Israeli airstrikes killed scores of Palestinians and Lebanese—including dozens of women and children—over the weekend as right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that he and Republican U.S. President-elect Donald Trump "see eye to eye" on perceived threats posed by Iran.
A Sunday morning Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strike on the home of the Alloush family in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza killed at least 33 Palestinians including at least 13 children and nine women, according to health and civil defense officials in the embattled coastal enclave.
Some sources said more than 40 people were killed in the attack. According to Gaza officials, more than 50 people—many of them forcibly displaced by Israel's 13-month onslaught—were sheltering in the Alloush home when it was bombed.
Witnesses to the strike's aftermath described a horrific scene of dozens of victims blown to bits.
"There was a very huge explosion," relative Abdullah al-Najjar toldAgence France-Presse. "When we arrived here, all the bodies were torn apart."
The IDF claimed the strike targeted unspecified "terrorist infrastructure" that "posed a threat" to its troops, and that "numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians."
Israeli forces have killed or wounded hundreds of Palestinians in a monthlong operation in northern Gaza during which residents have been forcibly expelled, possibly permanently.
IDF troops have destroyed much of the Jabalia camp and cut its residents off from humanitarian aid. As the IDF forces people to flee from Jabalia, its drones and snipers have targeted Palestinian civilians without regard for age or gender. Survivors have reported Israeli soldiers shooting people holding white flags, first responders, and journalists trying to document what many experts say is a genocide backed by U.S. military aid and diplomatic support.
Another Sunday morning IDF strike that targeted the al-Khour family home in Sabra, south of Gaza City, killed numerous Palestinians including Wael al-Khour, the director of the Palestinian Authority's Welfare Ministry in Gaza, his wife, three of their children, and three grandchildren, according toReuters.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese Health Ministry said at least 23 people including seven children were killed in a Sunday IDF airstrike on the village of Almat north of the capital Beirut.
"Under the rubble, there are only children, elderly men and women," said Raed Berro, a lawmaker from the political and paramilitary group Hezbollah who represents the district in the Lebanese Parliament.
Lebanese officials also said that more than a dozen paramedics and civil defense volunteers were killed by IDF strikes in the Tyre district of southern Lebanon on Saturday.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least 3,186 people have been killed and over 14,000 others wounded by Israeli attacks on the country since October 2023. That's when Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel in solidarity with Gaza after the Hamas-led attack and kidnappings prompted Israel's retaliatory assault that has left more than 156,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing.
The latest IDF strikes came amid a looming deadline this week imposed last month by the Biden administration for Israel to take "urgent and sustained" action to improve the humanitarian situation in northern Gaza, where United Nations officials last week warned of imminent famine.
However, with the end of the Biden administration fast approaching, Netanyahu said Sunday that he has spoken three times with Trump and that he and the U.S. president-elect "see eye to eye on the Iranian threat in all its components," including Hamas and Hezbollah, which are backed by Tehran.
On Monday, Trump confirmed that he has tapped Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) to serve as his ambassador to the United Nations. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the peace group CodePink, last week called Stefanik a "strident genocide supporter," as she has advocated sending Israel as many U.S. weapons as it needs, without conditions, to ensure "total victory" in Gaza.
