JERUSALEM.
The Israeli army and the internal security service said yesterday that they had discovered a tunnel belonging to the Islamist movement Hamas under the headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza City.
For its part, UNRWA, which Israel accuses of being “completely infiltrated by Hamas,” said it had not occupied its headquarters since October 12, five days after the Palestinian movement’s bloody attack on Israeli territory that marked the triggered war in Gaza.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said that “the revelation of UNRWA headquarters in Gaza’s deep involvement with Hamas (…) requires immediate action.”
“The immediate resignation” of Philippe Lazzarini, the director of this UN agency, “is imperative,” he declared on the social network X.
According to the Israeli military and the Shin Bet, military operations in Gaza City in recent weeks led to the discovery of a “tunnel entrance” near a UN humanitarian agency school. “The entrance led to an underground terror tunnel that was of great importance to Hamas’s military intelligence and ran under the building that serves as the UNRWA headquarters in the Gaza Strip,” Israeli sources said in a statement.
They also added that “UNRWA facilities provided power to the 700-meter-long, 18-meter underground tunnel” and that they found documents and weapons on the UN compound, which “confirms that the offices were also used by Hamas terrorists.” became”.
Hamas, for its part, warned that an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah could leave “tens of thousands dead and wounded” in this southern Gaza Strip city, the last refuge for those displaced by the war in the Palestinian territories.
Yesterday, new Israeli bombings hit the city on the border with Egypt, which is home to 1.3 million Palestinians, more than half of Gaza’s total population. The vast majority of them are refugees who have fled the Israeli offensive in other areas of the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian security sources said five police officers were killed in two bombings. Israeli forces said two senior Hamas military officials were killed in one of those attacks.
In this context, the international organization Doctors Without Borders published yesterday on its account Two people were killed and five others were injured, including a nurse. “Medical staff are afraid to move in and around the hospital for fear of being shot.”
“We are concerned for the lives of our colleagues, medical staff and patients in the hospital,” MSF said.
Tensions lead to Houthis dying in Yemen
Reuters
CAIRO – Yemen’s Houthi militia held funerals yesterday for at least 17 militants killed in joint US and British airstrikes against Iran-backed rebels, the group’s news agency Saba said.
The Houthis have launched waves of drone and missile attacks on commercial vessels since November 19, in what they see as a response to Israel’s military operations in Gaza, which prompted Britain and the US to retaliate last month.
“These crimes will not deter the Yemeni people from continuing to support and support their brothers in Gaza,” Saba said in his coverage of the funerals.
In addition to airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, the US and UK have again added them to a list of terrorist groups.
War kills civilians in Lebanon
BEIRUT. – Three people, including two civilians, were killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon yesterday, one of which targeted a surviving senior official in the Palestinian Hamas movement, Lebanese and Palestinian security sources reported.
The Palestinian source, who requested anonymity, said one of the Israeli attacks was “a failed attempt to assassinate a senior official of the Hamas movement.”
The events took place in the town of Jadra, about 40 km north of the border with Israel, far from the battle zone between Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, and the Israeli army.
A Lebanese security source said the target of the attack was Bassel Saleh, who was “responsible for recruiting in the West Bank” within the movement.
“He escaped the assassination attempt but suffered burns on his back and was taken to hospital,” he added.
According to Lebanon’s official press agency NNA, another attack by an Israeli drone left one dead and nine injured in the town of Hula, near the border with Israel.
Since the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza on October 7, Hezbollah has been bombing Israeli military positions.
In response, Israel bombed targets in southern Lebanon and high-ranking Hezbollah officials. At least 230 people, mostly Hezbollah fighters, have been killed in southern Lebanon in four months. According to the army, 15 people were killed on the Israeli side.
AFP