Advertisement
Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group fired anti-tank missiles and artillery shells at an Israeli military convoy in a disputed area along the border, killing an Israeli civilian, the group and Israel’s military said on Friday. Hezbollah said that its fighters ambushed the convoy shortly before midnight Thursday, destroying two vehicles. The Israeli military said the ambush wounded an Israeli civilian doing infrastructure work, and that he later died of his wounds. Low-intensity fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border has repeatedly threatened to boil over as Israel has targeted senior Hezbollah militants in recent months.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides of the border. On the Israeli side, the cross-border fighting has killed 10 civilians and 12 soldiers, while in Lebanon, more than 350 people have been killed, including 50 civilians and 271 Hezbollah members. On Thursday, Palestinian hospital officials said Israeli airstrikes on the southern city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip killed at least five people.
More than half of the territory’s population of 2.3 million have sought refuge in Rafah, where Israel has conducted near-daily raids as it prepares for an offensive in the city. The Israeli military has massed dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles in the area in what appears to be preparations for an invasion of Rafah. In central Gaza, four people were killed in Israeli tank shelling.
A ship travelling in the Gulf of Aden came under attack Thursday, officials said, the latest assault likely carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebels over the Israel-Hamas war. Meanwhile, a top Hamas political official told The Associated Press that the Islamic militant group is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel.
The Israel-Hamas war was sparked by the unprecedented October 7 raid into southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Israel says the militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others. The war has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, around two-thirds of them children and women.
Currently:
– Ship comes under attack off coast of Yemen as Houthi rebel campaign appears to gain new speed
– Satellite photos show new port construction in Gaza Strip for US-led aid operation
– USC cancels graduation ceremony and dozens are arrested on other campuses as anti-war protests grow
– Chef José Andrés says aid workers killed by Israeli airstrikes represented the best of humanity’
– UN report says 282 million people faced acute hunger in 2023, with the worst famine in Gaza
– EU military officer says a frigate has destroyed a drone launched from Yemen’s Houthi-held areas