Gaza war: Hamas fire rockets on Tel Aviv, no casualties reported

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Iran has rejected tempting offers by European intermediaries - including renewing talks on Tehran's nuclear programme - in return for restraint against Israel, after the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in its capital last month, sources told The New Arab's Arabic language service Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

Tehran dismissed the "insincere" offers amid Western calls for halting or limiting Iranian retaliatory strikes on Israel, in an effort to bolster efforts to reach a Gaza ceasefire deal with talks set to take place on Thursday.

Iranian officials said the offers were merely "buying more time" for Israel, adding that if de-escalation calls were sincere then pressure would be placed on Israel to stop the war, the sources said.

They stressed that Tehran's response to Hanieyh's assassination on its soil is "inevitable", adding that Israel would be "punished" for "crossing red lines".

Read more below.
 

A Palestinian man has died from critical injuries sustained after Israeli forces fired live bullets and tear gas canisters during an assault in the occupied West Bank early on Tuesday.

Mutaz Sarsour, aged 18, died from wounds sustained during the dawn raid on the Al-Am'ari refugee camp in the city of Ramallah.

The attack also injured three men, including one who was reportedly run over by a military vehicle.

Read more below.

A rocket fired from the war-torn Gaza Strip fell in the sea off Israel's Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Israel's army said, as Hamas militants announced their first attack on the city in months.

"A short while ago, a projectile that was identified crossing from the Gaza Strip fell in the maritime space in central Israel," an army statement said, as an AFP journalist reported hearing a boom in the city at the same time.

The army added that "simultaneously, an additional projectile that did not cross into Israeli territory was identified".

Hamas armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said it fired two M90 rockets at Tel Aviv, their first attack on the Israeli commercial hub since May.

"Al-Qassam Brigades bombarded the city of Tel Aviv and its suburbs with two M90 missiles in response to the Zionist massacres against civilians and the deliberate displacement of our people," a statement by the group said.

The attack came with Israel on high alert for an attack by Iran and its proxies following the killings of senior figures from Hamas and Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group.

Hamas’s armed wing announced that it targeted the coastal Israeli city and its "environs" with two M-90 rockets, which have a range of 90 km.

In a statement on its official Telegram channel, the Brigades stated that the attack was "in retaliation for the massacres and forced displacement perpetrated by Israel."

An Israeli strike killed 10 members of a Gaza family in the territory's southern district of Khan Younis Tuesday, leaving only one survivor -- a three-month-old girl, a medic told AFP.

"Ten members of the Abu Haya family were killed in an Israeli strike on Abassan in east Khan Younis," the medic from Nasser Hospital told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"There is only one survivor from the family, a baby girl named Rim. She is just three months old," he said, identifying the 10 other members of the family -- two parents and their eight children.

The girl, wrapped in a black cloth, stirred strong emotion in the courtyard of Nasser Hospital, a place now known for grieving families searching for dead or wounded loved ones.

"This little girl was pulled out of the rubble. Her whole family is dead. Who will take care of her now?" asked Ibrahim Barbakh, a resident of Khan Younis, as he held the baby.

Rescue workers, witnesses and medical sources reported further Israeli air strikes and shelling in several parts of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, some of them deadly.

UNRWA, the primary humanitarian agency in Gaza, stated in a post on X that nearly 84 percent of the Gaza Strip has been placed under evacuation orders by the Israeli military.

Displacement never ends in #Gaza. Nearly 84% of the Gaza Strip - about 305 km² - has been placed under evacuation orders by the Israeli military

People run for their lives, grabbing what they can and leaving everything else behind. They are exhausted and have nowhere safe to go. pic.twitter.com/ojt2yzoFL2

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) August 13, 2024

Hamas is sticking to its demand that Gaza truce talks focus on a deal already discussed with Israel and mediators rather than starting anew, an official said on Tuesday, after Israeli airstrikes killed at least 19 Palestinians in the enclave.

The U.S. said on Monday that it expected peace talks slated for Thursday to go ahead as planned, and that a ceasefire agreement was still possible. Axios reported that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken planned to set off on Tuesday for discussions in Qatar, Egypt and Israel.

The Israeli government said it would send a delegation to Thursday's talks, but Hamas, the Palestinian group that ran Gaza before the war, requested a workable plan to implement a proposal it has already accepted rather than more talks.

