Region

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — The Hamas-Israel war raging in Gaza entered its fourth month on Sunday as the Israeli forces again pounded the besieged Palestinian territory and US top diplomat Antony Blinken was back in the region seeking to avoid a wider escalation.

Israeli air strikes overnight and early Sunday killed at least 64 people in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory, said its health ministry.

It said two journalists were killed when their car was struck. The ministry, medics, and witnesses identified them as Mustafa Thuria, a video stringer for Agence France-Presse, and Hamza Wael Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera's bureau chief in Gaza who earlier lost his wife and two other children in an Israeli strike.

Israeli bombardment also claimed other civilian lives in the southern city of Khan Yunis and in the Rafah area near the Egyptian border, where many of the territory's displaced people have sought refuge, AFP correspondents reported.

Relatives were mourning the dead at Khan Yunis' European Hospital, among them Mohamed Awad, who wept over the body of a 12-year-old boy and listed other family members killed.

"My brother, his wife, his children, his relatives and the brothers of his wife — there are more than 20 martyrs," he said.

During the Gaza war, violence has also flared between Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed armed group Hizbollah, which have traded almost daily cross-border fire since the war started.

A recent flareup in tensions and border hostilities had sparked “real concern”, US Secretary of State said ahead of a Jordan visit on Sunday.

“We want to do everything possible to make sure that we don’t see escalation there”, Blinken said on his fourth trip to the Middle East since the October 7.

Blinken warned of the need to end an “endless cycle of violence”.

Deadly violence also flared again in the occupied West Bank, where bloodshed has surged to levels unseen in nearly two decades.

An early morning Israeli strike in Jenin killed six Palestinians, while an Israeli border police officer died when a roadside bomb hit her vehicle Sunday, sources on both sides said.

The Israeli forces later reported an Israeli was shot dead near the West Bank city of Ramallah, and that police were searching for the attacker.

‘Unnecessary war’ 

Israel is carrying out a relentless bombardment and ground invasion that have killed at least 22,722 people, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.

Families and friends of the hostages again rallied in Tel Aviv late Saturday, demanding steps leading to their release but many also voicing anger at his government.

The Netanyahu government is “ruining Israel and they are destroying everything we hoped and dreamed of”, one demonstrator, Shachaf Netzer, 54, told AFP.

“Everybody here wants an election.”

On Israel’s tense northern border with Lebanon, Hizbollah on Saturday said it had fired 62 rockets at an Israeli military base, days after a strike in Beirut killed Hamas deputy leader Saleh Al Aruri.

A US Defence Department official told AFP that Israel carried out the strike that killed Aruri.

The Israeli forces said it had struck Hizbollah “military sites” in response to the rocket barrage, while army spokesman Daniel Hagari warned the Shiite Muslim armed group against “dragging Lebanon into an unnecessary war”.

Top Western diplomats, also including EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, were in the region as part of a fresh push to address mounting fears of a wider conflict and to boost the flow of aid into Gaza.

Blinken held talks with His Majesty King Abdullah II before heading to Qatar and Abu Dhabi later in the day, on a regional tour that was also set to take him back to Israel and the occupied West Bank.

King Abdullah warned Blinken against “the catastrophic repercussions of continuation of the aggression against Gaza, underlining the necessity of ending the tragic humanitarian crisis” there, a statement from the Royal palace said.

Borrell visited Beirut on Saturday, where he met members of Hizbollah’s political wing, and was next headed to Saudi Arabia where he planned to discuss “a joint EU-Arab initiative” for peace.

Civilians in Gaza have borne the brunt of the conflict that has reduced swathes of the coastal territory to rubble and triggered a deepening humanitarian crisis.

“Gaza has simply become uninhabitable,” UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on Friday.

JENIN Palestinian Territories — An air strike, gunfire and explosives across the West Bank killed eight Palestinians and two Israelis on Sunday, officials on both sides said as violence surges in the occupied territory.

Seven Palestinian were killed in an Israeli air strike in the area of Jenin refugee camp, a fighters’ stronghold in the northern West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Israeli police said an officer was killed when her "vehicle... was hit by an explosive device" during a raid on the camp, adding that three other officers were wounded.

