JERUSALEM: Israeli air strikes on Gaza, Lebanon and Syria left a total of 77 people dead on Sunday, rescuers and health authorities said.

In Gaza, 30 people, including 13 children, were killed by Israeli strikes in the territory’s north, rescuers and health officials said.

The first strike on Sunday hit a house in Jabalia, Gaza, killing at least 25 people, including 13 children and injuring more than 30, Gaza’s civil defence agency said.

Another strike on the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City killed five people, with others still missing, civil defence said. “A number of civilians are still under the rubble,” it said.

30 killed in Jabalia, Gaza death toll at 43,603; 38 dead in Lebanon; assault near shrine in Syria claims 9 lives

The United Nations has described the area as under “siege”.

Israel’s military strikes have killed 43,603 people in Gaza, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry, which the UN considers reliable.

Meanwhile, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at the time that top US officials made “clear” to Israel’s government that changes need to be made “to see that the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up from the very, very low levels that it is at today”.

Earlier on Saturday a UN-backed assessment warned famine is imminent in northern Gaza. Aid shipments allowed to enter Gaza were now lower than at any time since October 2023, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report.

38 killed in Lebanon

At least 38 people were killed in Israeli strikes across Lebanon on Sunday, including 23 in a raid north of the capital Beirut, the health ministry said.

Israel in recent months turned its focus north towards Lebanon, escalating air strikes and sending in ground troops, after almost a year of tit-for-tat exchanges of fire with Lebanese group Hezbollah. The Lebanese group said it was acting in support of Hamas.

In Lebanon, the health ministry said an Israeli strike on the village of Almat, north of Beirut, killed 23 including three children, on Sunday. Israeli strikes killed three rescuers in Lebanon south, and at least 12 people in the Baalbek region.

More than 3,130 people have been killed in Lebanon since the cross-border exchanges began, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, most of them since Sept 23.

Strike on Syria

An Israeli strike on an apartment in Damascus, Syria, killed nine people on Sunday, a war monitor said.

The Israeli strike killed “nine people and wounded 14, including women and children, in the Sayyida Zeinab area,” Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Britain-based monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria, earlier said that “the Israeli attack targeted (Hezbollah) figures in the building where Lebanese families and members of the movement live”.

Syria’s official Sana news agency reported an Israeli aggression targeting a residential building in the Sayyida Zeinab area, home to a major Shia shrine, that killed and injured an unspecified number of people.

Since 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes on residential buildings as well as airport in Syria.

While Israel continued to conduct deadly strikes inside Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, Qatar pulled out of efforts for ceasefire in Gaza mentioning that both Hamas and Israel were not serious in talks.

“Qatar would resume those efforts… when the parties show their willingness and seriousness,” Doha’s foreign ministry spok­e­sman Majed Al-Ansari said in a statement.

Earlier, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed the hope to use the remaining weeks of his term to press for an end to the Gaza and Lebanon wars, a spokesman said.

The heads of UN agencies in early November while describing north Gaza as under siege, which denied basic aid and life-saving supplies.

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2024