Drone was launched at the residence of Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel

Israel announced this Saturday, October 19, that a drone launched from Lebanon targeted the residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuabsent from the venue, in the midst of the Israeli offensive against the Lebanese Hezbollah, which claimed responsibility for rocket fire against several regions of the country.

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In the Gaza Strip (Israel’s southern border), the Civil Defense indicated that 33 people died last Friday night in an Israeli bombing of the Jabaliya refugee camp, in the north of the Palestinian territory.

Israel launched a new military operation in northern Gaza earlier this month, alleging that militants from the Islamist movement Hamas are regrouping in that area.

More than 400 people have died in that area since the beginning of this operation, according to local medical sources.

The Palestinian Islamist movement, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, has been weakened after a year of war and the assassination on Wednesday of its leader, Yahya Sinwar.

The war in Gaza broke out after the incursion, on October 7, 2023, of militants in southern Israel who killed 1,206 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages, 97 of whom remain captive, according to counts of AFP based on official Israeli data.

In the Israeli retaliatory offensive against Gaza, a territory of 2.4 million inhabitants before the war, 42,519 Palestinians died, according to data from the Ministry of Health of the Hamas government, considered reliable by the UN.

Shooting from Lebanon towards Israel

The Gaza conflict spread to Lebanon, where Israel intensified bombing and launched on September 30 ground operations in order to weaken the powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas and backed by Iran.

Hezbollah responds with rocket fire towards the Hebrew country, where air raid sirens sounded this Saturday in several northern cities. The Israeli army estimated that at least 115 projectiles had been launched during the day from Lebanon.

Netanyahu’s office said a drone had been launched toward the president’s private residence in Caesarea, a coastal city in central Israel. He specified that The incident left no victims and that the prime minister was not at the scene.

The Israeli army indicated that the drone, from Lebanon, had hit a “structure” in Caesarea, without clarifying whether it was on the grounds of the residence.

In the bombings this Saturday, A man in his 50s died further north, in the port city of Acre, from shrapnel, Israeli emergency services reported.

Hezbollah announced for its part that it fired rockets against the Haifa region, the large port in northern Israel, as well as against Safed. He also fired on a military base, in response, he said, to Israeli “aggressions” in Lebanon.

From Israel to Lebanon

An Israeli bombing hit the highway that connects Beirut with northern Lebanon this Saturday for the first time, killing two people, Lebanese authorities announced.

The Jewish State also bombed the southern suburb of the capital, a stronghold of Hezbollah, after calling on residents to evacuate the area. In the east of the country, four people were killed in another Israeli attack, including the mayor of the town of Sohmor, the official Lebanese news agency ANI reported.

Israel says it seeks to neutralize to Hezbollah in the regions near its border and allow the return to the north of the country of some 60,000 displaced people for a year due to the rocket launches of the Islamist movement.

AFP

At least 1,418 people have been killed in Lebanon since the start of Israeli bombings against Hezbollah on September 23, according to an AFP tally based on official data. The UN counts around 700,000 displaced people in the country.

The war does not let up despite the presence in southern Lebanon of Finul, the United Nations peace mission created in 1978 for that country.

The head of diplomacy of the European Union, Josep Borrell, suggested reinforcing the UN mission, although he clarified that This “would require a decision by the UN Security Council.”

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Middle Eastern “powderbox”

The possibility of a war in the region is always serious and no one, except the Zionist regime, wants that to happen,” said the head of Iranian diplomacy, Abas Araghchi, during a visit to Istanbul.

“We want to reduce tensions, but as we said on several occasions, we are prepared for any scenario and any situation,” he continued, adding that the region has become a “tinderbox.”

Iran fired around 200 missiles at Israel on October 1, in revenge for the assassinations of an Iranian general, as well as of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in July in Tehran, and of the head of Lebanese Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, in Beirut last month.

Haniyeh’s successor, Yahya Sinwar, was killed on Wednesday in an Israeli operation in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. The leader was considered by Israel to be the architect of the attack on October 7, 2023.

Netanyahu said Friday that Sinwar’s death marked “the beginning of the end” of the war in Gaza and several foreign leaders shared the hope that it would open the way to a ceasefire.

According to several analysts, however, the death of the Hamas leader further disorganized the movement, which would now be dispersed into small cells, which could complicate future negotiations.

“The war has not stopped and the killings continue unabated,” lamented a Gaza resident, Jemaa Abu Mendi, 21.

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