- Seventy-three Palestinians killed and 99 wounded in attacks by Israel in Gaza over the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry says.
- The whereabouts of 600 patients and health workers from Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital is “unknown”, WHO says.
- Speaking from Qatar, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he will raise with Israel the “need to do everything possible” to increase the flow of aid.
- At least 22,835 people have been killed – including 9,600 children – in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. About 1,139 people were killed in Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
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More details on Hezbollah commander killing
The senior Hezbollah reportedly killed in an Israeli attack has been identified as Wissam al-Tawil, deputy head of a unit within the elite Radwan force.
The security sources told news agencies he and another Hezbollah fighter were killed when their car was hit by an air strike on the Lebanese village of Majdal Selm.
The killing comes as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Israel later on Monday in an attempt to calm burgeoning tensions and the threat of a wider Middle East war.
Hezbollah’s secretary-general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel in two televised addresses last week not to launch a full-scale war on Lebanon. “Whoever thinks of war with us … will regret it.”
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Hezbollah will not discuss cross-border violence until Israel ends Gaza war: Official
Sheikh Ali Damoush, deputy chairman of the executive council of Hezbollah, has said that the Lebanese armed group will not engage in discussion of any matter related to the cross-border clashes between Hezbollah and Israel until the Israelis stop their “aggression against Gaza”.
According to Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA), he spoke at a ceremony commemorating a killed Hezbollah fighter, Abdul Jalil Ali Hamza, in the town of Al-Khader in the Bekaa Valley.
Damoush also said that “the Israeli predicament is deepening day after day as the war lasts, because the longer the aggression continues, the more and more exhausted the enemy becomes, whether on the Gaza front or on the Lebanon front”.
“There is no choice but to stop the aggression,” he said.
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Israeli strike kills top Hezbollah commander in Lebanon: Reports
Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander in an air strike on southern Lebanon, news reports say.
“This is a very painful strike,” one security source told Reuters news agency.
The unidentified commander played “a leading role in managing Hezbollah’s operations in the south,” a security official told AFP news agency. He was “killed in an Israeli raid targeting his car in the south”.
Hezbollah has lost more than 130 fighters in Israeli shelling on southern Lebanon since cross-border bombardment began on October 7.
The killing further raised fears of the conflict in Gaza spilling over to Lebanon and elsewhere.
The aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Aita al-Shaab, a Lebanese border village with Israel [File: Hussein Malla/AP] -
Blinken tells UAE of US commitment to ‘independent Palestinian state’
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he held a meeting with Emirati President Mohamed Bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi.
The two discussed efforts to prevent Israel’s war on Gaza widening and addressed humanitarian needs in Gaza.
“I underscored our continued commitment to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state,” Blinken added.
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Situation at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital ‘catastrophic’
Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan from Doctors Without Borders spoke to Al Jazeera from Amman, Jordan, about the dire situation her colleagues face in Gaza.
“Unfortunately, most of the NGOs evacuated al-Aqsa Hospital after flyers dropped warning them the ‘area was no longer safe’ and they needed to evacuate.”
Al-Aqsa Hospital is the largest and only functioning hospital in central Gaza and treats about 100 wounded each day, she said.
“The situation has been catastrophic over the last few weeks. Our colleagues who were there from multiple different organisations have been reporting horrific scenes. They weren’t expecting to have to evacuate. It was a sudden increase in risk,” said Haj-Hassan.
“A colleague I know in the hospitals said each day there’s an imaginary line in this dystopian grid that determines who’s at risk of being imminently killed. He described them as war crimes disguised as a benevolent prior warning.”
Source:https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/1/8/israel-war-on-gaza-world-must-look-says-wael-dahdouh-as-son-killed
