20 children killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza, Lebanon, officials say

BEIRUT – Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of people, including at least 20 children, across Gaza and Lebanon on Sunday, health authorities said, as the human toll of Israel’s parallel wars continued to climb.

The strike in the northern Gaza Strip hit family homes in the besieged Jabalya refugee camp, sparking an hourslong rescue effort to find survivors and retrieve the dead, according to accounts from the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the Gaza Health Ministry.

Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Health Ministry, said at least 33 people were killed, including 13 children. The Israel Defense Forces said the strike in Jabalya targeted militants who “posed a threat to IDF troops,” adding that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”

In Alamat, a mountainous village in northern Lebanon, at least 20 people were killed, including seven children, in an attack on a residential building, according to the country’s Health Ministry. The IDF said the strike was aimed at Hezbollah militants “responsible for firing rockets and missiles toward Israeli territory,” adding that the incident was under review.

The lethal attack in Gaza came ahead of a U.S. deadline this week for Israel to improve aid access to the north, which the United Nations warned Friday was facing imminent famine, or the Biden administration could consider possible cuts to military assistance. But with Washington looking at an extended period of political transition after Donald Trump’s election victory, it is unclear how much leverage the Biden administration still has – or will be willing to exert – on Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has wasted no time preparing for Trump’s next term, revealing in a recorded message Sunday that he has spoken to the president-elect three times in recent days. Trump has simultaneously told Netanyahu to “do what you have to do” in Gaza and Lebanon while promising to bring both conflicts to an end, leaving his Middle East policy an open question.

Netanyahu said he and Trump “see eye-to-eye on the Iranian threat in all its aspects, and on the dangers they reflect. We also see the great opportunities facing Israel, in the area of peace and its expansion.”

For now, the violence in Gaza and Lebanon remains relentless. Civil defense workers with the Red Crescent Society were told by Palestinians at the scene that about 70 displaced people had been staying in the building hit by Israel on Sunday. “There is a lack of equipment,” spokeswoman Nebal Farsakh told The Washington Post in voice messages after speaking to rescue teams on the ground in Jabalya. “Civilians are trying to evacuate the people trapped under the rubble using their hands.”

Amer Abdel-Moati, 31, listed the names of each of his family members killed in the strike. “My aunt’s house had 15-17 people in it,” he said in a WhatsApp message. He has already buried 12 of them, he said, with the rest lost to the rubble. The home of the Alloush family, which was in front of his aunt’s home, was also completely destroyed, he said.

Photos from the scene showed some of the shrouded bodies being taken from the site in a minivan for burial. With a shortage of ambulances in the area, Farsakh said, the task has mostly fallen to civilians.

Around five hours later, Lebanese rescue workers began the same grim search in Alamat. The Health Ministry said it expected the death toll to rise once body parts collected at the scene had been identified. At least 42 people were killed in total across the country in nine deadly strikes Sunday, mostly concentrated in the province of Baalbek-Hermel in the northeast, according to preliminary death tolls from the Health Ministry.

As the Israeli military widens the scope of its aerial and ground campaign against Hezbollah, the toll for civilians and the country’s health infrastructure has mounted.

Ten paramedics were killed in the past 24 hours, health authorities said Sunday, including three in an afternoon Israeli airstrike in the south of the country.

On Saturday afternoon, a strike in Deir Qanoun, in the southern district of Tyre, killed six paramedics from the Risala Scout Association – a civil defense and ambulance organization associated with the Amal Movement, a Lebanese political party and Hezbollah ally – and a seventh paramedic from the Islamic Health Committee.

The Health Ministry described the latest attacks on paramedics as a “clear continuation of the Israeli war crime of targeting rescue and ambulance teams in violation of all international humanitarian laws.”

More than 185 Lebanese first responders have been killed since October 2023, the vast majority in the past seven weeks as Israel ramped up airstrikes ahead of its Oct. 1 ground invasion. Israel has accused Hezbollah of using ambulances to transport fighters but has not provided evidence to supports its claims.

The IDF did not comment on the strikes against paramedics or on the civilians killed in Alamat, but said it was aware of the reports and was looking into them.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, continues to fire missile and rocket salvos at Israel, setting off sirens across the country. In statements, the militant group said its fighters were also clashing with Israeli troops in two separate areas of southeast Lebanon. Israel has said it will keep fighting the war in Lebanon until some 60,000 Israelis displaced by Hezbollah fire can return to their homes in the north.

The violence Sunday continued to spill over into other countries in the region, with Israel striking a building in the Sayyidah Zeinab area of Damascus, according to Syria’s state news agency.

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Harb reported from London.