Hope of ceasefire talks in the region is dimming after the Israeli military stepped up shelling of the Gaza Strip, killing 23 people, while 11 Israelis suffered injuries in a Hezbollah attack.
Fresh strikes on Gaza, vaccinations face challenges
Medics said at least 13 Palestinians died on Sunday in separate attacks on homes in the town of Beit Lahiya and Jabaliya, the largest of the enclave’s eight historic refugee camps and the centre of the army’s new military offensive. Others were killed in separate Israeli airstrikes on Gaza and southern neighbourhoods. The Palestinians said the fresh strikes were aimed at devastating two towns in northern Gaza and their population camps to create buffer zones. Israel denies the claims, saying it was fighting Hamas militants who launched attacks from there.
Israel did not comment on its military action on Sunday in northern Gaza. On Saturday, the military sent a new army division to Jabaliya to join two other active battalions, adding that the operation had killed hundreds of Palestinian militants in battles since the raid began on 5 October. Due to the offensive, Gaza Health Ministry is struggling to continue vaccinating thousands of children in Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun. COGAT, the Israeli army’s Palestinian civilian affairs agency, said it facilitated the start of the second round of the polio vaccination campaign in northern Gaza on Saturday, and that 58,604 children have received a dose.
The statement said an Israeli shelling hit a clinic on Saturday, injuring four children. A statement from the head of the World Health Organisation said the incident occurred despite a humanitarian pause agreed by the two warring parties, Israel and Hamas, for the vaccination campaign. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said:
A WHO team was at the site just before. This attack, during humanitarian pause, jeopardises the sanctity of health protection for children and may deter parents from bringing their children for vaccination. These vital humanitarian-area-specific pauses must be absolutely respected. Ceasefire!
A possible ceasefire that would end the war and lead to the release of Israeli and foreign hostages held in Gaza, as well as Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, remains extremely faded because of the divisions between Hamas and Israel. The two sides cannot reach an agreement: Hamas seeks a permanent end to the war, rejecting recent proposals for a temporary truce, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims the war can only end when Hamas comes to an end.
For more than a year, hostilities have continued in the Gaza Strip since. The war began on 7 October 2023 when Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli counts. The Israeli retaliatory offensive left more than 43,000 Palestinians dead and much of Gaza reduced to rubble.
Hezbollah attack injures 11 people, Isreal captures senior Hezbollah operative in northern Lebanon
The ceasefire in the region remains in jeopardy due to the Israel-Lebanon conflict. Rockets fired from Lebanon into central Israel on Saturday injured 11 people in the latest round, Israeli emergency services said. The military said air-raid sirens continued to sound in northern Israel while rocket fire and drone attacks from Lebanon continued. The attack likely followed an Israeli attack on Friday, when Israeli strikes on more than a dozen towns in the Baalbek area, home to Roman ruins listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, killed 52 people, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. In addition, two Hezbollah commanders were killed in the Tyre neighbourhood on Friday, according to the Israeli military, but there was no comment from the group.
Beyond that, an Israeli military spokesman said that members of the elite Shayetetet 13 unit captured the alleged Hezbollah fighter after he landed on the coast in Batroun, a town in northern Lebanon, and then brought him back to Israeli territory. The detained operative is currently being investigated by Unit 504, an intelligence unit of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported on Saturday that eyewitnesses saw unidentified military forces conducting a landing operation on Batroun beach at dawn the previous day. The troops “moved with all their weapons and equipment to a chalet near the beach, where they kidnapped the citizen Imad Amhaz and took him to the beach, (then) left by speedboats to the open sea,” NNA reported.
The Lebanese government said its security services were investigating “an incident that took place in the Batroun area.” Meanwhile, Hezbollah released a statement referring to an incident of “Zionist aggression in the Batroun area” but did not provide further details.
Iran detains American-Iranian journalist, US says
The detention of Reza Valizadeh, an American-Iranian journalist who once worked for a US government-funded broadcaster and who was recognised to the Associated Press by the US State Department, came as Iran marked the 45th anniversary of the seizure of the US embassy and hostage crisis on Sunday. Valizadeh worked at Radio Farda, the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty-controlled US Agency for Global Media. In February, he posted on X that members of his family had been detained in an attempt to force him to return to Iran. In August, Valizadeh apparently published two reports indicating he had returned to Iran.
The US Department of State told AP that it was “aware of reports that this dual US-Iranian citizen has been arrested in Iran” when asked about Valizadeh. “We are working with our Swiss partners who serve as the protecting power for the United States in Iran to gather more information about this case. Iran routinely imprisons US citizens and other countries’ citizens unjustly for political purposes. This practice is cruel and contrary to international law,” the department said.
The detention comes as Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei earlier threatened Israel and the US with retaliation when long-range B-52 bombers reached the Middle East in an attempt to deter Tehran. Rumours of Valizadeh’s detention have been circulating for weeks. However, Iran has not recognised Valizadeh’s detention. Iran’s mission to the UN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since the 1979 US embassy crisis, when dozens of hostages were released after 444 days of captivity, Iran has used prisoners with Western ties as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the world. Five Americans detained in Iran for years were released in September 2023 in exchange for five Iranians in US custody and $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets to be unlocked by South Korea. Valizadeh became the first American detained by Iran since then.
