Israel is accused of killing journalists in Lebanon and children in Gaza hospital

Tel Aviv — An Israeli airstrike killed three journalists in southern Lebanon on Friday, at a complex known to house more than a dozen journalists from various organizations. The Lebanese Ministry of Health. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati called the attack deliberate and “war crimes committed by the Israeli enemy.”

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the attack but later said it was investigating it.

The three journalists were identified as two cameramen and one engineer who worked for media companies linked to Iran and the Lebanese group it supports, Hezbollah, with which Israel is in a conflict. escalating war with for a year. Hezbollah has long been labeled a terrorist group by the US, Israel and many other countries.

The pre-dawn strike, about five miles inside the Lebanese border, destroyed a building and destroyed at least one vehicle marked “PRESS.”

The Associated Press and other agencies said no warning had been issued before the attack on the guesthouse where the journalists had been sleeping.

The IDF itself reported five casualties in southern Lebanon on Thursday and said Hezbollah militants emerged from a tunnel shaft and began throwing grenades, prompting Israeli soldiers to fire back.

The IDF says 22 of its soldiers have been killed in fighting in southern Lebanon since Israel launched ground operations there in early October.

The Israeli army has also continued and stepped up its offensive against Hezbollah’s Hamas allies in the Gaza Strip since the war. murder of group leader Yahya Sinwar earlier this month. At least 38 people were killed in IDF attacks in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, health officials in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory said on Friday, with at least 14 children reportedly among the dead.

In the north of the enclave, Israeli forces stormed the last operational hospital in the area, Kamal Adwan Hospital, after two other adjacent facilities were taken out of service in recent days. The hospital is located in Beit Lahia, northwest of Jabalia, which has been a major focus of IDF operations in recent weeks.

Health workers said IDF forces entered the hospital in the middle of the night, shortly after a World Health Organization delegation left the hospital.

In a statement, the IDF said that forces operated in the vicinity of the hospital “based on intelligence information about the presence of terrorists and the terrorist infrastructure in the area,” and that they had “eliminated hundreds of terrorists” there. The IDF said it had evacuated about 45,000 Palestinian civilians before the operation.

Three Israeli soldiers were killed during operations in northern Gaza, the IDF said on Friday.

Amid ongoing fighting in Lebanon and Gaza, US Secretary of State Antonly Blinken was back in the region this week pushing for a peace deal.

After his eleventh visit to the Middle East in a year, Blinken was in London on Friday, where he met his counterparts from Jordan and Qatar, along with Lebanon’s interim prime minister.

Following his conversation with Jordan’s foreign minister, the State Department issued a statement saying Blinken had “underscored the importance of ending the war in Gaza, securing the release of all hostages and easing the suffering of the Palestinian people.”

On Lebanon, Blinken told Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadiin that the US remains committed to working with its regional partners “to achieve lasting stability” by pursuing a diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict on based on an existing United Nations resolution.

Blinken has said that Israel cannot leave its troops in Lebanon for an extended period of time, and that the IDF must do more to prevent civilians, the Lebanese forces and UN peacekeepers located in the south of the country.

Israel confirmed Thursday that it would send its spy chief David Barnea to Qatar on Sunday for a new round of talks with US and regional officials aimed at brokering a ceasefire deal. CIA Director Bill Burns is also expected to attend the meetings, along with the prime minister of Qatar, which has served as one of the mediating countries for the past year.

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