Multiple deaths as Israeli strikes and clashes span Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza
by AFP Staff Writers
Damascus (AFP) Nov 21, 2024

The Syrian defence ministry said 36 people were killed and more than 50 wounded Wednesday in Israeli air strikes on the city of Palmyra, renowned for its ancient ruins.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the Israeli strikes had killed as many as 61 people.

"The Israeli enemy launched an air attack from the direction of the Al-Tanf area, targeting a number of buildings in the city of Palmyra," the defence ministry said in a statement.

The attack "killed 36 people and wounded more than 50", and caused "significant material damage," it added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights however gave a higher toll, which it expected to "rise due to the presence of seriously injured people".

"The total number of dead reached 61 people," it said.

Among them, 33 were Syrians affiliated with Iranian militias, 22 were non-Syrians, four from Hezbollah and two unknown, according to the monitor.

The strikes targeting Palmyra -- a modern city adjacent to Greco-Roman ruins -- are the deadliest in Syria since all-out war erupted between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel on September 23.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence in the country.

The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned "in the strongest terms the brutal Israeli aggression against the city of Palmyra, which reflects the continuing crimes of Zionism against the countries of the region and their peoples".

Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was taken over and pillaged by Islamic State jihadists at the height of the Syrian civil war.

The director general of Antiquities and Museums in Syria, Nazir Awad, told AFP the city's temples "did not suffer any direct damage" during the latest strikes.

"We need to conduct a survey on the ground to confirm these observations," he added.

Gaza civil defence says 17 killed in Israeli strikes
Gaza City, Palestinian Territories (AFP) Nov 20, 2024 - Gaza's civil defence agency said on Wednesday that at least 17 people, including a baby, were killed in Israeli air strikes on the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.

The Israeli military said one of its soldiers was killed and another seriously wounded during combat in the north of the Gaza Strip.

The baby was killed in nighttime shelling of the Nuseirat refugee camp, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said, adding a shell killed two other people west of the camp in central Gaza.

A drone strike killed two people, including a 15-year-old girl, at a school-turned-shelter for displaced people in the northern city of Beit Lahia, he said.

Since early October, the Israeli army has been waging an operation in Gaza's far north that it says is aimed at preventing Palestinian militant group Hamas from regrouping.

The military campaign has forced at least 100,000 people to flee for Gaza City and nearby areas, said Louise Wateridge, spokeswoman for the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA.

In Jabalia, also in Gaza's far north, emergency workers on Wednesday recovered the bodies of seven people from under the rubble of a house hit by an air strike the night before, Bassal said.

In southern Gaza, a person was killed when a group of Palestinians was targeted near another school in the city of Rafah on Wednesday, he said.

Strikes on a residential building in Gaza City killed two people, Bassal said, while a first responder from the agency was killed while trying to evacuate wounded people in the same area.

In the city's Zeitun neighbourhood, an air strike killed another person and wounded several others, Bassal added.

The war in Gaza began after Hamas's unprecedented October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed nearly 44,000 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which the UN considers reliable.

Israel army says 3 soldiers, including 70-year-old, killed in Lebanon
Jerusalem (AFP) Nov 20, 2024 - The Israeli military said Wednesday three soldiers, including a 70-year-old, were killed in south Lebanon, where its troops have battled Hezbollah since late September after a year of cross-border exchanges of fire.

The army announced two soldiers were killed in the same incident including 70-year-old reservist Ze'ev 'Jabo' Hanoch Erlich, after it had said earlier Wednesday that a 22-year-old soldier from Jerusalem "fell during combat in southern Lebanon".

The deaths bring to 52 the army's losses in Lebanon since the start of ground operations.

Another soldier was heavily injured during the same incident that killed the two soldiers including Erlich, the military said, adding he had been taken to hospital.

The Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, described Erlich as a "pioneer of research in geography, archaeology and Jewish history of Judea and Samaria" -- as Israel calls the West Bank.

He lived in Ofra, one of the first settlements in the area.

The announcements come amid a US-led push to secure a truce, with US envoy Amos Hochstein expected in Israel Wednesday after talks in Beirut this week.

Israel widened the focus of its war from Gaza to Lebanon, nearly a year into the conflict in Gaza that was sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack.

In support of its Palestinian ally, Hezbollah launched low-intensity strikes on Israel after the attack, forcing around 60,000 Israelis to flee their homes.

Israel says not fighting Lebanese army, after soldiers killed
Jerusalem (AFP) Nov 20, 2024 - Israel's military said Wednesday it was fighting the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, not the Lebanese army, after the latter said four of its soldiers were killed in Israeli strikes.

"We emphasise that the (Israeli army) is operating precisely against the Hezbollah terrorist organisation and is not operating against the Lebanon Armed Forces," the military told AFP in a statement.

The Lebanese army said Israeli fire killed a soldier Wednesday, a day after it said three other personnel died in a strike on their position in the town of Sarafand, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the southern border.

South Lebanon has seen intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants whose group holds sway in the area.

Israel's military said it struck "a terrorist infrastructure site in which a number of Hezbollah terrorists were operating in the area of Sarafand" on Tuesday night.

"The (army) is looking into reports regarding soldiers of the Lebanon Armed Forces who were injured during the strike," it added, but did not refer to the other deadly incident mentioned by the Lebanese army.

Since September 23, Israel has ramped up its bombing campaign in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops, after almost a year of cross-border exchanges begun by Hezbollah in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas.

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