Israeli strikes kill more than 30 across Gaza Strip, casualties in Lebanon reported

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Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 14-year-old teenager in Halhoul, near the West Bank's Hebron, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said.

Israeli troops recently detained an individual in Syria it said was an Iranian operative who had gathered intelligence on Israeli troops in the border area, the Israeli military said on Sunday.

The military named the person as Ali Soleiman al-Assi, a Syrian citizen from the area of Saida in southern Syria. It said the operation took place in recent months but gave no exact date.

"The operation by Israel Defense Forces troops to detain al-Assi prevented a future attack and led to the exposure of the operational methods of Iranian terror networks located near the Golan Heights," the military said.

Al-Assi was brought to Israel for investigation, it said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Hezbollah must be pushed back beyond the Litani river, with or without a ceasefire deal in place, and that the Iran-backed group must be prevented from rearming.

"With or without an agreement, the key to returning our (evacuated) residents in the north safely to their homes is to keep back Hezbollah beyond the Litani, to strike its every attempt rearm, and to respond forcefully against all action against us," Netanyahu said during a visit to the border with Lebanon.

The Litani river is roughly 30 km inside Lebanon from the border with Israel.

The death toll from Israeli attacks on Lebanon has now climbed to 2,986 and the number of injured to 13,402 since October 2023, including 18 dead and 83 injured in the past 24 hours, the Lebanese health ministry said on Sunday.

At least 772 of those killed were women and children, the ministry added in a statement.

Iran's president said Sunday a potential ceasefire between its allies and Israel "could affect the intensity" of Tehran's response to Israel's recent strikes on Iranian military sites.

"If they (the Israelis) reconsider their behaviour, accept a ceasefire and stop massacring the oppressed and innocent people of the region, it could affect the intensity and type of our response," Masoud Pezeshkian said, quoted by state news agency IRNA.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Lebanese border on Sunday, his office said, as the Israeli military continued to the country's south on Sunday.

"Netanyahu visited the Lebanon border today," his office said in a statement, his second such visit to the frontier in less than a month.

Medical sources in the Gaza Strip said that at least nine Palestinians were killed and a number of others were injured after an Israeli air strike targeted the Sheikh Nasser area east of Khan Younis, the Palestinian Wafa agency reported.

According to Al Jazeera, seven members of the same family, including four children were killed in the latest attack.

The death toll for Palestinians killed in Gaza on Sunday has climbed to 31, Palestinian medics said, with nearly half of the deaths in northern areas where the army has waged a month-long campaign.

Palestinians said the new aerial and ground offensives and forced evacuations were "ethnic cleansing" aimed at emptying two northern Gaza towns and a camp of their population in order to create buffer zones. Israel denies this, saying it is fighting Hamas militants who launch attacks from there.

Medics said at least 13 Palestinians were killed in separate attacks on houses in Beit Lahiya town and Jabalia, the largest of the enclave's eight historic refugee camps and the focus of the army's new offensive.

The rest were killed in separate Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City and in southern areas, including one in Khan Younis, which health officials said had killed eight people, including four children.

Several strikes hit Lebanon's eastern Baalbek region, where Hezbollah holds sway, after the Israeli army issued an evacuation warning for the area on Sunday, an AFP correspondent said.

The correspondent reported at least three strikes on the area, which has seen heavy air raids in recent days by Israel, which has been at war with Hezbollah for more than a month.

At least seven Palestinians, including children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis on Sunday, health officials told Reuters.

A pro-Palestinian group took two sculptures of Israel's first president from a UK university in a protest marking the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, with police on Sunday confirming they were investigating reports of a burglary.

"Today, Palestine Action have marked 107 years since the Balfour Declaration, by taking two sculptures of Israel's first president, Chaim Weizmann, from its display case at University of Manchester," the protest group said in a press release.

Greater Manchester Police told AFP in a statement that it had received a report of a burglary at the north west England university at around 11.55pm (2355 GMT) on Friday.

The local Jewish Representative Council of GM & Region community group wrote on X that "overnight, criminals from Palestine Action broke into the University, smashed the case and stole the statue of Weizmann.

"We urge the authorities and Home Secretary to fully proscribe Palestine Action as it is essential they face the full force of the law," it added.

