dle East
AS IT HAPPENED
Dozens killed in Israeli air strikes on Rafah ahead of ground assault
Israeli air strikes killed at least 28 Palestinians in Rafah early Saturday, hours after Israel’s prime minister said he asked the military to plan for the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people from the southern Gaza city ahead of a ground invasion. Israeli strikes also targeted the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus early Saturday, the Syrian military said. Read our blog to see how the day’s events unfolded.
Issued on: 10/02/2024 – 07:26
Modified: 10/02/2024 – 23:00
2 min
A Palestinian sits in his house, which has been destroyed in an Israeli strike in Rafah, Gaza Strip on February 10, 2024.
A Palestinian sits in his house, which has been destroyed in an Israeli strike in Rafah, Gaza Strip on February 10, 2024. © Fatima Shbair, AP
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FRANCE 24
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This blog is no longer being updated. For more coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, please click here.
Summary:
Witnesses reported new Israeli air strikes on Rafah early Saturday, after the Israeli military intensified air raids, with fears rising among Palestinians of a coming ground invasion. Twenty eight people, including ten children, were killed in overnight Israeli strikes.
Iran’s top diplomat warned on Saturday that a full-blown attack on Lebanon would “spell the end” of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during a Beirut trip, as cross-border tensions surge over the Gaza war.
Israeli air strikes hit several sites on the outskirts of Syria’s capital, Damascus, the Syrian military said Saturday. The strikes came from the direction of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Syrian state news agency SANA reported, citing an unnamed military official. Three people were killed in the strikes, according to a war monitor.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 28,064 people have been killed and 67,611 wounded in Israeli strikes on the enclave since October 7. Israeli officials say about 1,140 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks in southern Israel. Militant fighters took some 250 hostages during the attack and 132 are still in Gaza, according to Israeli figures.
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a day ago
Israeli ground invasion in Rafah would lead to ‘unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe’, says EU’s Borrell
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a day ago
UK’s FM David Cameron ‘deeply concerned’ about imminent Israeli ground assault in Rafah
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a day ago
Israeli FM calls for UNRWA chief Lazzarini’s resignation
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10th Feb
13:04
Israel claims Hamas tunnel found under UN agency Gaza HQ
The Israeli military claimed on Saturday that they had discovered a Hamas tunnel under the Gaza City headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
UNRWA said in response that it had not operated from the base since October 12 – five days after Hamas fighters attacked southern Israel – and called for an independent investigation.
Hamas has previously denied Israeli claims that it has dug an extensive network of tunnels under schools, hospitals and other civilian infrastructure as cover for its activities.
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10th Feb
11:27
Israeli military says it killed two Hamas operatives in Gaza’s Rafah
The Israeli air force killed two Hamas operatives on Saturday in Rafah, a city on the Gaza Strip’s southern border with Egypt where hundreds of thousands of war-displaced Palestinians are sheltering, the military said.
One of the targets had been responsible for security for Hamas leaders and the other served in a senior investigative role for the governing Islamist group, a military statement said. It added that a third, Rafah-based investigator was also killed.
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10th Feb
11:05
Iran FM says Israel offensive on Lebanon would ‘spell end’ of Netanyahu
Iran’s top diplomat warned on Saturday that a full-blown attack on Lebanon would “spell the end” of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during a Beirut trip, as cross-border tensions surge over the Gaza war.
Israeli forces and Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah group, a Hamas ally, have traded near-daily fire following the outbreak of war on October 7 between Israel and the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip.
“Any move by the Zionist regime (Israel) for a large-scale attack on Lebanon will spell the end of Netanyahu,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told reporters in Beirut.
Amir-Abdollahian, whose country backs a number of armed groups in the region including Hezbollah and Palestinian factions including Hamas, was on his third visit to Beirut in over four months of hostilities.
“Our assessment is that the Zionist regime will never be able to fight on two fronts,” he added. “Netanyahu is struggling to get out of the Gaza quagmire.”
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10th Feb
10:10
Yemen’s Houthis say 17 fighters killed in US strikes
A total of 17 Houthi fighters were killed in overnight US strikes, the Iran-backed Yemeni rebel group said through its official media on Saturday, following public funerals in the capital Sanaa.
“The bodies of a number of martyrs of the nation and the armed and security forces who were martyred as a result of the bombing of the American-British aggression were carried through Sanaa today in a solemn funeral procession,” Houthi official media said, listing their names.
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10th Feb
09:53
Ground assault on Rafah: ‘It’s hard to fathom how an operation like this can be feasible’
As Israel prepared to launch its ground assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Saturday, FRANCE 24 spoke to John Lyndon, executive director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace.
“It’s really hard to fully fathom how an operation like this can be feasible, considering that we have 1.4 million people from across the Gaza Strip now concentrated in such a small parcel of land in Rafah and the dire humanitarian conditions that they are already living in 127 days into this war,” said Lyndon.
“So I share the alarm that you’ve been discussing from different world leaders, from different humanitarian organisations.”
Furthermore, “it’s safe to assume that those that still remain alive [Israeli hostages held by Hamas] are probably in Rafah. And any ground invasion that goes in, and I know this from speaking to families of hostages as recently as this week, it radically increases the likelihood that those remaining surviving hostages will lose their lives,” said Lyndon.
