Add Category
At least 22 people have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a school that was housing displaced people in Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry says.
The Gaza health ministry said most of those killed were women and children. The Hamas-run government media office said 13 children and six women were among the dead.
An official from the Gaza civil defence agency said that more than 30 other people were injured after an Israeli rocket hit the Al-Zaytoun School C in Gaza City.
"The women and their children were sitting in the playground of the school, the kids were playing, and suddenly two rockets hit them," said one witness Said Al-Malahi.
Some of the dead were wrapped in blankets and carried away on donkey carts, as ambulances transferred other bodies.
Israel's military said in a statement the air force had "conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command and control centre in Gaza City".
It said the target was "embedded inside" the Al Falah School, which is adjacent to the Al-Zaytoun School buildings.
Officials in Gaza said thousands of people were sheltering at the school that was hit. (Reuters: Dawoud Abu Alkas)
The military did not provide a death toll but said "numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence".
It is the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced people in Gaza, with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) accusing Hamas of hiding among the civilian population in Gaza.
Hamas denies the IDF's accusations.
Death toll from Beirut strike grows
The Lebanese health ministry has raised the death toll from an Israeli strike on Beirut's suburbs to at least 37, including three children and seven women.
In a statement on Saturday, local time, the IDF said at least 16 Hezbollah militants were killed in the attack.
The IDF also said it was carrying out further strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, without offering details.
The strike on Friday was the first such Israeli attack on Lebanon's capital in months and came shortly after Lebanon's Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with 140 rockets.
Before the updated death toll was announced during a televised news conference on Saturday, the ministry had said at least 14 people were killed and 66 people were injured.
The Israeli military said Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil and other senior members of an elite Hezbollah unit were killed in the air strike, which sharply escalated the year-long conflict between Israel and the militant group.
Hezbollah confirmed Aqil's death in a statement that called him "one of its top leaders", without providing details of how he died.
At least 31 people were killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut's suburbs on Friday. (Reuters: Amr Abdallah Dalsh)
In a second statement issued later, Hezbollah said Aqil was killed in Beirut's southern suburbs of Dahiyeh in what it called a "treacherous Israeli assassination".
It also said Ahmed Wahbi, a commander who oversaw the military operations of the al-Hajj Radwan Force during the war in Gaza until early 2024, was also killed in the Israeli strike.
The group said several more of its members were killed, but it did not disclose whether they were commanders or its foot soldiers.
UN rights chief says weaponising ordinary devices illegal
The strikes came after communication devices, including pagers and two-way radios used by Hezbollah, detonated earlier this week, reportedly killing 37 people and injuring more than 3,400 others.
Hezbollah has described it as an Israeli attack.
Weaponising ordinary communication devices would represent a new development in warfare — and targeting thousands of Lebanese people using pagers, two-way radios and electronic equipment without their knowledge was a violation of international human rights law, the United Nations human rights chief said on Friday.
Volker Türk told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council there must be an independent and transparent investigation of the device explosions in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday.
"Those who ordered and carried out these attacks must be held to account," he said.
When reporters asked Israel's UN ambassador Danny Danon about speculation Israel was behind the explosions, he said: "We are not commenting."
AP/Reuters/AFP