In the Balfour Declaration, UK foreign minister Arthur Balfour spelled out plans to form "a national home for the Jewish people" in a 1917 letter to Walter Rothschild, a British politician and supporter of the idea of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

The letter was endorsed and published by the government on Nov 2, 1917.

Lebanon's health ministry said three people were killed and nine others wounded in an Israeli strike Sunday on Haret Saida, a densely populated area near the southern city of Sidon.

"The Israeli enemy's raid on Haret Saida resulted in an initial death toll of three people killed and nine others injured," the ministry said. The strike was not preceded by an Israeli evacuation warning.

The health ministry in the Gaza Strip said on Sunday that at least 43,341 people have been killed in the year-long war.

The toll includes 27 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 102,105 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began on October 7 last year.

Israeli forces stepped up bombardment of the Gaza Strip on Sunday killing at least 23 people, Palestinian medics said, with over half the deaths in northern areas where the army has waged a month-long campaign.

Medics said at least 13 Palestinians were killed in separate attacks on houses in Beit Lahiya town and Jabalia, the largest of the enclave's eight historic refugee camps and the focus of the army's new military offensive. The rest were killed in separate Israeli air strikes in Gaza City and the southern areas.

Israeli forces have detained at least 16 Palestinians in the West Bank in overnight raids, the Palestinian news agency Wafa said on Sunday, including a child.

The Palestinian Authority’s Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees and the Prisoners' Society reported in a joint statement that the detentions occurred in the provinces of Ramallah, Nablus, Tubas, Salfit, and Hebron.

 Hezbollah has reportedly launched around 35 rockets  from Lebanon at northern Israel, Israeli media said.

Most pf those were launched into the occupied Golan Heights territory, while ten were intended to target the Western Galilee region.

According to the Israeli military, some rockets were "intercepted, and others landed in open areas".

The Israeli military called for the evacuation of the Baalbek area in eastern Lebanon, warning that it was poised to strike Hezbollah targets there and in nearby Douris.

"You are currently located near the facilities and assets associated with Hezbollah, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will be targeting in the near future," the Israeli military's Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on X addressed to residents of Baalbek and Douris.

The World Health Organization said four children were among six people wounded on Saturday in a strike on a polio vaccination centre in northern Gaza.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the health centre was "in an area where a humanitarian pause was agreed to allow vaccination to proceed" and the attack could off parents of children needing a second vaccine to be covered.

"We have received an extremely concerning report that the Sheikh Radwan primary health care centre in northern Gaza was struck today while parents were bringing their children to the life-saving polio vaccination in an area where a humanitarian pause was agreed," Tedros said.

"Six people, including four children, were injured," he added.

The Gaza civil defence agency source told AFP that it was "an Israeli quadcopter that fired two missiles which hit the wall of Sheikh Radwan clinic".

Israeli strikes targeted several locations in southern Lebanon on Sunday, including Zawtar Sharqieh in the Nabatieh district, Jwaya, the outskirts of Bazourieh and Burj al-Shemali in the Sour district, L'Orient Today reported.

The outskirts of Ansariyeh and Sharqa in Bint Jbeil were bombed overnight.

A Bangladeshi worker died in a air strike in Lebanon, Dhaka's foreign ministry said Sunday, as the Israeli bombardment hampered efforts to repatriate citizens.

Mohammad Nizam, 31, was killed on Saturday afternoon in a reported strike as he stopped at a coffee shop on the way to work in Beirut, Bangladesh's ambassador to Lebanon, Javed Tanveer Khan said in a statement.

Mohmmad Jalaluddin said his younger brother Nizam had lived in Beirut for more than a decade, and had not been among the estimated 1,800 Bangladeshis who had registered for an evacuation flight home.

"We want to bury him in our ancestral home, and are now waiting for the government's response," Jalaluddin told AFP.

At least nine people Palestinians have been killed inn Gaza on Sunday by Israeli strikes, with casualties in Beit Lahia and Jabalia in the north, and Rafah in the south.

Local sources told the Palestinian news agency Wafa that Israeli warplanes bombed a house belonging to the Al-Najjar family killing three people, while a strike in Beit Lahia killed five.

Several injuries were also reported,

In Rafah, one Palestinian was killed and two others were injured in an Israeli drone attack.