Monday, August 26, 2024

Israel-Hamas war latest: Israel launches more strikes on Lebanon


Israel-Hamas war latest: Israel launches more strikes on Lebanon, state media and witnesses say

The Associated Press



After a short-lived calm following a heavy exchange of strikes between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, fighting resumed Monday.

State media and witnesses reported that Israeli strikes targeted the Lebanese border village of Tair Harfa and an area of the coastal city of Sidon on Monday afternoon. A car was hit in the latter strike.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that a man “from one of the Palestinian organizations” had survived the strike on the car. In addition to targeting Hezbollah members, Israel has occasionally targeted members of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Lebanon. There were no immediate reports of other casualties.

Later Monday afternoon, Hezbollah announced that it had targeted military surveillance equipment in northern Israel with an exploding drone.

Here’s the latest:

Intensifying conflict hampers Gaza food aid deliveries, UN agencies say

JERUSALEM — U.N. agencies say they have only been able to deliver about half the food required in Gaza over the last two months because of Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and heavily damaged roads.

The leading international authority on hunger crises, known as the IPC, said in June that Gaza was at “high risk” of famine, with nearly the entire population of 2.3 million Palestinians experiencing varying degrees of hunger.

The World Food Program said in a statement Monday that in July and August it was only able to deliver around half of the 24,000 metric tons of food aid for operations serving 1.1 million people.

It said its operations were “severely hampered by intensifying conflict, the limited number of border crossings and damaged roads.”

It warned that roads littered with shell craters and debris are already difficult to navigate and will be unusable in a few months when the winter rains set in.

Israel’s ongoing offensive against Hamas, as well as sweeping Israeli evacuation orders that the U.N. says now cover around 84% of Gaza’s territory, have forced hundreds of thousands of people into squalid tent camps along the coast.

Israel has controlled all of Gaza’s border crossings since May, when it captured the Rafah crossing with Egypt. Egypt has refused to open its side until the Gaza side is returned to Palestinian control.

 Iran’s foreign minister again has referenced his country’s planned retaliation over the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Abbas Araghchi said late Sunday he made the remark in a conversation with Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, by telephone.

“Iran reaction to Israeli terrorist attack in Tehran is definitive, and will be measured & well calculated,” Araghchi wrote on the social platform X. “We do not fear escalation, yet do not seek it—unlike Israel.”

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