GAZA/BEIRUT: The Zionist entity said it had struck Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday, while officials in Gaza said they were still trying to recover bodies from the rubble after a Zionist strike that killed dozens. At least 87 people were dead or missing following the airstrike on Beit Lahia in northern Gaza late on Saturday, the health ministry in the Palestinian territory said, one of the highest death tolls reported for months from a single attack.

It marked an intensification of the Zionist entity’s offensives against Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, days after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had raised hopes of an opening for ceasefire negotiations to end more than a year of escalating conflict in the Middle East. With US elections approaching, officials, diplomats and other sources in the region say the Zionist entity is seeking through military operations to try to shield its borders and ensure its rivals cannot regroup. The Zionist entity is also preparing to retaliate for an Iranian missile barrage earlier this month, though Washington has pressed it not to strike Iranian energy facilities or nuclear sites.

Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was the subject of an assassination attempt by “Iran’s proxy Hezbollah” on Saturday when a drone was directed at his holiday home. In a call with former US President Donald Trump, the prime minister reiterated that the Zionist entity would make decisions based on its own interests, according to a statement from Netanyahu’s office. The Zionist entity’s government has rejected several attempts by the United States, its main ally and military backer, at brokering ceasefires in both Gaza and Lebanon.

In Gaza, the health ministry said rescue operations following the strike in Beit Lahia were being hindered by communications problems and by ongoing Zionist military operations. At Kamal Adwan Hospital, which was flooded with wounded from the strike, many patients had to be treated on the floor while nearby the dead were wrapped in white burial shrouds and placed in neat rows where relatives gathered to grieve. The Jeddah-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation “condemned the strike in the strongest terms” and called the Zionist entity’s actions in Gaza a “stain on the conscience of humanity”.

The strike came two weeks into a major Zionist assault around the town of Jabalia, just to the south of Beit Lahiya. As the fighting has continued, two of the three remaining hospitals in northern Gaza have been hit and patients, medical staff and displaced people injured, according to the United Nations. The UN has been urgently seeking access. Over 5,000 Palestinians left Jabalia via designated routes, Zionist

military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on social media platform X. Evacuation orders directing people south have fueled fears among many Palestinians that the operation is intended to clear them out of the northern part of Gaza to help ensure Zionist control of the area after the war.

Palestinians were also shocked by footage appearing to show a group of people in a street in Jabalia being hit by a strike as they approached to rescue someone who had already been hit. The Zionist offensive has made most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people homeless, caused widespread hunger and destroyed hospitals and schools. “Horrifying scenes unfolding in Gaza, amidst conflict, relentless (Zionist) strikes & an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis,” UN Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland posted on X.

In Lebanon, the Zionist entity stepped up its bombardment of southern Beirut from Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, it said its air force attacked Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut as well as an underground workshop for the production of weapons. Fighter jets killed three Hezbollah commanders, including Alhaj Abbas Salameh, a senior figure in the group’s southern command, the Zionist military said in a statement. Reuters witnesses saw smoke rising from Beirut’s southern suburbs, once a densely populated zone that also housed Hezbollah offices and underground installations.

The Lebanese army, which is not fighting in the war, said three of its soldiers were killed in a Zionist strike on their vehicle in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah said on Sunday it had fired various rocket barrages at the Zionist entity, including a “salvo” directed at “the city of Haifa”, and at three Zionist military bases. It also said it had fired rockets at Zionist troops in the vicinity of two border villages, Markaba and Adaisseh. Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said Zionist forces had used explosives to blow up buildings there and in a third village, Rab El Thalathine.

The Zionist military said about 70 projectiles fired from Lebanon crossed into the Zionist entity within a matter of minutes, and that it intercepted some of them. NNA said Zionist strikes on Beirut hit a residential building in Haret Hreik near a mosque and a hospital. In southern Lebanon, NNA later said Zionist strikes had targeted dozens of locations, including the city of Nabatiyeh for the third time this week. It also reported that a Zionist strike hit a center for rescue workers affiliated with Hezbollah in Deir Al-Zahrani in southern Lebanon, partially destroying it.

Illustrating the intensity of the fighting, NNA later reported 14 Zionist strikes in the space of 15 minutes on a single border village, Khiam. Over the last year, more than 2,400 people have been killed, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, with more than 1.2 million people displaced, most in recent weeks. – Agencies