Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel on Monday, drawing retaliatory strikes. The Israeli military said 35 projectiles were launched at one of its bases, striking the sources of the rocket fire, without causing any casualties.
Hezbollah said its attack was in response to recent Israeli strikes on towns and villages in southern Lebanon.
The two sides have traded fire on a near-daily basis along the border since the start of the war in Gaza. Hezbollah says it is acting in solidarity with the Palestinian Hamas militant group, which triggered the war with its Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel.
The low-intensity fighting has repeatedly threatened to boil over as Israel has targeted senior Hezbollah militants in recent months.
Hezbollah said earlier Monday that its fighters shot down an Israeli drone, the fourth to be brought down since the war began.
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said Monday that Israel has been "committing the crime of starvation" in Gaza for months in violation of international law.
Also Monday, Palestinian civil defence in Gaza said it had found 283 bodies on the grounds of a Khan Younis hospital, and Israel's chief of military intelligence resigned over the failure to prevent the Oct. 7 attack, the first senior official to do so.
The conflict, now in its seventh month, has sparked regional unrest pitting Israel and the U.S. against Iran and allied militant groups across the Middle East. Israel and Iran traded fire directly this month, raising fears of all-out war.
The war was sparked by the unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which Hamas and other militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Israel says militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, at least two-thirds of them children and women. It has devastated Gaza's two largest cities and left a swath of destruction. Around 80% of the territory's population have fled to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave.
The U.S. House of Representatives approved a US$26 billion aid package on Saturday that includes around US$9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza, which experts say is on the brink of famine, as well as billions for Israel. The U.S. Senate could pass the package as soon as Tuesday, and President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately
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Hezbollah fires dozens of rockets
JERUSALEM -- Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel on Monday, drawing retaliatory strikes. The Israeli military said 35 projectiles were launched at one of its bases, without causing any casualties. It said it struck the sources of the rocket fire.
The attack came at the start of Passover, a major Jewish holiday, and set off air raid sirens as far south as Safed, a sizable town in northern Israel that has rarely been targeted.
Hezbollah claimed the attack, which it said was in response to recent Israeli strikes on towns and villages in southern Lebanon. The two sides have traded fire on a near-daily basis along the border since the start of the war in Gaza.
Hezbollah says it is acting in solidarity with the Palestinian Hamas militant group, which triggered the war with its Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel. The low-intensity fighting has repeatedly threatened to boil over as Israel has targeted senior Hezbollah militants in recent months. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides of the border.
Hezbollah said earlier Monday that its fighters shot down an Israeli drone, the fourth to be brought down since the war began.
Israel committing starvation crimes in Gaza: Human rights group
JERUSALEM -- An Israeli human rights group says Israel has been "committing the crime of starvation" in Gaza for months in violation of international law. B'Tselem is the latest rights group to accuse Israel of purposely starving Palestinians as part of its war against Hamas.
In a report released Monday, B'Tselem said the severe hunger in Gaza is "the product of a deliberate and conscious Israeli policy." International experts said in late March that famine was imminent in northern Gaza, which has been isolated and under Israeli control since late last year, and that hunger was worsening across the entire territory.
The Israeli military body responsible for civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Israel has sought to blame U.N. agencies, saying they are unable to distribute aid that piles up at border crossings.
U.N. officials say distribution is hampered by the difficulty of coordinating with the military, which regularly turns back deliveries, and by the breakdown of law and order.
B'Tselem noted that Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza immediately after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that triggered the war, only relenting weeks later under U.S. pressure. It said Israel's cumbersome inspections system stifled deliveries, and that its offensive has almost completely destroyed the capacity to grow or produce food inside Gaza.
B'Tselem also pointed to comments from senior Israeli officials implying that the restrictions on aid were part of the war effort and aimed at putting pressure on Hamas.
Under heavy U.S. pressure after an Israeli strike that killed seven aid workers, Israel promised earlier this month to ramp up aid to Gaza.
283 bodies uncovered from temporary burial ground
CAIRO -- The Palestinian civil defence in the Gaza Strip said Monday it had uncovered 283 bodies from a temporary burial ground inside the main hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.
The burial area in the Nasser hospital was built when Israeli forces were besieging the facility last month. At the time, people were not able to bury the dead in a cemetery and dug graves in the hospital yard, the group said.
In a statement, the department said a total of 283 bodies have been recovered from the hospital yard since Friday.
The civil defence said some of the bodies were of people killed during the hospital siege. Others were killed when Israeli forces raided the hospital, also last month.
Calls for Gaza missions' safe passage
CAIRO -- The head of the World Health Organization on Monday called for safe passage for humanitarian aid missions throughout Gaza after an aid team failed to complete its most recent trip to hard-hit northern Gaza.
United Nations agencies and aid groups say the ongoing hostilities, Israeli military restrictions on goods and the breakdown of order inside Gaza make it increasingly difficult to bring vital aid to much of the coastal enclave.
WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement that a mission by the WHO and its partners on Saturday at Kamal Adwan and Awda hospitals in northern Gaza was only partly completed "due to severe delays at checkpoints and ongoing hostilities."
"As a result, fuel and medical supplies did not reach Kamal Adwan, for the second time in the last seven days, and partners were also unable to assess needs at Awda to support restoration of services," he said.
He said the team managed to evacuate four patients from Kamal Adwan, along with their caretakers, including a 9-year-old boy suffering from a head tumor.
