- LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
- More than 50 Gazans were killed in Israeli airstrikes overnight, medical sources said
- Israeli rocket attack targets airports in Damascus and Aleppo – Syrian state media
- One civilian killed, airports out of service – state media
GAZA/JERUSALEM, Oct 22 (Portal) – Fears that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could spread to the Middle East grew on Sunday as the United States sent more military supplies to the region while Israel targeted targets in Gaza and elsewhere attacked.
More than 50 Palestinians were killed in Israeli air strikes on the narrow coastal enclave overnight, Gaza medical sources said on Sunday.
An Israeli rocket attack targeted Damascus and Aleppo international airports in neighboring Syria early Sunday, killing a civilian worker and disabling the airports, Syrian state media reported.
Israel said its planes attacked Hezbollah targets in Lebanon on Saturday and that one of its soldiers was hit by an anti-tank missile during cross-border fighting in which the Iran-backed group killed six of its fighters.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Saturday that the Lebanese people would be affected if his country was included, the State Department said.
Israel began a “total siege” of the Gaza Strip after a cross-border attack on southern Israel by militants from the Islamist movement Hamas killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, on October 7. The shooting spree traumatized Israel.
Gaza’s health ministry said Saturday that Israeli air and missile strikes in retaliation had killed at least 4,385 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, and displaced more than a million of the 2.3 million people in the tiny territory.
Increasing attacks
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Washington would send more military assets to the Middle East to support Israel and strengthen the U.S. defense position in the region after “recent escalations by Iran and its proxy forces.”
A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and additional battalions of the Patriot anti-aircraft missile system will be sent to the region and additional troops will be placed on standby, Austin said.
Washington has already sent a significant amount of naval forces to the Middle East in recent weeks, including two aircraft carriers, their supply ships and about 2,000 Marines.
Drones and missiles targeted two US military bases in Iraq last week. It was the latest in a series of attacks after Iraqi militants warned Washington against backing Israel against Iran-backed Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
[1/5]An Israeli soldier secures an area in Kibbutz Kissufim in southern Israel after a deadly infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip October 21, 2023. Portal/Amir Cohen LICENSES
A deadly explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza on Tuesday was likely caused by a rocket fired from Gaza and not an Israeli attack, Canada’s defense ministry said, reaching conclusions similar to those of the United States and France.
Israeli aircraft early Sunday struck a compound beneath a mosque in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank that the military said was used by militants to organize attacks.
Israeli forces killed a fifth Palestinian in the West Bank overnight, bringing the death toll there since the start of the war to 90, the Palestinian health ministry said on Sunday.
Palestinian media reported that at least 11 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli attack in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis and that Israel is attacking the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
The attacks came hours after Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari urged Gazans to move south out of danger.
“For your own safety, move south. We will continue to attack in the Gaza City area and increase attacks,” Hagari told Israeli reporters on Saturday.
Help is coming, invasion is threatening
The first humanitarian aid convoy allowed into the enclave since the outbreak of war arrived through the Rafah border crossing on Saturday. The United Nations said the 20-truck convoy brought life-saving aid that would be received by the Palestinian Red Crescent.
But the U.N. humanitarian office said the amount of goods brought in on Saturday was just 4% of the daily average of imports into Gaza before hostilities and was only a fraction of what was needed after 13 days of siege on the crowded enclave.
Biden, long a staunch supporter of Israel, welcomed the arrival of the aid after days of intense negotiations. He said the United States is committed to ensuring more aid goes to Palestinians who are running out of food, water, medicine and fuel.
“We will continue to work with all parties,” Biden said in a statement.
After several inconclusive wars since seizing power there in 2007, Israel has massed tanks and troops near the fenced border around Gaza for a planned ground invasion aimed at destroying Hamas.
“We will advance into the Gaza Strip… to destroy Hamas operatives and Hamas infrastructure,” Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi told troops on Saturday in a video distributed by the Israeli military. “We will remember the images and those that fell two weeks ago on Saturday.”
Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Michelle Nichols in New York, and offices in Washington and Jerusalem; writing by Phil Stewart and Lincoln Feast; Edited by Daniel Wallis and William Mallard
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