In a separate incident, a Palestinian man was killed by Israeli forces fire in Abwein village north of Ramallah, said the health ministry. There was no immediate comment from the military.

Elsewhere in the Ramallah area, an Israeli civilian was shot dead, according to the Israeli forces.

The Israel man was "killed adjacent to the British police junction" north of Ramallah, it said in a statement.

Violence in the West Bank has surged to levels unseen in nearly two decades since October 7.

Israeli forces carry out regular raids in the occupied territory including Jenin and its adjacent refugee camp, often triggering gun battles between Palestinian fighters and Israeli forces.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported early Sunday a major deployment of Israeli forces in Jenin.

It said an “Israeli drone strike” killed six people including four brothers. A seventh person later died from wounds.

‘Unbelievable scene’ 

Suleiman Moussa, a resident of Jenin, said the air strike followed sounds of gunfire.

“We came here and saw people thrown to the ground ... [and] some body parts,” Moussa told AFP.

“It was an unbelievable scene and we didn’t know what to do.”

AFP footage from the site of the strike near the camp showed residents inspecting patches of blood and splintered glass on a pavement.

Mourners gathered later on Sunday for the funeral of the four brothers.

During 2023, the health ministry counted more than 520 Palestinian deaths in across the West Bank in violence related to the conflict.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.

About 3 million Palestinians live in the territory along with 490,000 Israelis, who live in settlements deemed illegal under international law.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The West Bank has experienced an "unmatched surge" in the number of new Israeli settlements since the start of the war in Gaza, an Israel-based NGO has said.

The Israeli group Peace Now said in a report that nine outposts had appeared in the West Bank since the start of the Hamas-Israel conflict.

The West Bank, a territory occupied by the Israeli forces since 1967, has seen a sharp increase in violence since the start of the war in Gaza.

About 3 million Palestinians live in the occupied West Bank, which is also populated by 490,000 Israelis living in settlements deemed illegal under international law, but recognised by Israel.

Peace Now said in the report published on Thursday there had been an increase in the activities of some settlers who are "marginalising" the Palestinians in the territory, noting a "record" number of new settlements since the outbreak of fighting.

"The three months of war in Gaza are being exploited by settlers to establish facts on the ground and effectively take control of extensive areas in Area C," Peace Now said, referring to the part of the West Bank under Israeli civilian and military control and where the settlements are concentrated.

Several leaders of Israel’s pro-settlement movement are ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which has helped to create a “permissive military and political environment” that is favourable to the development of some settler projects, according to the group.

Acts of violence by settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank reached a record high in 2023, the Israeli watchdog Yesh Din reported earlier this week, while the UN also recorded 1,225 attacks by settlers on Palestinians during the year.

In December, the United States imposed sanctions on dozens of settlers, who are now banned from entering American territory.

TEHRAN — A bombing attack in southern Iran claimed by the Daesh group has killed 91 people, state media said Saturday, raising an earlier toll after two victims had succumbed to wounds.

The two blasts in Kerman on Wednesday hit crowds at a memorial ceremony near the tomb of Qasem Soleimani, a top Revolutionary Guard general killed in a US drone strike in Iraq in January 2020.

“The death toll from the terrorist incident reached 91 after two people, including a child, hospitalised in intensive care, succumbed to their injuries,” official news agency IRNA quoted a local health official as saying.

The attack is the deadliest in Iran since 1978, when arson killed more than 370 people trapped in a cinema in Abadan, in the country’s southwest, according to AFP archives.

Daesh group extremists on Thursday claimed responsibility for the blasts. A statement said two of Daesh members had “activated their explosive belts” in the middle of “a large gathering of apostates, near the grave of their leader”.

The Iranian intelligence ministry said on Friday that “one of the suicide bombers” was “of Tajik nationality”, while the identity of the second attacker has not yet been established.

At least 11 suspects have been arrested across six Iranian provinces over the attack, the ministry said.

The funerals of the victims took place on Saturday in Kerman with the participation of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Gen. Hossein Salami, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Soleimani was head of the Guards’ foreign operations arm, the Quds Force, before his death. He is celebrated in his country for his role in the fight against Daesh in neighbouring Iraq as well as in Syria.