Heavy fighting reported in Gaza; Israeli jets strike near Damascus, Syrian media says
Rocket fire toward southern Israel * IDF carries out airstrikes in Palestinian enclave after barrages, also targets Hezbollah sites in Lebanon
The Israeli military is beginning to use an evacuation map for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, for them to avoid active combat zones.
The IDF’s Arabic-language Spokesman, Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, says on X that Palestinians in a number of zones in northern Gaza’s Jalabiya, Shujayya and Zeitoun, should evacuate to “known shelters” shelters in the Daraj and Tuffah areas of Gaza City.
He also calls on Palestinians in several zones in southern Gaza’s Khirbat Ikhza’a, Abasan, Bani Suheila and Ma’an to head for shelters in Rafah.
The map splits the Gaza Strip into hundreds of small zones, and the military has called on Palestinians to pay attention to their area’s number, and follow the IDF’s future updates.
A war monitor claims that airstrikes attributed to Israel in Syria overnight killed two fighters affiliated with Hezbollah and wounded seven others.
“Two Syrian fighters working for Hezbollah were killed and seven other fighters working for the group were wounded in Israeli air strikes on Hezbollah sites near Sayyida Zeinab,” says Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor.
There was no independent confirmation.
SOHR, run by a single person, has regularly been accused by Syrian war analysts of false reporting and inflating casualty numbers.
After eight weeks, UN Women breaks its silence on allegations of sex crimes carried out by Hamas terrorists on October 7.
“We reiterate that all women, Israeli women, Palestinian women, as all others, are entitled to a life lived in safety and free from violence,” the organization says.
“We unequivocally condemn the brutal attacks by Hamas on Israel on 7 October,” the organization says. “We are alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence during those attacks.”
“For the sake of everyone in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, and especially women and children, we call for a return to a path of peace, a respect for international humanitarian and international human rights law,” UN women says.
Israeli officials have been furious at global human rights groups and women’s activist groups who have consistently dismissed evidence and testimony over sex abuse crimes carried out during the Hamas onslaught against southern Israel last month. Israeli women’s rights groups have slammed their international counterparts for ignoring the mounting evidence of such allegations.
Earlier this week, Sarah Hendriks, deputy director at UN Women, was pressed in a CNN interview about the group’s silence on the issue.
Hendriks said that the agency is “deeply alarmed at the disturbing reports of gender-based and sexual violence on October 7,” adding that “we absolutely unequivocally condemn all forms of violence against women and girls.”
CNN anchor Bianna Golodryga asked Hendriks why the group has failed to “specifically call out Hamas” in the wake of “mounting evidence now over seven weeks” from Israeli investigators about such crimes on October 7. In her response, Hendriks again failed to name Hamas and said the agency always supports an “impartial, independent investigation.”
Last week, the UN office for women’s issues was slammed for posting and then deleting a condemnation of “the brutal attacks by Hamas on October 7.”
The Israel Defense Forces says it carried out airstrikes against over 400 targets across the Gaza Strip in the past day since Hamas violated the truce and fighting resumed.
The military says fighter jets attacked over 50 targets in the Khan Younis area in “extensive” strikes in the southern part of the enclave.
Troops on the ground in northern Gaza directed airstrikes on a number of targets, including on a mosque that was used by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group as an operational headquarters.
Naval forces also carried out strikes on Hamas infrastructure in the south, including on maritime equipment used by Hamas.
The military also said that a number of terror cells were eliminated, and that targets hit included an ammunition depot.
After a lull of some eight hours, sirens sound in the Gaza border communities Holit and Sufa, warning of incoming rocket fire.
There are no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
Yesterday, the truce between Israel and Hamas, which brought the first pause in almost eight weeks of war sparked by the shock October 7 assault, broke down after Hamas fired rockets toward Israel and did not deliver on additional hostage releases.
Israel’s military was carrying out extensive operations against Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza overnight, and heavy fighting is reported in the southern part of the Palestinian enclave, according to Hebrew-language media.
Extensive ground battles are reported in the Khan Younis area, according to Channel 12, amid intelligence that some of Hamas’s leadership is present in the city.
Army Radio says military forces are also operating in Gaza City and Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza.
Earlier, Israel carried out strikes in Khan Younis and Rafah, also in southern Gaza.
Gazans reported the IDF had dropped flyers in Khan Younis calling on residents to move south to Rafah, warning the area is dangerous.
The IDF earlier published a map splitting the Gaza Strip into hundreds of small zones, which it will use to notify Palestinian civilians of active combat zones.
It asked Palestinians to pay attention to their area’s number, and follow the IDF’s future updates.
The military may use this map to call on Palestinians from specific areas to evacuate when the IDF’s ground offensive expands to the Strip’s south, instead of demanding mass evacuations as it did in the northern part of Gaza.
“The IDF is operating strongly against terror organizations, while making great efforts to differentiate between civilians and terrorists,” the military said in a message to Gazans.
“The people of Gaza are not our enemies. For this reason, as of this morning the IDF is leading controlled and specific evacuations of Gaza residents in order to remove them as much as possible from areas of combat.
Syrian military official: Israeli strikes near Damascus overnight result in ‘material losses’
DAMASCUS — Israeli airstrikes hit several points on the outskirts of Damascus overnight, Syrian state media reported, resulting in some damage.
State news agency SANA, citing an unnamed military official, says the strikes came from the direction of the Golan Heights and that Syrian air defenses shot most of the missiles down. The strikes resulted in only “material losses,” the statement says.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition war monitor, says the strikes hit in the area of the south Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab, where it said that “there are military forces working with the Lebanese Hezbollah,” the terror group backed by Iran.
It said ambulances rushed to the scene.
Israel has struck targets in Syria several times since the onset of the Hamas-Israel war on October 7, when terrorists killed 1,200 people in Israel and took some 240 hostages.
On Sunday, a reported Israeli airstrike hit the international airport in Damascus and put it out of commission, just hours after the airport resumed flights following a monthlong hiatus after a previous Israeli strike.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years, often targeting Hezbollah and other terror groups backed by Iran, but it rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations.
A Syrian military source is cited by state media as saying that Israel carried out airstrikes on targets near the Syrian capital of Damascus.
The source tells the SANA official news agency that at “around 1:35 a.m. today, the Israeli enemy carried out an air attack” from the direction of the Golan Heights, “targeting some sites in the vicinity of the city of Damascus.”
Lebanese terror group Hezbollah claims responsibility for firing a Katyusha rocket from southern Lebanon at the northern Israeli community of Dishon tonight, Ynet reports.
There are no reports of injuries or damage. Sirens sounded in Dishon, close to the Lebanon border, earlier.
Channel 12 reports that several impact sites were observed in unpopulated areas.
A protester with a Palestinian flag set herself on fire outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, local police say.
The protester is in critical condition after a security guard at the scene intervened. The guard was also burned in the process, and his condition is not immediately known, police say.
“We believe that was an act of extreme political protest,” Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum says during a press conference.
The protester arrived at the building that houses the Israeli consulate and several other businesses and used gasoline to self-immolate, Schierbaum says.
“We believe this building remains safe, and we do not see any threat here,” he adds.
The FBI’s Atlanta office says it was coordinating with local law enforcement on the matter.