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Rocket Fire From Lebanon Kills 7 11/01 06:13
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) -- Rocket barrages from Lebanon into northern Israel
killed four foreign workers and three Israelis on Thursday, Israeli medics
said, the deadliest cross-border strikes in Israel since it invaded Lebanon.
Israel kept up airstrikes it says targeted Hezbollah militants across Lebanon,
where health authorities on Thursday reported 24 people killed.
U.S. diplomats were in the region pushing for cease-fires in both Lebanon
and Gaza, hoping to wind down the wars in the Middle East as the Biden
administration enters its final months. Pressure has been building ahead of the
U.S. election next week.
In northern Gaza, Israeli forces struck one of the last functioning
hospitals, destroying much-needed supplies that the World Heath Organization
had delivered to the facility, the U.N. agency said. The strikes set off a fire
that affected the dialysis unit, destroyed water tanks, damaged the surgery
building and injured four medics trying to extinguish the blaze, said the
hospital's director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment about a strike
on the hospital, which it stormed last week after alleging it was harboring
Hamas militants. Gaza's Health Ministry on Thursday condemned Israeli attacks
on the hospital and called on the international community to safeguard medical
facilities in Gaza.
Back-to-back deadly rocket attacks hit Israel
Projectiles from Lebanon crashed into an agricultural area in Metula,
Israel's northernmost town, killing four Thai workers and an Israeli farmer,
officials said.
Hours later, the Israeli military reported another volley of some 25 rockets
from Lebanon, striking an olive grove in a suburb of the northern Israeli port
city of Haifa. That strike killed a 30-year-old man and 60-year-old woman while
wounding two others, said Magen David Adom, Israel's main emergency medical
organization.
Both Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by Iran, Israel's regional adversary.
Hezbollah did not immediately claim responsibility for Thursday's rocket fire.
Israel's military said 90 projectiles were fired from Lebanon on Thursday.
Hezbollah has been firing thousands of rockets, drones and missiles into
Israel -- and drawing fierce Israeli retaliatory strikes -- since Hamas' Oct.
7, 2023, attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered Israel's devastating war in the
Palestinian enclave.
The residents of Metula evacuated in October 2023, and only security
officials and agricultural workers remain.
In addition to the four Thais killed, another Thai agricultural worker was
injured by the rocket fire, Thailand's Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa
said in social media posts Friday. Maris urged all parties to return to the
path of peace in the name of the civilians harmed by the continuing conflict.
The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an Israeli organization that
advocates for foreign workers, said authorities had put them in danger by
allowing them to work along the border without proper protection.
Agricultural areas near Israel's border are closed military zones that can
only be entered with official permission. For the few remaining residents, the
thump of interceptions by Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system and wailing
air raid sirens punctuate daily life.
Nonetheless, local officials largely support continuing a ground operation
in southern Lebanon.
"If the Israeli government accedes to an agreement brought by (the Biden
administration) ... we will not have it because for us this is rehabilitating
Hezbollah again on our borders," said Eitan Davidi, the mayor of the northern
town of Margaliot.
Israeli bombs across Lebanon after evacuation warnings
Israeli strikes killed 24 people in Lebanon on Thursday, among them 13
people in the country's eastern Bekaa Valley, according to Lebanon's state-run
National News agency, a day after the Israel's military warned residents there
to evacuate.
The warnings sent thousands of people fleeing and spread panic across the
city known for its colossal Roman ruins.
The Lebanese Health Ministry reported that over the last 24 hours, Israeli
bombardments killed 45 people and wounded 110 in various parts of the country.
Jean Fakhry, a local official in the Deir al-Ahmar region in the Bekaa
Valley, said Israeli airstrikes pummeling the area turned the main highway "a
parking lot" of fleeing cars stuck in traffic.
Around 12,000 displaced people are staying in the area, he said, with most
taking refuge in private homes. At one of the shelters in Deir al-Ahmar,
families with luggage were still arriving Thursday.
"Our homes were destroyed," said Zahraa Younis, from the village near
Baalbek. "We came with nothing -- no clothes or anything else."
US officials are in the region seeking a cease-fire
Senior White House aides Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein were in Israel for
talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior officials about the
conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah.
The meetings focused on efforts to secure a cease-fire deal in Lebanon and
to assess new proposals floated by mediators to free Israeli hostages being
held in Gaza, according to a U.S. official familiar with planning for the talks
who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment
publicly. The meetings were attended by Netanyahu as well as Yoav Gallant, the
Israeli defense minister; David Barnea, the director of the Mossad, Israel's
foreign intelligence agency; and other officials.
But with the U.S. election on Tuesday, hopes for immediate progress appeared
remote -- particularly in Gaza where Israel has come under criticism for not
letting more humanitarian aid into the besieged north.
The death toll from more than a year of war in Gaza passed 43,000 earlier
this week, Palestinian health officials reported.
The Awda Hospital in central Gaza said late Thursday it had received 16
bodies of people killed by Israeli bombardment of two houses in Nuseirat
refugee camp. The hospital said more than 30 others, including a medic and two
journalists, were wounded.
Over the past year, the broadening Israeli campaign in Lebanon against
Hezbollah has killed 2,865 people there, wounded over 13,000 and devastated
Lebanese towns near the border.
Some 1.2 million people in Lebanon have been displaced since Israel
escalated the conflict into a full-blown war last month, when it launched a
wave of heavy airstrikes that killed Hezbollah's top leader, Hassan Nasrallah,
and most of his deputies.
A year of Hezbollah rocket attacks have also forced 60,000 Israelis to
evacuate from near the border.
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