BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia fired dozens of rockets at northern Israel on Saturday, warning that the barrage was its initial response to the targeted killing, presumably by Israel, of a top leader from the allied Hamas group in Lebanon’s capital earlier this week.
The rocket attack came a day after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said that his group must retaliate for the killing of Saleh Arouri, the deputy political leader of Hamas, in a Hezbollah stronghold south of Beirut. Nasrallah said that if Hezbollah did not strike back, all of Lebanon would be vulnerable to Israeli attack. He appeared to be making his case for a response to the Lebanese public, even at the risk of escalating the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel as the war between Israel and Hamas rages on.
Hezbollah said it launched 62 rockets toward an Israeli air surveillance base on Mount Meron and that it scored direct hits. The group said rockets also struck two army posts near the border. The Israeli military said about 40 rockets were fired toward Meron and that a base was targeted, but made no mention of the base being hit. It said it struck the Hezbollah cell that fired the rockets.
On Saturday, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said 122 Palestinians were killed over the past 24 hours, bringing the total since the start of the war to 22,722. The count does not differentiate between combatants and civilians. The ministry has said two-thirds of those killed have been women and children. The overall number of wounded rose to 58,166, the ministry said.An Israeli soldier weeps at the marker for a loved one kidnapped on Oct. 7 in a cross-border attack by Hamas at the Nova music festival, after a press conference at the site in Re’im, southern Israel, Friday, Jan. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah received at least 46 bodies overnight, according to hospital records seen by The Associated Press. Many were men who were apparently shot. Fighting has raged between Israeli forces and militants in the area. The dead also included five members of a family killed in an airstrike, the records showed.
The latest Israeli-dropped leaflets urged Palestinians in some areas near the hospital to evacuate, citing “dangerous fighting.”
In the southern city of Khan Younis, the focus of Israel’s ground offensive, the local European Hospital received the bodies of 18 people killed in an overnight airstrike on a house in the city’s Maan neighborhood, said Saleh al-Hamms, head of the nursing department at the hospital. Citing witnesses, he said more than three dozen people had been sheltering in the house, including those displaced.
Israel has held Hamas responsible for civilian casualties, saying the group has embedded within in Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. Still, international criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war has grown more persistent because of the rising civilian death toll. The United States has urged Israel to do more to prevent harm to civilians, even as it keeps sending weapons and munitions while shielding its close ally against international censure.