A Hamas official told Reuters that a CNN report saying the group planned to attend on Thursday was wrong.

"Our statement the other day was clear: what is needed is the implementation, not more negotiation," said the official, who declined to be named owing to the sensitivity of the issue. 

Israel's war on the Gaza Strip has killed at least 39,929 Palestinians and wounded 92,240 since 7 October, the Palestinian enclave's health ministry said on Tuesday.

A total of 32 Palestinians have been killed and 88 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry said in a statement

The Israeli military reported that its air defenses successfully destroyed two unmanned aircraft launched from Lebanon.

According to a statement from the army, one drone was shot down while still in Lebanese airspace, and the other was intercepted over Israeli territory earlier in the day.

The statement also confirmed that there were no casualties.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said on Tuesday it received a report of an incident 97 nautical miles northwest of Yemen's Hodeidah, as the Iran-aligned Houthis have launched attacks on global shipping since November in solidarity with Palestinians as Israel wages war on Gaza.

Authorities were investigating, UKMTO added in an advisory note.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin will discuss the situation in the Middle East with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Moscow on Tuesday, the Kremlin said late on Monday.

"It is expected that an exchange of views will be held on the situation in the Middle East in light of the current aggravation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip," the Kremlin said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Abbas is in Moscow on a long-expected visit until Wednesday and is to travel to Turkey for talks with President Tayyip Erdogan afterwards.

Russia, which has forged close ties both with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Arab leaders including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has condemned the recent killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, calling on all parties to refrain from further destabilisation of the Middle East.

It has also repeatedly scolded the West for ignoring the need for an independent Palestinian state within 1967 borders.

Hundreds of Israeli activists have entered the courtyards of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque and performed Talmudic rituals, according to reports from the Wafa news agency and other Palestinian media outlets.

Footage shared on Israeli social media shows large groups of Israelis, under the watch of security officers, marching towards the mosque while chanting.

The march took place on Tisha B’Av, a Jewish holy day that commemorates the destruction of the ancient temples.

The Al-Aqsa compound is administered by Jordan’s Islamic Endowments Department, or Waqf, while Israel maintains security control. Under this arrangement, Jews are not permitted to pray within the mosque compound. However, some right-wing Jewish Israelis advocate for the right to pray there, challenging the established status quo

Palestinian official media said Israeli troops shot a man dead in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday during a raid to demolish the apartments of two detained Palestinian suspects.

"The occupation soldiers fired bullets and tear gas, killing a young man who was hit in the chest," Palestinian official news agency, Wafa, reported.

When contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said it was looking into the report.

The Israeli troops had stormed Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority, to demolish the apartments of two Palestinians who are in custody on suspicion of carrying out an attack in the city earlier this year.

"Suddenly, they arrived and surrounded the neighbourhood and then entered the house," Ahmed al-Barghouti, brother of one of the detainees, told AFP.

"They told us that the house was going to be destroyed with explosives and ordered us to leave even though I'm ill and we have two elderly people in our family."

Israel routinely demolishes the homes of Palestinians accused of carrying out attacks, arguing that such measures act as a deterrent, while critics say they amount to collective punishment.

At least ten Palestinian civilians were killed, and several others injured overnight, due to an Israeli airstrike east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa.

According to local sources, the airstrike targeted a residential building in the town of Abasan al-Kabira, resulting in the deaths of ten people and injuring several others.

Iran on Tuesday rejected Western calls to stand down its threat to retaliate against Israel for the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran late last month.

"The declaration by France, Germany and Britain, which raised no objection to the international crimes of the Zionist regime, brazenly asks Iran to take no deterrent action against a regime which has violated its sovereignty and territorial integrity," foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said in a statement.

"Such a request lacks political logic, flies in the face of the principles and rules of international law, and constitutes public and practical support" for Israel.

Iran and its allies have blamed Israel for the killing of Haniyeh as he visited Tehran on July 31 for the swearing-in of President Masoud Pezeshkian. Israel has not commented.

Western diplomats have scrambled to avert a major conflagration in the Middle East, where tensions were already high due to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

In a statement on Monday, the United States and European allies called on Iran to "stand down".

"We called on Iran to stand down its ongoing threats of a military attack against Israel and discussed the serious consequences for regional security should such an attack take place," said the joint statement issued by Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the United States.