A drone was launched towards Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu home on Saturday, the Israeli government announced.
Sirens sounded Saturday morning, warning of incoming gunfire from Lebanon. The drone was launched toward Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea, but neither he nor his wife were home, his spokesperson said in a statement. There were no injuries.
No information was provided on where the drone was launched from or who might be responsible for the attempted attack. Israel did not say whether the drone was intercepted or landed elsewhere.
This is the second strike targeting Netanyahu in recent months. In September, Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched a ballistic missile toward Ben Gurion Airport as Netanyahu’s plane landed. The missile was intercepted.
Meanwhile, in GazaMore than 50 people were killed in multiple Israeli strikes, including children, in less than 24 hours, according to hospital officials and an Associated Press reporter.
Ariel Schalit / AP
Saturday’s strikes on Israel come as Lebanon’s war with Hezbollah – an ally of Iran-backed Hamas – has intensified in recent weeks. Hezbollah said Friday it plans to launch a new phase of combat by sending more guided missiles and explosive drones to Israel. The militant group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in late September, and Israel sent ground troops to Lebanon in early October.
The Israeli military said some 55 projectiles were fired Saturday morning into two separate barrages into northern Israel from Lebanon. Some were intercepted, the army said, and no casualties were immediately reported.
Israel also said Saturday it had killed Hezbollah’s deputy commander in the southern town of Bint Jbeil. Army says Nasser Rashid oversaw attacks on Israel
In Lebanon, the Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike hit a vehicle on a main highway north of Beirut on Saturday, killing two people. It is unclear who was in the car when it was struck.
A standoff also ensued between Israel and Hamas, which it is fighting in Gaza, with both signaling resistance to ending the war after the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar this week. On Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Sinwar’s death was a painful loss, but noted that Hamas had continued despite the killings of other Palestinian militant leaders before him.
“Hamas is alive and will remain so,” Khamenei said.
Since Israel announced Sinwar’s death on Thursday and a senior Hamas politician confirmed the death on Friday, Hamas has reiterated its position that the hostages taken in Israel a year ago will only be released after a ceasefire in Gaza and a withdrawal of Israeli troops. This tough stance contrasts with Netanyahu’s statement that his country’s army will continue fighting until the hostages are freed and will remain in Gaza to prevent a severely weakened Hamas from rearming.
Israel claims Sinwar was the chief architect of Hamas’s 2023 raid on Israel, which killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 250 others. Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has caused the deaths of more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. does not distinguish combatants from civilians but asserts that more than half of the dead are women and children.
New strikes hit Gaza on Saturday. The Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement that Israeli strikes hit the upper floors of Indonesia’s Beit Lahiya hospital and forces opened fire on the hospital building and its courtyard, causing panic. among patients and medical staff. At Al-Awda Hospital in Jabaliya, strikes hit the upper floors of the building, injuring several staff members, the hospital said in a statement.
In central Gaza, at least 10 people were killed, including two children, when a house was hit in the town of Zawayda, according to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital where the injured were taken. An AP reporter counted the bodies at the hospital. Another strike killed 11 people, all from the same family, in the Maghazi refugee camp, according to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where they were taken. An Associated Press reporter counted the bodies at the hospital.
On Friday night, at least three houses were struck in northern Gaza, killing at least 30 people, more than half of whom were women and children, said Fares Abu Hamza, head of the ambulance service and emergency from the Ministry of Health. Houses were hit in Jabaliya and at least 80 people were injured.
The war destroyed large areas of Gazahas displaced around 90% of its population of 2.3 million people and left them struggling to find food, water, medicine and fuel.
Sinwar’s assassination appears to be a chance frontline encounter with Israeli troops on Wednesday, and it could change the dynamics of the Gaza war even as Israel continues its offensive against Hezbollah with ground troops in southern Lebanon and airstrikes in other parts of the country. .
Israel was committed to politically destroying Hamas in Gaza, and killing Sinwar was a major military priority. But Netanyahu said Thursday evening in a speech announcing the killing that “our war is not yet over.”
Yet the governments of Israel’s allies and the exhausted residents of Gaza expressed his hope that Sinwar’s death would pave the way for the end of the war.
In Israel, families of hostages still held in Gaza have called on the Israeli government to use Sinwar’s killing as a way to restart negotiations to repatriate their loved ones. There are around 100 hostages remaining in Gaza, at least 30 of whom are dead, according to Israel.
