BEIRUT (AP) — An Israeli airstrike killed an elite Hezbollah commander in southern Lebanon on Monday. It was the latest in an escalating exchange of blows along the border that has raised fears of another war in the Middle East even as fighting in Gaza takes a rising toll on civilians.
The attack on an SUV killed a commander of a secret Hezbollah force operating along the border, according to a Lebanese security official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. Hezbollah identified the slain fighter as Wissam al-Tawil, without providing details.
He is the armed group's highest-ranking fighter killed since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel sparked an all-out war in Gaza and less intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that has escalated since an Israeli attack A senior Hamas leader was killed in Beirut last week.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is back in the region this week, appears to be trying to avert a wider conflict.
Fighting continued in the northern Gaza Strip even after Israel said it had largely halted major operations there and was now focusing on the central region and the southern city of Khan Younis, where thousands more Palestinians fled.
Israeli officials say fighting will continue for many months as the army seeks to crush Hamas and return scores of hostages taken during the militants' Oct. 7 attack.
The offensive has already killed over 23,000 Palestinians, devastated large swaths of the Gaza Strip, displaced nearly 85% of its 2.3 million residents and left a quarter of residents starving.
“Nauseating scenes” in Gaza’s overcrowded hospitals
Doctors, patients and displaced people fled the main hospital in central Gaza as fighting neared, witnesses said on Monday. The loss of the facility would be another major blow to a health system devastated by the three-month war.
Doctors Without Borders and other aid organizations withdrew from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in recent days because it was too dangerous. This spread panic among people seeking shelter there, prompting many to join the hundreds of thousands who fled south of the besieged area.
Tens of thousands of people have sought refuge in hospitals in the Gaza Strip, where dozens of people injured in Israeli attacks are being treated every day. According to the UN Humanitarian Office, only 13 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are partially functioning.
Omar al-Darawi, an employee at Al-Aqsa Hospital, said the facility had been attacked several times in recent days. He said thousands of people left the site after aid agencies left, while patients were concentrated on one floor to be treated by remaining doctors.
“We have a lot of wounded people who can’t move,” he said. “They need special care that doesn’t exist.”
More dead and wounded are being added every day as Israeli forces, supported by heavy airstrikes, advance through the center of the Gaza Strip. Gaza's Health Ministry said on Monday that 249 Palestinians had been killed and 510 others injured across the territory in the past 24 hours.
World Health Organization staff visiting on Sunday saw “disgusting scenes of people of all ages being treated on blood-stained floors and in chaotic corridors,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the U.N. agency's head, said in a statement. “The carnage in Gaza must end.”
Thousands more Palestinians fled Deir al-Balah and the refugee camps in the center of the Gaza Strip and moved south along the coastal road to an area called Muwasi on the outskirts of Rafah at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, where more than a million people have already gathered.
The UN children's agency UNICEF warned that 90% of children under two in Gaza were consuming only bread and milk and that cases of diarrhea were skyrocketing.
“As the threat of famine increases, hundreds of thousands more young children could soon be severely malnourished, and some are at risk of death. “We cannot allow this to happen,” said Catherine Russell, executive director of UNICEF.
POOR CONDITIONS IN THE SEPARATE NORTH
The situation is even worse in the northern Gaza Strip, which Israeli forces cut off from the rest of the territory at the end of October.
Entire parts of the city were demolished and the majority of the population fled. Tens of thousands of those still alive suffer from severe shortages of food and water. The WHO said late Sunday that it had been unable to deliver supplies to the northern Gaza Strip for 12 days due to heavy bombardment and the inability to ensure safe passage with the Israeli military.
Even there, Israel is still fighting against so-called militant nests.
An airstrike early Sunday leveled a four-story house full of displaced people in the city's Jabaliya refugee camp, killing at least 70 people, including women and children, according to Mahmoud Bassal, a Gaza civil defense spokesman. There was no immediate confirmation from the Health Ministry, which has struggled to maintain operations in the north.
The search operations were still ongoing on Monday. Civil defense officials distributed a graphic video showing the aftermath, showing several bodies scattered in the rubble.
Jabaliya, which was built for Palestinian refugees from the war over the creation of Israel in 1948 and is now a densely built-up neighborhood, has seen weeks of heavy fighting.
In the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, more than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed, about two-thirds of them women and children, and more than 58,000 injured since the war began, according to the Health Ministry. The death toll does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.
Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the group operates in populated residential areas, but the military almost never comments on the intended target in attacks that kill large numbers of civilians. The military claims it has killed around 8,000 militants without providing evidence and says 176 of its own soldiers were killed in the offensive.
On the way to averting a major war
Blinken, who met with leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on Monday after talks in Jordan and Qatar, again spoke of the need for Israel to adjust its military operations to minimize harm to civilians and provide more aid into the area.
However, his main focus seemed to be on preventing the war from spreading.
Hezbollah rocket fire hit a sensitive air base in northern Israel on Saturday. It was one of the most serious attacks in three months of fighting. The militant group said it was an “initial response” to the killing of Hamas deputy political leader Saleh Arouri in Beirut last week.
So far, both sides have tried to limit the fighting.
Hezbollah appears wary of risking an all-out war that would lead to massive destruction in Lebanon. Israeli leaders say their patience is running out and they are prepared to go to war if tensions cannot be resolved through diplomacy. They expressed particular concern about Radwan Force, Hezbollah's elite unit of which al-Tawil was commander and which operates along the border.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “do everything possible” to restore “security in the north” during a visit to troops near the border.
“We prefer this to happen without a broader campaign, but that will not stop us,” he said.
Hezbollah began firing rockets shortly after Hamas's Oct. 7 attack, saying it was aimed at easing pressure on Gaza. Hamas and other militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in southern Israel that day and took about 250 people hostage, over 100 of whom were released during a ceasefire in November.
On the Lebanese side, almost 200 people were killed in the exchange with Israel, mostly fighters but also 20 civilians. In Israel, five civilians and 12 soldiers were killed and more than 150 injured along the Lebanese border. Tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border have been forced from their homes.
___
Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip and Magdy from Cairo.
___
For more AP coverage, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war