Several killed, injured in Israeli attack on ambulance convoy in Gaza
Blinken says Israel has ‘right’ and ‘obligation’ to defend itself
TEL AVIV + GAZA + BEIRUT ( Web News )
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Friday that his powerful militia is already engaged in unprecedented fighting along the Lebanon-Israel border and threatened a further escalation as Israel’s war with Hamas nears the one-month mark.
In televised remarks — his first since the Palestinian militants’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel — Nasrallah stopped short of announcing that Hezbollah would fully enter the war, a move that would have devastating consequences for both Lebanon and Israel.
The United States, Israel’s strongest backer, has warned Hezbollah and its patron Iran against entering the fray and has sent warships to the Mediterranean, a move Nasrallah said “will not scare us.”
Celebratory gunshots rang out over Beirut as thousands packed into a square in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital to watch Nasrallah’s speech broadcast via video-link on a massive screen.
In Israel, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday to urge protections for civilians in the fighting with Hamas, as Israeli troops tightened their encirclement of Gaza City.
Nasrallah criticized the strong U.S. backing of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza that has killed more than 9,000 people, mostly civilians. While U.S. officials in recent days have pushed more publicly for protecting civilians in Gaza, they have yet to call for a cease-fire.
The Hezbollah leader said U.S. President Joe Biden had made a “fake argument that Hamas cut off children’s heads (without) evidence, but stayed silent for the thousands of children in Gaza who were decapitated and their limbs were torn apart” by Israeli bombing.
Nasrallah praised Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage across southern Israel. The militants attacked farming villages, towns and military posts, killing more than 1,400 people — most of them civilians — and taking hundreds of hostages back to Gaza while Israeli forces were slow to respond.
He insisted that Hamas had planned the attack in secrecy and that Hezbollah had no part in it. “This great, large-scale operation was purely the result of Palestinian planning and implementation,” Nasrallah said.
Facing a relentless aerial bombardment and now a ground incursion by Israeli forces in Gaza, Hamas leaders have been pushing — sometimes publicly — for Hezbollah to widen its involvement in the war. Nasrallah met last week in Beirut with senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri and with Ziad Nakhaleh of the allied group Islamic Jihad.
However, Hezbollah officials have avoided publicly setting a specific red line, saying vaguely that they would join the war if they see that Hamas is on the verge of defeat. Instead, Hezbollah has taken calculated steps to keep Israel’s military busy on its border with Lebanon, but not to the extent of igniting an all-out war.
The Israeli military said seven of their soldiers and one civilian had been killed on the northern border as of Friday. More than 50 Hezbollah fighters and 10 militants with allied groups, as well as 10 civilians, including a Reuters journalist, have been killed on the Lebanese side.
Several killed, injured in Israeli attack on ambulance convoy in Gaza
A government statement said Israeli forces targeted “a convoy of ambulances which was transporting the wounded” from Gaza City towards Rafah in the south.
The health ministry announced “several citizens were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike at the entrance to Al-Shifa hospital” in Gaza City.
An AFP journalist at the scene saw multiple bodies beside a damaged ambulance.
Al-Shifa hospital is facing severe overcrowding, with a bed occupancy rate of 164 percent according to the World Health Organization.
Some 16 hospitals across Gaza are no longer functioning due to damage from strikes and a lack of fuel, the health ministry said.
The WHO warned Wednesday that the fuel shortage “immediately risks the lives” of the wounded and other patients.
More than 23,500 people have been wounded across Gaza in four weeks of war, the health ministry said, while the death toll has surpassed 9,200.
Around 1,400 people were killed in attacks by Hamas militants in Israel on October 7, sparking the war.
The health ministry spokesman, Ashraf Al-Qudra, earlier said they would send critically injured Palestinians who needed to be urgently transferred for treatment in Egypt from Gaza city and the north to the south.
Israel’s military said it was looking into a report by the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip that scores of Palestinians were killed and wounded in an Israeli strike on an ambulance convoy.
Reuters could not immediately verify the Health Ministry’s report.
Israel has the right and obligation to defend itself. Antony Blinken
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated Friday that Israel has the right and obligation to defend itself as it continues to pummel the Gaza Strip with an air and ground assault.
“Israel has not only the right but the obligation to defend itself… to make sure that this October 7 never happens again,” Blinken told journalists as he met Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Tel Aviv.
Israel launched a massive retaliatory assault against Gaza’s Hamas rulers after its fighters carried out the October 7 attack which Israeli officials say killed 1,400 people.
More than 9,200 people have been killed in Gaza, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said.
Soon after Blinken’s arrival he held separate meetings with Herzog and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Blinken, who is on his second tour to the Middle East since the war erupted, urged Israel to protect civilians who are caught in the crossfire and to “bring assistance to those who so desperately need it.”
Prior to his arrival in Israel, Blinken said he would seek “concrete steps” from Israel to ensure harm to Palestinian civilians is reduced.
“We will be talking about concrete steps that can and should be taken to minimize harm to men, women and children in Gaza,” Blinken had told reporters before departing for Israel.
“This is something that the United States is committed to.”
“When I see a Palestinian child – a boy, a girl – pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building, that hits me in the gut as much as seeing a child in Israel or anywhere else,” Blinken said.
“So this is something that we have an obligation to respond to, and we will.”
US President Joe Biden has promised full support and ramped-up military aid to Israel for its campaign in Gaza, but in a visible shift of tone has also voiced empathy for Palestinian suffering which has stoked anger in parts of the world.
“I think we need a pause,” Biden said on Thursday at a campaign event.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby later clarified what such a pause would entail.
“A humanitarian pause… is temporary, localized and focused, focused on a particular objective or objectives, humanitarian aid in, people out,” Kirby told reporters.
The French Institute in Gaza was hit by an Israeli airstrike
The French Institute in Gaza was hit by an Israeli airstrike, but no injuries were reported among staff at the site, the French foreign ministry said on Friday, while the Gaza office of news organization Agence France-Presse (AFP) was also hit.
The ministry added it had asked Israeli authorities to provide the “tangible” reasons that motivated the strike on the institute “without delay.”
In a separate statement, the ministry also expressed “very strong concerns” over the number of civilian victims in Gaza.
AFP said on social network X that its office in the Gaza Strip was shelled by the Israeli army and seriously damaged on Thursday by a strike.
None of the eight AFP staff members or permanent employees normally based in Gaza were on site at the time of the impact. All were evacuated to the south of the Gaza Strip on October 13, it added.
“AFP condemns in the strongest terms this strike on its office in Gaza City,” it said.