Netanyahu, Biden to speak on attack; IDF and Hezbollah clash at border

Israel’s yearlong assault of the Gaza Strip has now killed more than 42,000 people, health authorities in the besieged enclave said today.

At least 45 people were killed in just the last 24 hours, the health ministry said, adding that a number of the victims were still stuck under the rubble with emergency responders unable to reach them.

Another nearly 98,000 people have been injured in the past year, it said.

A renewed Israeli operation in northern Gaza has forced evacuations again of those who had returned to their homes after months of assault. At least 400,000 people are now “trapped” in the area with no safe place to flee, Philippe Lazzarini, chief of UNRWA, the U.N. agency in Gaza, said in a post on X today.

“No end to hell,” he wrote, as “recent evacuation orders from the Israeli Authorities are forcing people to flee again & again, especially from Jabalia Camp.”

“Many are refusing because they know too well that no place anywhere in Gaza is safe,” he said, as refugee shelters and services are shutting down. Hunger is also spreading, he said, and the new operation is threatening a polio vaccination drive for children.

Hezbollah officials are no longer demanding a truce in Gaza as a condition for reaching a cease-fire in Lebanon, rowing back from an oft-repeated promise to keep fighting until Israel halts its offensive against Hezbollah’s Iran-backed ally Hamas.

Ever since Hezbollah began launching missiles across Lebanon’s border a day after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas assault on Israel, Hezbollah officials have consistently said they would not stop until Israel ended the war in Gaza.

But Naim Qassem, the deputy leader of Hezbollah, broke that link in a televised speech on Tuesday, even as he promised to continue to stand with Hamas and Palestinians in their battle with Israel. Two days earlier, two lower-ranking Hezbollah officials had also talked about a Lebanon truce without making a linkage with Gaza.

Clouds of smoke rise from several Israeli air strikes targeting the southern Lebanese village of Khiam this morning.

The State Department said it was inappropriate for Israeli soldiers to raise their flag in southern Lebanon, where the IDF has ordered the evacuation of dozens of villages.

“It’s obviously inappropriate for Israeli soldiers to take that step, and we would look to them to comply with what they have said, which these are limited incursions, not with the goal of holding territory,” spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters last night.

The Israeli flag was planted in Maroun Al-Ras, a village in southern Lebanon. NBC News was able to verify the photos through geolocation of the area.

The United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon said earlier this week that the IDF was operating near one of its outposts in Maroun Al-Ras, adding that the Israeli operations put the security of peacekeepers at risk. Satellite images had confirmed the presence of Israeli tanks.

As the world waits for Israel’s expected retaliation against Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a video message to the people of Lebanon in which he called on them to “free your country of Hezbollah.”