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10th Feb
09:11
‘Israel is holding up food for Palestinians in Gaza,’ says UNRWA
A food shipment for 1.1 million people is stuck at an Israeli port due to recent restrictions from Israeli authorities, UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said in a post on X.
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10th Feb
09:02
Senior Hamas official in Lebanon survives Israeli strike, says Palestinian source
A senior Hamas official survived an Israeli assassination attempt on Saturday in Lebanon, a Palestinian security source told AFP, with rescuers reporting two civilians killed in the strike south of Beirut.
The Palestinian source, requesting anonymity for security concerns, said the Israeli strike “was a failed attempt to assassinate a senior official in the (Hamas) movement”, while an official with a Lebanese rescue association told AFP that two civilians had been killed.
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10th Feb
09:01
We ‘took control’ of Israeli Skylark drone ‘in good condition’, says Hezbollah
Lebanon’s Iran-backed armed faction Hezbollah said on Saturday that it had seized an Israeli Skylark drone over Lebanese air space “in good condition”.
The Skylark is a small, unmanned aerial vehicle typically used for surveillance and produced by Israel-based weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems.
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10th Feb
08:26
Bodies of Gaza girl, ambulance team trapped under Israeli fire found after 12 days
Relatives found the body on Saturday of a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who had begged Gaza rescuers to send help after being trapped by Israeli military fire, along with the bodies of five of her family members and two ambulance workers who had gone to save her.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) accused Israel of deliberately targeting the ambulance it sent to rescue Hind Rajab after she had spent hours on the phone to dispatchers begging for help with the sound of shooting echoing around.
“The occupation deliberately targeted the Red Crescent crew despite prior coordination to allow the ambulance to arrive at the site to rescue Hind,” the Red Crescent said in a statement.
Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the Red Crescent statement.
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10th Feb
08:02
Gaza death toll from Israeli attacks hits 28,000
At least 28,064 Palestinians have been killed and 67,611 others injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since Oct. 7, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said on Saturday. Most of the casualties are women and children.
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10th Feb
04:48
Israeli operation in Rafah ‘may cause tens of thousands of casualties’
Hamas has warned that any Israeli military operation in the Gazan city of Rafah could lead to “tens of thousands” of dead and injured.
The Palestinian militant group, at war with Israel, warned in a statement of catastrophic repercussions of going into the city, where more than one million civilians have fled to escape Israeli bombardment elsewhere in Gaza.
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10th Feb
03:25
Israeli strikes on Rafah kill 28 people, including ten children
Overnight into Saturday, three airstrikes on homes in the Rafah area killed 28 people, according to a health official and Associated Press journalists who saw the bodies arriving at hospitals. Each strike killed multiple members of three families, including a total of 10 children, the youngest three months old.
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10th Feb
03:23
‘Aid agencies have already said that the Rafah evacuation is impossible’
More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are packed into Rafah, many after being uprooted repeatedly by Israeli evacuation orders that now cover two-thirds of Gaza’s territory. It’s not clear where they could run next.
Aid agencies fear that their evacuation will be impossible, says FRANCE 24’s special correspondent in Israel.
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10th Feb
01:35
Israel’s planned ground offensive on Rafah, where an estimated 1.3 million people have fled, has drawn condemnation from several rights groups, including Doctors Without Borders.
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10th Feb
01:31
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10th Feb
01:25
Israeli air strikes hit several sites on the outskirts of Syria’s capital, Damascus, the Syrian military said Saturday.
The Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one of the strikes hit a residential building west of the capital and may have killed “figures of non-Syrian nationalities” but did not give more details.
The observatory said Saturday’s assault was the 10th apparent Israeli strike on Syrian territory since the beginning of the year.
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Yesterday’s key developments:
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ordered the army to prepare to evacuate hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza’s Rafah, his office said Friday. Washington warned it would not support any ground assault on the city, and UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said civilians in Rafah in the Gaza Strip need to be protected, but the United Nations does not want to see any forced mass displacement.
Nearly 10 percent of children under five in Gaza are acutely malnourished, a rate about 12 times higher than before the Israel-Hamas war, according to initial UN data published in a note from the UN humanitarian office OCHA relased on Friday.
About 30 rockets were fired into northern Israel from Lebanon late Thursday into early Friday, following an Israeli drone strike that seriously wounded a commander of Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the Israeli army said.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 27,947 people have been killed and 67,459 wounded in Israeli strikes on the enclave since October 7. Israeli officials say about 1,140 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks in southern Israel. Militant fighters took some 250 hostages during the attack and 132 are still in Gaza, according to Israeli figures.
About casualty figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry:
Gaza’s health ministry collects data from the enclave’s hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The health ministry does not report how Palestinians were killed, whether from Israeli airstrikes and artillery barrages or errant Palestinian rocket fire. It describes all casualties as victims of “Israeli aggression”.
The ministry also does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Throughout four wars and numerous skirmishes between Israel and Hamas, UN agencies have cited the Hamas-run health ministry’s death tolls in regular reports. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Palestinian Red Crescent also use the numbers.
In the aftermath of war, the UN humanitarian office has published final death tolls based on its own research into medical records. The UN’s counts have largely been consistent with the Gaza health ministry’s, with small discrepancies.
For more on the Gaza health ministry’s tolls, click here.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)
(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP, Reuters)
