambassador to Israel and breaking off contacts with Netanyahu.

West Bank unrest 

The war has exacerbated tensions in the occupied West Bank, where more than 150 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces and settlers since it started, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Israeli occupation forces killed four Palestinians in the West Bank on Monday, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry.

The Israeli military said on Monday it had arrested Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi, 22, in a raid in her West Bank town of Nabi Salih on suspicion of “inciting violence and terrorist activities”.

Overall, the army said more than 1,350 Palestinians had been arrested across the West Bank since October 7.

Tamimi became prominent at age 14 when she was filmed biting an Israeli soldier to prevent him from arresting her younger brother and for later slapping another Israeli soldier.

GAZA STRIP, Occupied Palestine — At least 45 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on a central Gaza refugee camp, health ministry said on Sunday in an updated toll, as fighting rages in the Palestinian territory.

The Hamas-run ministry in the besieged Gaza Strip said in a statement that "the number of martyrs in the Maghazi massacre has risen to 45".

Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra had initially reported 30 deaths.

Hamas said in a statement posted on Telegram that Israel had "directly" bombed civilian homes, adding that most of the dead were women and children.

“An Israeli air strike targeted my neighbours’ house in Al Maghazi camp, my house next door partially collapsed,” said Mohammed Alaloul, 37, a journalist working for the Turkish Anadolu Agency.

Alaloul told AFP his 13-year-old son, Ahmed, and his 4-year-old son, Qais, were killed in the attack, along with his brother. His wife, mother and two other children were injured.

The health ministry in Gaza, the narrow territory under Hamas control since 2007, said more than 9,480 Gazans, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israeli strikes and the intensifying ground campaign.

GAZA STRIP, Occupied Palestine — The health ministry in Gaza said at least 15 people were killed on Saturday when a UN school sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians was hit by an Israeli strike.

"The massacre at the Al Fakhura school committed by the occupation [Israel] this morning left 15 martyrs and 70 wounded," ministry spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra told a press conference.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said its school is being used as a "shelter for displaced families".

"At least one strike hit the school yard where there were tents for displaced families. Another strike hit inside the school where women were baking bread," UNRWA said in a statement.

On Thursday, UNRWA said four of its schools in the Gaza Strip housing people displaced by the war had been damaged by bombings.

An estimated 1.4 million people have been displaced in four weeks of war, out of the territory’s 2.4 million residents, with many crammed into schools or hospitals.

The health ministry said on Saturday at least 9,488 people have been killed across Gaza, the majority civilians, since Israel started pounding the territory on October 7.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said in a statement one of its ambulances had been struck “by a missile fired by the Israeli forces”, about 2 metres from the entrance to Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

The strike on Friday killed 15 people and wounded 60 others, it said, mirroring figures released earlier by the Hamas-run health ministry.

An AFP journalist at the scene saw multiple bodies beside the damaged ambulance outside the hospital.

Another ambulance, belonging to the health ministry, was “directly targeted” by a missile around 2 kilometre from the hospital, causing injuries and damage, the PRCS said.

Hamas denied that its fighters had been inside the vehicles, which it said were hit by Israeli forces while transporting wounded people from Gaza City towards the Rafah crossing with Egypt.

According to the PRCS, the convoy of five ambulances left Al Shifa hospital shortly after 4:00pm (14:00 GMT) and headed south.

The convoy, consisting of four ambulances from the Hamas-run health ministry and one belonging to the PRCS, had to turn back after hitting a stretch of road “blocked by large quantities of rubble and rocks” due to shelling, the statement said.

As the ambulances headed back towards the hospital, a first “missile” strike hit a health ministry ambulance, damaging the vehicle and injuring the people inside, according to the PRCS.

A second deadly strike hit the PRCS ambulance, carrying a wounded woman, as it approached Al Shifa’s gates, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

It said “the deliberate targeting of medical teams constitutes a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions, a war crime”.

UN ‘horrified’ 

More than 23,500 people have been wounded across Gaza in four weeks of war, according to health ministry in Gaza.

Some 16 hospitals across Gaza are no longer functioning because of damage from strikes and the lack of fuel, according to the Hamas authorities that rule Gaza.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement he was “horrified by the reported attack in Gaza on an ambulance convoy outside Al Shifa hospital”.

He added that the deadly fighting “must stop”.

World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “utterly shocked” by reports of attacks on ambulances evacuating patients.

