Netanyahu's home targeted by drone as Israel strikes Beirut suburbs
October 20, 2024 — 3.44am
Israeli strikes pummelled Beirut’s southern suburbs on Saturday as Hezbollah fired salvos of rockets at northern Israel, with one drone directed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s holiday home.
Netanyahu’s spokesman said the prime minister was not in the vicinity of his holiday home in Caesarea and there were no casualties.
Later, Israeli media published a video of Netanyahu walking in a park and stating: “Nothing will deter us, we will keep going until victory,” he said in the video filmed by one of his aides.
Israeli security forces secure a road near where Israel’s government says a drone was launched toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s house.Credit: AP
The Iran-backed Lebanese group did not claim responsibility for the drone attack but said it carried out several rocket attacks on northern and central Israel.
The volleys from Hezbollah came as health officials in Gaza, where Israel has been battling Palestinian militant group Hamas for more than a year, said Israeli strikes had killed more than 30 people across the territory.
Pledges from Israel and its enemies Hamas and Hezbollah to keep fighting in Gaza and Lebanon have dashed hopes that the death of Sinwar might hasten an end to more than a year of escalating war in the Middle East.
Sinwar, a mastermind of the October 7, 2023, attack that triggered the Gaza war, was killed by Israeli soldiers in the Palestinian enclave on Wednesday.
Israel also tightened a siege around hospitals in Jabalia in northern Gaza, where residents and medical officials said Israeli forces were bombing houses and preventing medical and food supplies from entering.
Israel has been pounding Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, in what it says is an effort to stop Hamas fighters regrouping.
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On Saturday afternoon, Israel carried out heavy strikes on several locations in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, leaving thick plumes of smoke wafting over the city horizon throughout the evening.
It issued evacuation orders for four separate neighbourhoods within the suburbs, urging residents to get 500 metres away, but carried out strikes in other parts as well, Reuters witnesses said.
In northern Israel, some of the rockets were intercepted but one hit a residential building, police said.
One person was killed and at least nine people were injured in different locations, the Israeli ambulance service said. Air raid sirens sent people running to shelters.
Municipality workers survey the damage to an apartment building struck by a rocket fired from Lebanon, in Kiryat Ata, northern Israel, on Saturday.Credit: AP
Also on Saturday, Israeli planes dropped leaflets over southern Gaza showing a picture of the dead Hamas chief with the message that “Hamas will no longer rule Gaza”, echoing language used by Netanyahu.
“Whoever drops the weapon and hands over the hostages will be allowed to leave and live in peace,” the leaflet, written in Arabic, read, according to residents of the southern city of Khan Younis and images circulating online.
The leaflet’s wording was from a statement by Netanyahu on Thursday after Sinwar was killed by Israeli soldiers operating in Rafah, in the south near the Egyptian border, on Wednesday.
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