Israel steps up attacks in Gaza as UN peacekeepers come under fire in Lebanon

Palestinians in northern Gaza described heavy Israeli bombardment Saturday in the hours after airstrikes killed at least 22 people, as Israel warned people there and in southern Lebanon to get out of the way of offensives against the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups.

In Lebanon, the U.N. peacekeeping force said that its headquarters in Naqoura was hit again, with a peacekeeper struck by gunfire late Friday and in stable condition. It wasn’t clear who fired. The shooting occurred a day after Israel’s military fired on the headquarters for a second straight day. Israel, which has warned peacekeepers to leave their positions, didn’t immediately respond to questions.

Hunger warnings emerged again in northern Gaza as residents said they hadn’t received aid since the beginning of the month. The U.N. World Food Program said that no food aid had entered the north since Oct. 1. An estimated 400,000 people remain there.

Israel’s military renewed its offensive in northern Gaza almost a week ago while escalating its air and ground campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Amid Israel’s war with Hezbollah, a top U.N. official, Carl Skau, told The Associated Press that he’s concerned that Lebanon’s ports and airport might be taken out of service. More than 1 million people have been displaced.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said that an Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building on the edge of Barja south of Beirut, and the Health Ministry said that four were killed. The ministry said an airstrike on Maisra village northeast of Beirut killed five people.

The total toll in Lebanon over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is now 2,255 killed, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. More than 1,400 people have been killed since mid-September. It wasn’t clear how many were fighters.

Israel’s military said that Hezbollah fired more than 300 projectiles over the Yom Kippur holiday. The military said that it killed 50 militants in Lebanon. Claims on either side couldn’t be verified.

“We will keep standing with the Lebanese people during these difficult circumstances and also with the Palestinian people,” the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said Saturday while touring the scene of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.

Some Gaza residents are trapped

In northern Gaza, residents told the AP many were trapped in their homes and shelters with dwindling supplies while seeing bodies uncollected in the streets as the bombing hampered emergency responders.

Those who rushed to the scene of the latest deadly airstrikes in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya found a hole 20 meters (65 feet) deep where a home once stood.

At least 20 bodies were recovered as of Saturday morning, while others likely were trapped under rubble, emergency service officials said. Elsewhere in Jabaliya, a strike on a home killed two brothers and wounded a woman and newborn baby, the officials said.

Another strike in the afternoon hit a Jabaliya home and killed at least four people, including a woman, said Fares Abu Hamza, an official with the emergency service.

Israel’s military said that it killed more than 20 militants in the Jabaliya area over the past day.

Military spokesperson Avichay Adraee told people in parts of Jabaliya and Gaza City to evacuate south to an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone as Israel plans to use great force “and will continue to do so for a long time.”

Israel has repeatedly returned to parts of Gaza as Hamas and other militants regroup. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.

Once again, some families moved south on foot, in donkey carts or crowded in vehicles that navigated piles of rubble. Others refused to go.

“It’s like the first days of the war,” said a Jabaliya resident, Ahmed Abu Goneim. “The occupation is doing everything to uproot us. But we will not leave.”

The 24-year-old said Israeli warplanes and drones struck many neighboring houses in the past week. He counted 15 relatives and neighbors, including four women and five children as young as 3, killed in neighboring homes. He said that there were dead in the streets and “no one is able to recover them because of the bombing.”

Hamza Sharif, who stays with his family in a school-turned-shelter in Jabaliya, described “constant bombings day and night.”

He said that the shelter hasn’t received aid since the beginning of the month.

“Families depend on what they have stored, but they will run out of supplies very soon,” he said.

Food is running out

The World Food Program said that it was unclear how long the limited food supplies it distributed in northern Gaza earlier will last.

The U.N.’s independent investigator on the right to food last month accused Israel of carrying out a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians, which Israel has denied.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza started after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, when militants stormed into Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others.

Israel’s offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who don’t specify between combatants and civilians. Gaza’s Health Ministry said that hospitals had received the bodies of 49 people killed over the past 24 hours.

This story was reported by The Associated Press. Samy Magdy reported from Cairo. Jack Jeffery in Jerusalem, and Sam Metz in Rabat, Morocco, contributed to this report.