Al Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest, has a bed occupancy rate of 164 per cent according to the WHO, which on Wednesday warned a shortage of fuel for generators “immediately risks the lives” of patients.

Israel has long accused Hamas fighters of using hospitals and schools, charging that the armed group was using Palestinian civilians as “human shields”.

On Friday, a senior White House official said Hamas tried to use a US-brokered deal on opening the Rafah border crossing to get its fighters out of Gaza and into Egypt.

One-third of the names on a list provided by Hamas of wounded Palestinians for evacuation were those of Hamas members and fighters, the official said.

“That was just unacceptable to Egypt, to us, to Israel,” the official added.

KHAN YUNIS, Occupied Palestine — Layan Al Baz cries in agony when the effect fades of the painkillers she receives after her legs were amputated, the result of a strike on Gaza as Israel fights Hamas.

“I don’t want a false leg,” the 13-year-old Palestinian tells AFP in Khan Yunis’s Nasser hospital, in the southern Gaza Strip, where getting artificial limbs was nearly impossible anyway.

The impoverished Palestinian territory, under a crippling Israeli-led blockade for years and besieged since war erupted on October 7, suffers severe shortages of food, water and fuel, and medical supplies are scarce.

“I want them to put my legs back, they can do it,” Baz says in desperation from her bed at Nasser’s paediatric ward.

Every time she opens her eyes as the painkillers wear off, she sees her bandaged stumps.

Her mother, Lamia Al Baz, 47, says Layan was wounded last week in a strike on Al-Qarara district of Khan Yunis, part of Israel’s unrelenting military campaign.

According to the Hamas-run health ministry, nearly 9,500 people have been killed in Gaza since the war erupted, including at least 3,900 children.

Four of them were Baz’s relatives, killed in the strike that cost the 13-year-old’s legs, her mother says.

Lamia says two of her daughters, Ikhlas and Khitam, and two grandchildren including a newborn baby were killed when the Israeli strike hit Ikhlas’s home. The family were there to support Ikhlas who had just given birth.

“Their bodies were in shreds,” says Lamia, who had to identify her daughters’ bodies at a morgue. “I identified Khitam by her earrings and Ikhlas by her toes.”

Layan, her face and arms dotted with injuries, asks: “How will I return to school when my friends walk and I can’t?”

Lamia tries to reassure her: “I will be by your side. It will all be fine. You still have a future ahead of you.”

‘I’m still alive’ 

At the hospital’s burns unit, 14-year-old Lama Al Agha and her sister Sara, 15, lie in adjacent beds.

They are treated after an October 12 strike that killed Sara’s twin Sama and brother Yahya, 12, says their mother, sitting between the two hospital beds and struggling to hold back tears.

Stitches and burn scars are visible on Lama’s half-shaved head and her forehead.

“When they transferred me here, I asked the nurses to help me sit up and I discovered that my leg was amputated,” the 14-year-old recalls.

“I’ve been through a lot of pain but I thank God that I’m still alive.”

Lama is determined not to let her injury decide her future.

“I’ll get an artificial leg and continue my studies, so I can achieve my dream of becoming a doctor. I will be strong for me and for my family,” she says.

Hospital Director Nahed Abu Taaema explains that due to the massive number of casualties and dwindling resources, medics are often left with no choice but to amputate limbs to prevent life-threatening complications.

“We have to choose between saving a patient’s life or putting it at risk while trying to save their injured leg,” says Abu Taaema.

Dashed football dream 

Sporting a green football jersey and matching shorts, Ahmad Abu Shahmah, 14, uses crutches to walk around the ruins of his family’s home in Khan Yunis.

Now surrounded by several of his cousins, Abu Shahmah is at the courtyard where he used to play football.

But the building was destroyed in a strike that killed six of his cousins and an aunt.

“When I woke up [after surgery] I asked my brother, ‘where is my leg?’” he recalls.

“He lied to me and said it was right there, and that I couldn’t feel it because of the anaesthetics.”

The following day, “my cousin told me the truth”, says Abu Shahmah.

“I cried a lot. The first thing I thought about was that I will no longer be able to walk or play football like I would every day. I signed up to an academy one week before the war.”

Abu Shahmah supports FC Barcelona, while his cousins are die-hard fans of Real Madrid.

One of them, Farid Abu Shahmah, says that if he “could turn back time and return Ahmad his leg, I’d be ready to give up Real and become a Barcelona fan like him”.