Tent compound rises in southern Gaza as Israel plots offensive
Satellite photos appear to show a new compound of tents being built near Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip as the Israeli military continues to signal it plans an offensive on the city of Rafah.
Khan Younis has been targeted by repeated Israeli military operations over recent weeks. Israel has said it plans to evacuate civilians from Rafah during an anticipated offensive on the southern city, where hundreds of thousands of people have taken refuge during the war, now in its seventh month. The military said it was not involved in the tent construction.
Elsewhere, a failed rocket strike was launched Monday at a base housing U.S.led coalition forces at Rumalyn, Syria, marking the first time since Feb. 4 that Iranian-backed militias have attacked a U.S. facility in Iraq or Syria, a U.S. defense official said. No personnel were injured in the attack, and no group has claimed responsibility.
Irish diplomat condemns strike
Ireland’s top diplomat has condemned Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing of Gaza,” saying the civilian toll of its war against Hamas is “unacceptable.”
Speaking in a joint news conference with his Egyptian counterpart in Cairo on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Micheál Martin said the killing of women and children is “unconscionable.”
He mentioned an airstrike over the weekend on Gaza’s southern city of Rafah that killed 17 children and two women from the same extended family.
“The women and children that are being killed. It’s unconscionable,” he said. “It’s very difficult for me personally as a human being to comprehend that level of barbarity, there can be no justification for it, in my view.”
The minister called for a cease-fire, the release of all hostages captured by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war, and flooding the strip with humanitarian aid.
It’s “unacceptable that hostages are taken in this manner,” he said.
Hezbollah targets Israeli base
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said Tuesday afternoon it had launched an attack on an Israeli base near the city of Acre, considerably farther south than the areas it usually targets, in response to an Israeli airstrike that killed of one of its officials.
The Israeli military said in a statement earlier Tuesday that it had killed Hussein Ali Azqul in an airstrike in south Lebanon and described him as a “significant” operative in Hezbollah’s aerial defense unit. Hezbollah confirmed in a statement that Azqul had been killed.
State media and witnesses said the strike happened in the area of Adloun, between the coastal cities of Sidon and Tyre, about 25 miles north of the border with Israel.