Israel is not looking to wage war with Hezbollah militants on its northern border, but is focused instead on battling Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on Tuesday during a meeting with French head of state Emmanuel Macron.
“I want to make clear, we are not looking for a confrontation on our northern border or with anyone else … But if Hezbollah drags us into a war it should be clear that Lebanon will pay the price,” Herzog said.
Israel said on Tuesday it had killed dozens of Hamas fighters overnight in strikes on Gaza and indicated that it had no intention of easing its bombardment of the besieged Palestinian enclave.
The United States urged Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, trapped in a humanitarian crisis after two weeks of intense Israeli attacks.
But there appeared to be little prospect of a ceasefire any time soon in the bloodiest episode in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades.
The Palestinian health ministry said two weeks of Israeli air strikes have killed more than 5,000 people in Gaza in response to a Hamas attack. The militant group killed more than 1,400 people in a single day.
Hamas on Monday freed two Israeli women who were among the more than 200 hostages taken during the group’s Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel. They were the third and fourth hostages to be released.
Israeli tanks and troops are massed on the border between Israel and the Hamas-ruled enclave awaiting orders for an expected ground invasion – an operation that will be complicated by concerns over the hostages.
The Israeli military claimed it had hit more than 400 militant targets in Gaza overnight and killed dozens of Hamas fighters, including three deputy battalion commanders.
It said that among the targets hit was a tunnel that allowed Hamas to infiltrate Israel from the sea and Hamas command centers in mosques. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
Wide areas of Gaza have been flattened by Israeli bombs, forcing more than one million residents to seek shelter elsewhere in the territory.
With food, clean water, medicine and fuel fast running out, the United Nations and aid agencies have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe and pleaded for supplies to be allowed in.
Earlier, Israeli Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi suggested Israel had no intention of curbing its strikes.
“We want to bring Hamas to a state of full dismantling,” Halevi said in a statement.
“We are well prepared for the ground operations in the south,” he added. “Troops who have more time are better prepared, and that is what we are doing now.”
Medical officials in Gaza said dozens of Palestinians were killed or wounded overnight across the enclave, mostly in southern Gaza, due to the Israeli bombing. At least 15 houses were destroyed, the officials said.
Palestinians search for casualties under the rubble of a building destroyed by Israeli strikes in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 17, 2023. (Reuters)
Residents said an Israeli missile hit a petrol station in Khan Younis, where workers, families, and others who fled the eastern side of the city were gathered. Several were killed or wounded, they said.
“This a petrol station and there is solar panel power here, so people come to charge their devices and fill water. They bombed them in their sleep,” said Abdallah Abu Al-Atta, who lives by the petrol station.
More than 40 medical centers stopped operations after they ran out of fuel and after some of them were damaged by Israeli bombing, Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said.
Source: Al Arabiya
