Cross-border fighting between Lebanese Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops has increased in ferocity as troops prepare to storm the Gazan enclave of Rafah.
The Lebanese network launched a missile attack on a military base near the city of Acre, farther south than usual after an Israeli airstrike killed one of its officials.
Israel hit Hussein Ali Azqul in an airstrike in south Lebanon and described him as a “significant” Hezbollah operative. Witnesses said the strike happened in the area of Adloun.
An Israeli strike on a house in south Lebanon on Tuesday left a woman and a 10-year-old girl dead and six other people, hospital officials said.
Hezbollah has been clashing with Israeli forces along the border for more than six months against the backdrop of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Satellite photos show tents being built near Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip as the Israeli military signals a new offensive on Rafah.
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Men walk through rubble past damaged buildings in Gaza (AFP via Getty Images)Israel has said it plans to evacuate civilians from Rafah where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have taken refuge during the war. A Palestinian health official later said the tent camp was being set up to house displaced people sheltering in a hospital and is not linked to any military operation.
Its presence underscores the struggle to find shelter in Gaza, where some 80% of people have fled their homes. More than half of the territory’s population of 2.3 million have sought refuge in Rafah.
The Israel-Hamas war was sparked by the unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which the militants killed around 1,200 people and abducted around 250.
Israel says the militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others. On Wednesday Hamas released a video showing Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Poli, 24, who was seized on October 7 at an outdoor rave near Re’im, southern Israel.
California-born Goldberg-Polin was seriously wounded in the Hamas attack and appeared showing an arm had been amputated. Referring to the fate of hostages Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida told Al Jazeera TV network “the ball is in the court” of Israel, but that “time grows short and the opportunities are dwindling.”
A member of the Israeli military personnel examines a part of an Iranian ballistic missile (AFP via Getty Images)He suggested the hostages could meet the same fate as Ron Arad, the Israeli airman who is still missing after being captured in Lebanon in 1986.
And there were reports of mass graves at bombed Gaza hospital sites. Mass burial sites were discovered at the sites of the Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals in the Palestinian territory, both of them attacked in Israeli Defence Forces operations.
Israel has denied responsibility. In the House of Commons, Mhairi Black, the SNP’s deputy Westminster leader, said: “Two years ago when mass graves were discovered in Ukraine, this House united in condemnation and rightly treated these graves as evidence of war crimes, which Russia must be made to answer for.
“Yesterday, Palestinian officials uncovered two mass graves outside the bombed hospitals in Gaza. These graves also constitute war crimes, don’t they?”
Tonight, powerful explosions rang out in Sderot, the closest Israeli town to Gaza, as militants fired a new barrage of rockets. Houses were hit by shrapnel after it is believed the Israeli Iron Dome defence system blew them out of the sky.
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Other communities outside Gaza were also targeted. The extremist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed they fired the latest missiles, as war raged in the Strip. It is not known if there are casualties.
Chris Hughes Defence and Security Editor on Israel’s Gaza border
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