Prospects for a ceasefire between Israel and its adversaries Hamas and Hezbollah collapsed on Friday, as Israeli airstrikes resulted in the deaths of at least 64 people in the Gaza Strip, according to medics in the region. The strikes also targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Later on Friday, the Israeli military announced that it had killed senior Hamas official Izz al-Din Kassab, describing him as one of the last remaining high-ranking members of Hamas responsible for coordinating with other groups in Gaza, during an airstrike in Khan Younis.
U.S. envoys have been working to secure ceasefires on both fronts ahead of the U.S. presidential election scheduled for next Tuesday.
However, Hamas is opposed to a temporary truce, as reported by its Al-Aqsa television on Friday. The group stated that the proposed ceasefire terms did not meet its conditions, which include the requirement to end the year-long war in Gaza and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the severely impacted Palestinian enclave.
Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his priority was to enforce security “despite any pressure or constraints”.
His office said he relayed this message to U.S. envoys Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk in Israel on Thursday. Israel meanwhile pressed on with its military offensives against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon on Friday.
Medics in Gaza said about 64 people were killed and dozens injured overnight and into Friday morning in Israeli strikes on the city of Deir Al-Balah, the Nuseirat camp and the town of Al-Zawayda, all in Gaza’s central area, as well as in its south.
Fourteen people were killed by an Israeli strike at the gate of a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Nuseirat, according to medics at the camp’s Al-Awda Hospital. Another 10 were killed in a car in Khan Younis in the south of Gaza, medics said.
The Israeli military said its troops had killed what it called armed terrorists in central Gaza and the northern Jabalia area. It had no immediate comment on the reported school strike, although it habitually denies deliberately attacking civilians.
The heads of U.N. humanitarian agencies said on Friday the situation in north Gaza was “apocalyptic” with the entire Palestinian population there at “imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence” as Israel pursues its offensive against regrouping Hamas militants in the area.
Israel also pummelled Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday morning with at least 10 strikes, Reuters journalists said. It was the first bombardment of the area – once a densely-packed district and Hezbollah stronghold – in nearly a week.
The strikes came after Israel issued evacuation orders for 10 separate neighbourhoods.
Hassan Saad, speaking in a street in Lebanon’s capital Beirut, told Reuters: “This is a brutal war and Israel does not have the right to do this…There must be a limit put for Israel because it does not abide by any of the laws or human morality.”
Another Beirut man, Ali Ramadan, said he believed the Israeli airstrikes were a way to put pressure on Lebanon in the ceasefire negotiations.
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