Extract from ABC News
Lebanon's Hezbollah militia has fired dozens of rockets at northern Israel on Saturday, warning the barrage was its initial response to the targeted killing, presumably by Israel, of a top leader from the allied Hamas group in Lebanon's capital earlier this week.
The rocket attack came a day after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said his group must retaliate for the killing of Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy political leader of Hamas in a Hezbollah stronghold south of Beirut.
Mr Nasrallah said if Hezbollah did not strike back, all of Lebanon would be vulnerable to Israeli attack.
He appeared to be making his case for a response to the Lebanese public, even at the risk of escalating the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel as the war between Israel and Hamas rages on.
Hezbollah said on Saturday that it launched 62 rockets toward an Israeli air surveillance base on Mount Meron and that it scored direct hits.
The group said rockets also struck two army posts near the border.
The Israeli military said about 40 rockets were fired toward Meron and that a base was targeted, but made no mention of the base being hit.
It said it struck the Hezbollah cell that fired the rockets.
Israeli fighter jets and troops also struck a series of Hezbollah targets in the areas of Ayta ash Shab, Yaroun, and Ramyeh in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military aid.
Hezbollah said five of its fighters were killed on Saturday, without providing further details.
Separately, the armed wing of the Islamic Group in Lebanon said it fired two volleys of rockets toward the Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona on Friday night.
Two of the group's members were killed in the strike that killed Mr al-Arouri.
On Saturday, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said 122 Palestinians were killed over the past 24 hours, bringing the total since the start of the war to 22,722.
The count does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.
The war was triggered by a deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took some 250 hostages.
UN warns Gaza 'uninhabitable' as war rages on
Israel bombed southern Gaza Saturday as the UN warned the besieged Palestinian territory has been rendered "uninhabitable" by three months of war.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, the focus of Israel's ground offensive, the local European Hospital received the bodies of 18 people killed in an overnight air strike on a house in the city’s Maan neighbourhood, said Saleh al-Hamms, head of the nursing department at the hospital.
Citing witnesses, he said more than three dozen people had been sheltering in the house, including those displaced, when it was hit.
The Israeli military said its commandos had killed three fighters and found "many weapons, grenades, magazines and vests that were used by Hamas" in a civilian home.
Israel denies targeting civilians but says Hamas militants deliberately embed themselves and their infrastructure among civilian populations.
Hamas, which is backed by Iran and is sworn to Israel's destruction, denies the accusation.
Civilians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip have borne the brunt of the violence amid widespread displacement, destruction and a deepening humanitarian crisis.
With swathes of the territory already reduced to rubble, UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on Friday that "Gaza has simply become uninhabitable".
The World Health Organization (WHO) says the majority of the Palestinian territory's 36 hospitals have been put out of action by the fighting, while remaining medical facilities face dire shortages.
A UN team on Friday delivered medical supplies to Gaza authorities in Khan Younis, and WHO coordinator Sean Casey said it was "the first time we've been able to make this delivery in about 10 days".
Hamas chief urges Blinken to focus on ending Israeli 'aggression'
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has called on US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to use his current Middle East tour to end Israel's "aggression" as war rages in Gaza.
Mr Blinken and the European Union's senior diplomat Josep Borrell have both begun a new diplomatic push to stop the spillover from the three-month-old Gaza war into Lebanon, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and Red Sea shipping lanes.
US officials have said that Mr Blinken, in his fourth regional tour since fighting erupted with Hamas's October 7 attacks on Israel, would focus on getting more aid into the besieged Gaza Strip, ruled by the Palestinian militant group.
Mr Blinken was meeting the leaders of Türkiye and Greece on Saturday at the start of a week-long trip that will also take him to Israel, the occupied West Bank, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
In Istanbul, Mr Blinken held talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and then with President Tayyip Erdogan, a fierce critic of Israel's military actions in Gaza.
In the talks, Mr Blinken "emphasised the need to prevent the conflict from spreading, secure the release of hostages, expand humanitarian assistance and reduce civilian casualties", US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.
Mr Blinken also stressed the need to work toward broader, lasting regional peace that ensures Israel's security and advances the establishment of a Palestinian state, he said.
The EU's senior diplomat Mr Borrell, visiting the Lebanese capital Beirut, expressed alarm about the exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah and said it was important that Lebanon not be dragged into the Gaza conflict.
In a video message posted late Friday on Hamas's social media channels, Mr Haniyeh said he hoped Mr Blinken had "learned the lessons of the last three months" during which Israel has relentlessly bombarded Gaza in an effort to destroy the Islamist group.
US support for Israel's military campaign "has caused unprecedented massacres and war crimes against our people in Gaza", Mr Haniyeh said.
"We … hope that he will be more focused this time on ending the aggression" as well as "the occupation of all Palestinian lands", the Qatar-based Hamas chief added.
The United States is Israel's chief military and political backer and has repeatedly refused to support calls for a ceasefire.
However, Washington has lent its support to humanitarian pauses and backed a UN Security Council resolution demanding more aid be let into Gaza.
ABC/Wires
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