Israeli strikes leave dozens dead and missing in Gaza Strip

Photo: Agence France-Presse A man screams as he tries to pull another man out of the rubble of a building destroyed by the Israeli army, Thursday, in Beit Lahia, in the Gaza Strip.

Agence France-Presse in the Gaza Strip

Published at 10:42 Updated at 14:47

• Middle East

Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip killed dozens of people on Thursday, the day the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israel's prime minister, his former defense minister and the head of Hamas's armed wing.

Benjamin Netanyahu, former minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas official Mohammed Deif are charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes in the conflict in Gaza sparked by Hamas' unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7, 2023.

M. Netanyahu denounced an “anti-Semitic” decision by the ICC, considering himself the victim of a new “Dreyfus trial” named after the French captain of Jewish faith convicted of espionage at the end of the 19th century before being exonerated and rehabilitated.

The Palestinian Islamist movement welcomed the indictment of Israeli leaders as an “important step towards justice”, without mentioning the arrest warrant announced simultaneously by the ICC against its military leader.

Israel also launched massive strikes on September 23 in Lebanon against the pro-Iranian Hezbollah, which had opened a “support front” for Hamas after October 7, by firing rockets into Israeli territory.

Israeli raids on the Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah stronghold in the east of the country, killed 22 people, the Lebanese Health Ministry announced on Thursday, at a time when the American president's special envoy, Amos Hochstein, is in Israel, after Beirut, to try to obtain a truce between the belligerents.

On another front, the Israeli army also carries out regular strikes in Syria against pro-Iranian groups, the most recent of which, on Wednesday, in Palmyra, killed 22 people. 79 dead, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. They are “probably the deadliest” against Syria to date, the United Nations (UN) has warned.

Photo: Maya Alleruzzo Associated Press An Israeli soldier consoles a man at the funeral of a colleague in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

“Tattered Bodies”

In the Gaza Strip, the Civil Defense announced on Thursday the death of 22 people killed during the night by an Israeli strike in Gaza City (north).

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Another night raid in the area of ​​Beit Lahia and Jabalia (north) left dozens dead or missing, according to medical sources.

“Bodies are arriving at the hospital in tatters,” Hossam Abou Safiyeh, director of the Kamal Adwan establishment, who was close to the strike, told AFP.

The Hamas attack that sparked the war in the Palestinian territory resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data, including hostages killed or killed in captivity.

That day, 251 people were kidnapped, 97 of whom remain hostages in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the army.

The air and then ground offensive launched in retaliation by Israel has left at least 44,056 dead, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.

The United States, an ally of Israel, blocked on Wednesday a draft resolution of the UN Security Council demanding a ceasefire, despite international calls for an end to the conflict in the besieged and devastated territory, which is in the grip of a humanitarian disaster.

Washington then “categorically rejected” the ICC decision.

Yoav Gallant called it “a dangerous precedent” that “encourages terrorism,” with Israeli President Isaac Herzog decrying it as a “black day for justice” and “humanity.”

The Palestinian Authority, for its part, welcomed a “sign of hope.”

The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, called for the ICC’s warrants — which theoretically require the court’s 124 member states to arrest those they target — to be “respected and implemented.”

The indictment of Mohammed Deif “means that the voices of the victims are being heard,” said a representative of the families of victims of the Hamas attack. Israel announced this summer that it had killed this military leader, considered one of its masterminds of October 7, but Hamas has not confirmed his death.

Read also

• ICC issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant and a Hamas leader
• Hezbollah rejects any Israeli conditions for a truce in Lebanon

“Total stop of aggression”

Before going to Israel to meet Mr. Netanyahu on Thursday, the American envoy Amos Hochstein had judged on Tuesday in Beirut that a solution was “within reach” for a ceasefire in Lebanon.

The 13-point American plan presented last week provides for a 60-day truce and the deployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon, from which Israel says it wants to push Hezbollah away to allow the return of some 60,000 residents of the north of the country displaced by the movement's gunfire.

In Lebanon, tens of thousands of residents have also been displaced.

Israel “cannot impose its conditions on us,” Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said on Wednesday, while Israel says it will continue its military operations against the Shiite militia to prevent its attacks, even in the event of a truce.

In addition to the Bekaa Valley, the Israeli army also struck the southern suburbs of Beirut, another stronghold of the movement, again on Thursday. Hezbollah, after calls to evacuate.

The Lebanese movement claimed responsibility for missile strikes on an airbase near Ashdod, its first attack in southern Israel, and seven attacks on Israeli soldiers in the Khiam area, a southern Lebanese town near the Israeli border.

The violence between Israel and Hezbollah has left at least 3,558 dead in Lebanon since October 2023, most since the launch of the Israeli bombing campaign, followed on September 30 by ground incursions in the south of the country. On the Israeli side, 82 soldiers and 47 civilians have been killed in 13 months.