Drone targets Israeli prime minister’s home as attacks kill 50 in Gaza

Israeli security forces secure a road near where the Israeli government says a drone was launched toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea, Israel, Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024. (Ariel Schalit/AP)

JERUSALEM – The Israeli government said a drone targeted the prime minister’s home on Saturday, although there were no casualties. Iran’s supreme leader vowed that Hamas would continue its fight after the killing of the mastermind behind last October 7’s deadly attack.

Sirens sounded in Israel, warning of incoming fire from Lebanon. The military said dozens of projectiles were fired. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the drone attacked his home in the Mediterranean coastal town of Caesarea, although neither he nor his wife were home.

The barrage comes as Israel considers its expected response to an Iranian attack earlier this month and steps up its offensives against Hamas militants in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In Gaza, Israeli forces fired on hospitals in the battered northern part of the Palestinian enclave, and attacks in the Gaza Strip killed more than 50 people in less than 24 hours, including children, according to hospital officials and an Associated Press reporter there.

In September, Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched a ballistic missile toward Ben Gurion Airport as Netanyahu’s plane landed. The missile was intercepted.

Barrages from Lebanon target northern Israel

In addition to the drone launched at Netanyahu’s private home, the Israeli military said some 180 projectiles were fired from Lebanon throughout the day on Saturday morning. A 50-year-old man was killed after being hit by shrapnel while sitting in his car in northern Israel, and four people were injured, Israeli medical services said.

In the northern city of Kiryat Ata, sirens blared as people took cover and intercepted rockets exploded in midair. One rocket landed in the area and Associated Press reporters saw burned cars and a damaged building. Itzik Billet, commander of the Haifa area, said nine people were slightly injured.

The Israeli Fire Brigade also said it was fighting several fires caused by rockets in the Shlomi area, less than a kilometer from the Lebanese border.

Israel’s war with the Lebanese Hezbollah – an ally of Hamas backed by Iran – has intensified in recent weeks. Hezbollah said Friday it plans to launch a new phase of the battle by sending more guided missiles and exploding drones into Israel. The militant group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in late September, and Israel sent ground troops to Lebanon earlier in October.

On Saturday, the Israeli military issued new evacuation warnings for two buildings in Beirut’s southern suburb of Haret Hriek. Israel has issued almost daily warnings for people to leave buildings and villages in parts of Lebanon. The fighting has displaced more than 1 million people, including around 400,000 children.

Israel also said on Saturday it had killed Hezbollah’s deputy commander in the southern city of Bint Jbeil. The military said Nasser Rashid oversaw attacks on Israel.

In Lebanon, the Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike hit a vehicle on a highway north of Beirut on Saturday, killing two people. It is unclear who was in the car when it was hit.

Israel attacks Gaza while Hamas rejects hostage release

A standoff is also emerging between Israel and Hamas, which it is fighting in Gaza, with both signaling opposition to ending the war after the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar this week.

On Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Sinwar’s death was a painful loss but noted that Hamas continued despite the killings of other Palestinian militant leaders before him.

“Hamas is alive and will remain alive,” Khamenei said in his first comments on the killing.

Since Israel claimed Sinwar’s death on Thursday, which was confirmed on Friday by a top Hamas official, Hamas has reiterated its position that the hostages taken from Israel a year ago will not be released until a ceasefire is reached. Gaza is a withdrawal of Israeli troops. The firm stance came against a statement by Netanyahu that his country’s army will continue fighting until the hostages are released, and will remain in Gaza to prevent a seriously weakened Hamas from rearming.

Sinwar was the chief architect of the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped another 250. Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish fighters from civilians. but say more than half of the dead are women and children.

Strikes hit Gaza again on Saturday. The Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement that Israeli strikes hit the upper floors of the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya, and troops opened fire on the hospital building and courtyard, causing panic among patients and medical staff.

At Al-Awda Hospital in Jabaliya, northern Gaza, the upper floors of the building were hit by strikes, injuring several staff members, the hospital said in a statement. Three houses in Jabaliya were hit on Friday night, killing at least 30 people, more than half of them women and children, said Fares Abu Hamza, head of the health ministry’s ambulance and emergency service. At least 80 people were injured.

In central Gaza, at least 10 people, including two children, were killed when a house was hit in the town of Zawayda, where the victims were taken, according to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Another strike killed 11 people, all from the same family, in the Maghazi refugee camp, the same hospital said. Associated Press journalists counted the bodies from both attacks at the hospital.

A United Nations school housing displaced people in western Gaza City was also hit, killing several people, Hamas-led civil defense first responders said.

The attacks knocked out internet networks in northern Gaza, Paltel, the Palestinian communications company, said on Facebook on Saturday.

The war has devastated large parts of Gaza, displacing about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people and leaving them struggling to find food, water, medicine and fuel.

Probability of Sinwar’s death

Sinwar’s killing appeared on Wednesday to be an accidental frontline confrontation with Israeli forces and could change the dynamics of the war in Gaza even as Israel continues its offensive against Hezbollah with ground troops in southern Lebanon and airstrikes in other parts of the country . .

Israel has pledged to politically destroy Hamas in Gaza, and killing Sinwar was a top military priority. But Netanyahu said in a speech announcing the killing on Thursday that “our war has not ended.”

Still, the governments of Israel’s allies and exhausted Gazans expressed hope that Sinwar’s death would pave the way for an end to the fighting.

In Israel, families of hostages still held in Gaza demanded that the Israeli government use Sinwar’s killing as a way to resume negotiations to bring their loved ones home. There are about 100 hostages remaining in Gaza, at least 30 of whom Israel says are dead.

Associated Press reporters Jack Jeffery in Ramallah, West Bank, and Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Lebanon contributed to this report.