GAZA STRIP, BEIRUT - Dozens of Palestinians were killed or injured in an Israeli strike on a multi-story residential building housing at least six families in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya town on Sunday (November 17), medics and residents said. The Palestinian Civil Emergency said around 70 people were living in the property but the Gaza government media office put the number of those killed at 72.
The Israeli military, which has been fighting Palestinian fighters group Hamas in Gaza since October 2023, said several strikes were conducted overnight on “terrorist targets” in Beit Lahiya with everything possible done to avoid civilian harm.
The Israeli army sent tanks into Beit Lahiya and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, last month in what it said was a campaign to fight Hamas fighters waging attacks and prevent them from regrouping. It said it has killed hundreds of fighters in those three areas, which residents said Israeli forces had isolated from Gaza City.
Truce talks have halted in recent months as the two warring sides continue to trade blame. Hamas wants a deal that ends the war, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war can only end once Hamas is eradicated.
The Gaza health ministry said 43,800 people have been confirmed killed since Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas fighters killed around 1,200 Israelis that day, and still hold dozens of some 250 hostages they took back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Separately, an Israeli strike on a building in central Beirut on Sunday killed Hezbollah’s media relations chief Mohammad Afif, two Lebanese security sources told a wire service, though there was no immediate confirmation from Hezbollah.
Israel has rarely hit senior Hezbollah personnel who do not have clear military roles, and its air strikes have mostly targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs where Hezbollah has its heaviest presence.
The Israeli military declined to comment in response to questions from a wire service. An Israeli military spokesperson’s account on the social media platform X that often publishes evacuation orders for areas about to be bombed showed no such warning before this strike.
Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire for more than a year, since the Iran-backed group began launching rockets at Israeli military targets on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after its Palestinian ally Hamas carried out a deadly attack on southern Israel.
In late September, Israel dramatically expanded its military campaign in Lebanon, heavily bombing the south and east and the southern suburbs of Beirut alongside ground incursions along the border.
In addition to targeting Hezbollah, the escalation has killed several soldiers of the Lebanese military, including two who died on Sunday when Israel attacked an army post in the southern town of Al-Mari, the Lebanese army said on X. Two other soldiers were wounded, it said.
The strike on Beirut hit the Ras al-Nabaa neighbourhood, where many people displaced from the southern suburbs by Israeli bombardment had sought refuge.
The security sources said a building housing offices of the Ba’ath Party had been hit, and the head of the party in Lebanon, Ali Hijazi, told the Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed that Afif had been in the building.
The Syrian Social Nationalist Party, another political party with ties to Hezbollah, said in a statement that Afif had been killed but gave no details of how or where. The Lebanese health ministry said the strike had killed one and injured three.
Ambulances could be heard rushing to the scene, and guns were fired to prevent crowds approaching.
The broadcaster later also said Afif had been killed. It showed footage of a building whose upper floors had collapsed onto the first storey, with civil defence workers at the scene.
Afif was a long-time media adviser to Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut on Sept. 27.
He managed Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station for several years before taking over the group’s media office.
Afif hosted several press conferences for journalists amid the rubble in Beirut’s southern suburbs. In his most recent comments to reporters on Nov. 11, he said Israeli troops had been unable to hold any territory in Lebanon, and that Hezbollah had enough weapons and supplies to fight a long war.