Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of people in Lebanon and northern Gaza on Sunday, even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump have been discussing the way forward for when Trump takes office in January.
The Israeli leader said he has spoken with Trump three times since the U.S. presidential election last week and that they “see eye-to-eye on the Iranian threat in all its aspects, and on the dangers they reflect.”
Netanyahu said he sees “great opportunities facing Israel, in the area of peace and its expansion,” but did not expand on his statement.
Before the election, Trump, according to Israeli news accounts, told Netanyahu that he wanted Israel to resolve its wars against two Iranian-supported groups, Hamas militants in Gaza and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, before his inauguration as president on January 20.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog is scheduled to meet with outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday in Washington as the mid-month deadline approaches for Israel to meet a Biden administration ultimatum that it allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza to assist Palestinians or risk possible restrictions on U.S. military funding.
Israeli forces have encircled and largely isolated Jabaliya and the nearby northern Gaza towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun for the past month, allowing in only a trickle of humanitarian aid. Experts from a panel that monitors food security say famine is imminent or may already be happening.
In the Sunday fighting, an Israeli airstrike killed at least 23 people, including seven children, in Aalmat village north of Beirut, far from the areas in the east and south where Hezbollah militants have a major presence. Lebanon’s health ministry said another six people were wounded.
Watch related report by Arash Arabasadi:
There was no Israeli evacuation warning and no immediate Israeli comment on the attack.
In northern Gaza, an Israeli strike on a home sheltering displaced people in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya killed at least 17 people including nine women, according to Dr. Fadel Naim, director of Al-Ahly Hospital in Gaza City.
The Israeli military, without offering evidence, said it had targeted a site where militants were operating. It said the details of the strike are under review.
A separate strike hit a house in Gaza City, killing Wael al-Khour, a minister in the Hamas-run government, as well as his wife and three children, according to the Civil Defense first responders who operate under the government.
In Syria, the state news agency SANA said an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building in the Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab, killing seven civilians. The Britain-based opposition war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, suggested Hezbollah was targeted, but Israel did not offer any immediate comment.
The war in Gaza was triggered when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, although about one-third of them are believed to be dead.
Israel’s counteroffensive has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to local health authorities. The Israeli military says the death toll includes thousands of Hamas militants.
Some material in this report came from The Associated Press.
