Israel-Hamas war latest: Israeli strikes on Gaza kill 7; Hezbollah fires scores of rockets at Israel

Palestinian officials say Israel’s strikes early Tuesday killed at least seven people in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis. At least 15 others, including women and children, were injured in the strikes, they said.

Israel’s military says it will do “whatever is necessary” to push Hezbollah away from Lebanon’s border with Israel. Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire since the Israel-Hamas war began. On Monday, Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes in southern and eastern Lebanon, killing nearly 500 people and wounding more than 1,600 others.

Thousands of people fled southern Lebanon, jamming the main highway to Beirut in the biggest exodus since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

It’s a staggering one-day toll for a country still reeling from a deadly attack on communication devices the week before. Lebanon blamed the attacks on Israel, but Israel did not confirm or deny its responsibility.

Hezbollah launched more than 100 projectiles toward Israel on Monday, the military said, reaching deep into Israel including around the northern city of Haifa and parts of the occupied West Bank. Most of the missiles were intercepted but two people were lightly injured from falling shrapnel in northern Israel.

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Here’s the latest:

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Health Ministry said on Tuesday that the death toll from Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon over the past two days of escalation has reached 558, including 50 children and 94 women.

Health Minister Firass Abiad told reporters that 1,835 people have also been wounded since early Monday. They were taken to 54 hospitals around Lebanon, he said.

Abiad added that four paramedics were among those killed, and 16 paramedics and firefighters were among the wounded.

BEIRUT — A journalist working for the pan-Arab network Al-Mayadeen was killed in Israeli airstrikes while he was at his home in southern Lebanon, the network said Tuesday.

Hadi Al-Sayyed, 22, is the third journalist from the network killed in the ongoing conflict between the Israeli military and Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group. The network said he was wounded on Monday and died of his wounds on Tuesday.

According to the TV station, Al-Sayyed worked for the Al-Mayadeen’s online section and was at his house in the town of Burj Rahhal near the southern city of Tyre when it was hit in the airstrike.

Last November, Al-Mayadeen’s correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Al-Maamari were killed in an Israeli strike while covering southern Lebanon.

Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah was killed in Israeli shelling last October while covering the clashes alongside colleagues from the news agency as well as reporters from Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV and France’s international news agency, Agence France-Presse. His colleagues were all wounded but survived the attack.

JERUSALEM — Bombardment from Lebanon on Tuesday damaged a supermarket in Israel’s Arab city of Tamra, where the majority of residents are Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The attack spread fear through the community, which has no shelters. It was not immediately clear whether the supermarket was hit by a rocket that permeated Israel’s missile defense system or by shrapnel falling from an interception.

“I came here immediately to see what exactly happened,” said Jamal Diab, a friend of the market’s owner. “I saw here lots of damage.”

Tamra has no shelters, according to its mayor, Mousa Abu Rumi. An Israeli state comptroller’s report found in 2018 that only 11 out of 71 Arab local communities have public shelters.

He told The Associated press that Tamra’s residents have been instructed to find “the most protected place” nearby to seek shelter when they hear rocket sirens go off.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — A hospital in central Gaza said the bodies of two children killed in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday were brought there.

The Awda hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp said the strike hit a group of people in the nearby Bureij camp, and also wounded six other Palestinians.

The Health Ministry in the coastal territory, meanwhile, said Gaza’s hospitals received 12 dead and 43 wounded Palestinians over the last 24 hours.

The latest fatalities brought the overall death toll in Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7 to 41,467, and 95,921 wounded, said the ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between combatants and civilians in its count.

JERUSALEM — Israel’s military said that 100 rockets had been fired from Lebanon into northern Israel since the early hours of Tuesday morning, setting several fires and damaging buildings in the country’s north in the second day of much-intensified hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.

The rockets came in five volleys throughout the morning, the largest of them containing 50 rockets toward the Upper Galilee area. The military said it had struck the launchers where the rockets were fired. Another heavily-targeted area was southeast of the Israeli city of Haifa.

Rocket sirens blared throughout the morning in the country’s north. A video circulating on Israeli media showed explosions on a highway, with drivers pulling over and lying on the ground next to their vehicles.

