GAZA/BEIRUT: Hamas is rebuilding despite nearly a year of devastating Zionist air strikes and fighting, even as Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed on Sunday his country’s military “completely transformed reality” in the year since the Oct 7 Gaza war. In Gaza, the Zionist military said it had encircled the northern area of Jabaliya after indications Hamas was rebuilding.

Rescuers said 17 people, including nine children, were killed on Sunday by Zionist air strikes on the area. “The shelling is random and violent in multiple directions and we do not know where the shelling is coming from and we do not know where to go,” Gaza resident Jameel Al-Habibi told AFP. In recent months, Zionist troops have returned to several areas across the Palestinian territory where they had previously conducted operations against Hamas, only to find fighters regrouping. Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday a Zionist strike

on the Ibn Rushd School and Shuhada al-Aqsa Mosque in central Deir el-Balah killed 26 people.

“The mosque has been here for 20 years, and the neighborhood has displaced people,” imam Ahmed Fleet said as he retrieved Holy Qurans from the debris. “I was shocked when it was struck.”

Netanyahu told troops the Zionist entity “will win” as it attacks both the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and prepares to strike Iran, almost exactly a year since the unprecedented operation by Hamas. In late September, the Zionist entity turned its focus north, intensifying military action against Hezbollah, which had been sending rockets over the border from Lebanon in support of Hamas for nearly 12 months.

Zionist air attacks battered Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight and early on Sunday. During the night, the blasts sent booms across Beirut and sparked flashes of red and white for nearly 30 minutes visible from several kilometers away. It was the single biggest attack of the Zionist entity’s assault on Beirut so far, witnesses and military analysts on local TV channels said.

As another strike hit Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati appealed to the international community to put pressure on the Zionist entity for a ceasefire. At Beersheba central bus station, a border policewoman was killed and 10 other people injured, first responders said.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency said more than 30 strikes hit Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold overnight into Sunday. Shopkeeper Mehdi Zeiter, 60, said they “were like an earthquake”. A petrol station and medical warehouse were hit, NNA said. “It was the most violent night... there were strikes everywhere. They are not hitting military targets, but civilian ones,” Zeiter said.

AFPTV footage showed a massive fireball over a residential area, followed by a loud bang and secondary explosions. Smoke was still billowing from the site after dawn. Amid the fighting, Hezbollah continued attacks on the Zionist entity, saying on Sunday it launched attack drones towards a military base near the northern city of Haifa.

On Sunday, the Zionist army said rockets fired from northern Gaza had crossed into the Zionist entity. The Zionist entity says it aims to allow tens of thousands of Zionists displaced by almost a year of Hezbollah rocket fire into the Zionist entity to return home.

A senior Hezbollah source said Saturday the group had lost contact with Hashem Safieddine, widely tipped as its next leader, after air strikes in Beirut. The movement has yet to name a new chief after the Zionist entity assassinated Nasrallah late last month in a massive strike in Lebanon’s capital. Across Lebanon, strikes against Hezbollah have killed more than 1,110 people since Sept 23.

UN refugee agency head Filippo Grandi said Lebanon “faces a terrible crisis” and warned “hundreds of thousands of people are left destitute or displaced by (Zionist) air strikes”. The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon said it rejected a request by the Zionist military to “relocate some of our positions” in south Lebanon.

Lebanon’s Director General of Education Imad Achkar said on Sunday that 40 percent of Lebanon’s 1.25 million school pupils had been displaced by Zionist strikes. Numerous countries, including Australia, the United States, Brazil, China and Russia have been evacuating their nationals from Lebanon.

US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators tried unsuccessfully for months to reach a Gaza truce and secure the release of 97 captives still held there. Critics of Netanyahu accuse him of obstructing efforts to reach a Gaza ceasefire and a deal to free captives. The Zionist military offensive has killed at least 41,870 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians. – Agencies