"We again call for compliance with international humanitarian law, including access to health care and humanitarian aid for civilians in desperate need of help." He also called for a cease-fire.
Israel has isolated northern Gaza since the opening days of the ground offensive in late October after ordering its population to flee to the south. Tens of thousands of people remained there despite the flattening of entire neighborhoods and severe shortages of food and water.
54 killed in the last 24 hours
CAIRO -- The Gaza Health Ministry said the bodies of 54 people killed by Israeli strikes have been brought to hospitals over the past 24 hours. Hospitals also received 104 injured, it said Monday.
That brings the overall Palestinian death toll from the Israel-Hamas war to at least 34,151, the ministry said. Another 77,084 have been injured, it said.
The Health Ministry does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its tallies but has said that women and children make up most of those killed.
The Israeli military says it has killed 12,000 militants, without providing evidence to back up the claim.
283 bodies found in southern Gaza hospital
CAIRO -- The Palestinian civil defence in the Gaza Strip said Monday it had uncovered 283 bodies from a temporary burial ground inside the main hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.
The burial area in the Nasser hospital was built when Israeli forces were besieging the facility last month. At the time, people were not able to bury the dead in a cemetery and dug graves in the hospital yard, the group said.
In a statement, the department said a total of 283 bodies have been recovered from the hospital yard since Friday.
The civil defence said some of the bodies were of people killed during the hospital siege. Others were killed when Israeli forces raided the hospital, also last month.
After the military withdrew from Khan Younis earlier this month, residents have been returning to the site in search of the bodies of their loved ones with the aim of burying them in permanent graves elsewhere.
Civil defence workers began recovering bodies from the cemetery more than a week after Israel's military withdrew its forces from the city. The International Committee of the Red Cross has given 1,500 body bags and protective gear to the civil defence to help dig up the cemetery and move the bodies, it said.
Israel sent troops into Khan Younis in December, part of its blistering ground offensive that came in response to Hamas' Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel.
Israelis prepare to celebrate passover
JERUSALEM -- Israelis were set to begin celebrating Passover, a holiday meant to symbolize freedom, on Monday, against the backdrop of a brutal war in Gaza and the continued captivity of over 100 hostages in the strip.
Passover is a major Jewish holiday, celebrated over the course of a week, that commemorates the biblical story of the exodus of ancient Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Jews will gather for a meal, called a "seder," on Monday night to read the Passover story aloud.
In Israel, some prepared to leave chairs at the seder table empty to symbolize the captives remaining in Gaza.
Of some 250 hostages captured during the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, roughly 130 remain in captivity. Efforts to strike a deal to secure their return have stalled, and Israeli officials say at least 30 are now dead.
Many Israelis also have friends or family members killed or wounded in the Hamas attack, which killed 1,200 across southern Israel, according to Israeli authorities.
"I can't imagine celebrating Pesach, the freedom holiday, without my son," said Dalit Shtivi, whose son Idan Shtivi is being held hostage in Gaza. "I'm begging there will be a deal."
In Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood of Mea Shearim, families threw bread into small fires on the street and dunked dishes into cauldrons of boiling water. It's typical for observant Jews to cleanse their homes of "chametz," or grains, before the start of passover to commemorate the unleavened bread the Jews ate in their flight from Egypt.
2 arrested after Jerusalem car attack
JERUSALEM -- Israeli police say they have arrested two suspects believed to have rammed a car into a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem Monday morning, lightly wounding three.
The police said the two suspects were found after fleeing the scene and hiding near a closed business.
The Monday attack was the latest to strike Israeli cities and towns since the war against Hamas broke out on Oct. 7. Palestinians have during that time carried out a number of attacks against Israelis, some of them deadly. During that time, violence has also surged in the West Bank.
Israel arrests suspect in killing of 14-year-old settler
TEL AVIV, Israel -- Israeli authorities said they had arrested a suspect in the killing of a 14-year-old Jewish West Bank settler.
The teen's disappearance earlier this month sparked rampages by Israeli settlers in a number of Palestinian communities. At least one Palestinian man was killed, Palestinian health officials said, and dozens were injured in the rampages and in confrontations with the settlers.
A joint statement Monday by the Israeli internal security agency, Shin Bet, Israeli police and the military said Ahmed Dawabsheh, 21, was arrested in an overnight raid in the Palestinian village of Duma. Duma was one of the areas where the settlers rampaged after 14-year-old Binyamin Achimair's disappearance.
The developments were the latest tensions roiling the West Bank, which has seen surging violence since the war in Gaza began on Oct. 7.
Jerusalem car attack wounds 3
JERUSALEM -- Israeli police said a car slammed into pedestrians in Jerusalem on Monday, wounding three people lightly.
The three were injured when a car ran them over in the neighbourhood of Romema, northeast of the city center.
Footage of the incident taken by a CCTV camera and aired by Israeli media showed a car plowing into three ultra-Orthodox Jews, sending at least two flying over the dashboard. Two people exit the car with a gun, and appear to attempt to shoot, but fumble with the gun before running out of the camera's view.
Police said they were searching for the two attackers, who they said had exited the vehicle with a submachine gun and fled the scene.
Palestinians have carried out a number of attacks in Israeli cities and towns, some of them deadly, since the war against Hamas broke out on Oct. 7.
