Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday, November 2, 2024, that at least 43,314 Palestinians have been killed and 102,019 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October 2023.
It said that the toll includes 55 deaths in the previous 24 hours.
The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.
Israel on Saturday again carried out deadly airstrikes on north Gaza, as Lebanon’s Hezbollah intensified rocket fire near Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv.
Since October 6, 2024, Israeli forces have carried out a major air and ground assault on north Gaza, centred on the Jabalia area, vowing to stop attempts by Hamas militants from regrouping.
A joint statement by UN agency heads asserted that the situation unfolding in north Gaza is “apocalyptic.” “The area has been under siege for almost a month, denied basic aid and life-saving supplies while bombardment and other attacks continue,” the heads of the humanitarian, health and other agencies said.
They added that the entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.
Israel’s military on Saturday said dozens of militants were killed around Jabalia “in aerial and ground activity.”
Troops were also operating in central Gaza and Rafah in the territory’s far south, the Israeli military said, while witnesses told a news agency that Israeli drones and boats opened fire on al-Mawasi in south Gaza.
Medics and Gaza’s civil defence rescuers on Saturday reported three people killed in a strike on Nuseirat, in central Gaza.
Meanwhile, a strike in Israel’s Sharon area north of Tel Aviv injured 19 people, police said early on Saturday, after the army reported three projectiles fired from Lebanon into central Israel. Four of the injured were “in moderate condition.”
Hezbollah said it had again launched rockets at Israel’s Glilot intelligence base near Tel Aviv.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Threatens Israel US With Crushing Response Over Israeli Attack
Separately Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened Israel and the US with “a crushing response” over attacks on Iran and its allies.
Khamenei, 85, made the remarks on Saturday while addressing students ahead of the anniversary of the 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran by hardline students – which cemented the decades-long enmity between Tehran and Washington that persists today.
He spoke as Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its 26 October attack that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.
Any further attacks from either side could engulf the wider Middle East, already teetering over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict just head of the US presidential election this Tuesday.
Khamenei did not elaborate on the timing of the threatened attack, nor the scope. Khamenei had struck a more cautious approach in earlier remarks, saying officials would weigh Iran’s response and that Israel’s attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed.”
Speaking to the group of students, Khamenei noted that Iranian efforts “to confront the global arrogance and the criminal apparatus that governs the world order today will certainly not fail.” “Arrogance means comprehensive economic, military and cultural domination and the humiliation of nations,” he said.
Israel has warned Iran against retaliating.
Israel’s military chief Lieutenant General, Herzi Halevi earlier this week that if Iran makes the “mistake of launching another missile barrage at Israel, we will once again know how to reach Iran … and strike very, very hard.”
He added that certain targets had been set aside “because we may be required to do this again.”
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