Galilee Medical Center, a northern Israel hospital, said that two patients arrived to the hospital with minor head injuries from a rocket falling near their car. Several others were being treated for light wounds from running to shelters and traffic accidents when alarms sounded.

Hezbollah has been sending heavy volleys of rockets into Israel as Israel intensifies its operation in Lebanon. In Monday, Israeli strikes killed nearly 500 people, Lebanese health officials say, and Israel’s military ordered the south of the country evacuated.

BEIRUT — Lebanese families displaced from villages farther south slept in shelters hastily set up in schools in Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon. Some who did not find shelter elsewhere slept in cars and parks and on the seaside corniche.

Monday’s heavy bombardment sent thousands fleeing from south Lebanon. Hotels in Beirut were quickly booked to capacity and apartments in the mountains surrounding the capital were snapped up by families seeking safe accommodations.

Some offered up empty apartments or rooms in their houses in social media posts, while volunteers set up a kitchen at an empty gas station in Beirut to cook meals for the displaced.

In the eastern city of Baalbek, the state-run National News Agency reported that lines formed at bakeries and gas stations as residents rushed to stock up on essential supplies in anticipation of another round of strikes on Tuesday.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Data from fire-tracking satellites used by the United States showed the wide range of Israeli airstrikes that target southern Lebanon, an Associated Press analysis Tuesday showed.

NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System typically is used by experts to track wildfires across rural areas of the U.S. However, they also can be used to track the flashes and burning that follow airstrikes. That’s particularly true when an airstrike ignites flammable material on the ground, like munitions or fuel.

On Monday, Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes in southern and eastern Lebanon, killing nearly 500 people and wounding more than 1,600 others. Thousands of people fled southern Lebanon, jamming the main highway to Beirut in the biggest exodus since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

Data from Monday show significant fires breaking out across southern Lebanon, stretching from the border with Israel as far north as Mashghara in the Bekaa Valley, some 20 kilometers (more than 10 miles) from the border. The area of the strikes is over 1,700 square kilometers (650 square miles).

There were several areas that showed multiple, intense fires. One was near the southern coastal town of Naqoura, which hosts a base for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon known as UNIFIL. Others were in rural areas or villages.

Since its creation at the start of Israel’s occupation of Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, the Shiite militia Hezbollah is believed to have stockpiled weapons and missiles throughout southern Lebanon as a deterrent to Israel.

JERUSALEM — The United States Embassy in Jerusalem has restricted American government employees from traveling to Israel’s north after a heavy exchange of fire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.

The embassy said Tuesday that employees require an armored vehicle and prior approval to travel to a large region of the north that includes the bustling coastal city of Haifa.

The U.S. State Department meanwhile urged American citizens to leave the country, where Israeli strikes killed nearly 500 people on Monday.

DEIR-Al-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian officials say Israel’s strikes early Tuesday killed at least seven people in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis. At least 15 others, including women and children, were injured in the strikes, they said.

The civil defense said the dead include five people who were killed in a strike on the Abu Harb family house in the Qizan al-Najjar area. The strike also wounded at least 10 others, it said.

Another strike hit a house in the Tahlia area in Khan Younis, killing at least two people and wounding five others, according to the rescue service. The casualties from both strikes were confirmed in hospital records in Khan Younis.

Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians but rarely comments on individual strikes.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war. It does not say how many were fighters, but says a little over half were women and children.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Around 100 of the captives are still being held in Gaza, and a third of them are believed to be dead.

Airlines in the United Arab Emirates, a key East-West travel hub, canceled flight Tuesday to Lebanon over the ongoing cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah.

Long-haul carriers Emirates and Etihad canceled flights, as did FlyDubai, the low-cost carrier.

The United Arab Emirates, which reached a diplomatic recognition deal with Israel in 2020, is home to a large Lebanese population.

Egypt’s flagship airliner also canceled its flights to Lebanon on Tuesday. EgyptAir operates two flights daily between Cairo and Beirut. It said the cancellation will stay in place until “the signal stabilizes.”

Also Tuesday, Israeli media reported that Wizz Air, British Airways, Iberia and Azerbaijan Airlines were among several airlines to cancel flights to Israel’s major airport, Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv.