Israeli forces backed by fighter jets and drones carried out a second ground raid into Gaza in as many days and struck targets on the outskirts of Gaza City, the military said yesterday, as it prepares for a widely expected ground invasion of the Hamas-ruled territory.
Meanwhile, US warplanes struck targets in eastern Syria that the Pentagon said were linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard after a string of attacks on US forces, and two mysterious objects hit towns in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, adding to the already high tensions fueled by the three-week-old Gaza war.
The Palestinian death toll has soared past 7,000, as Israel has carried out waves of devastating airstrikes in response to a bloody Hamas incursion into southern Israel on Oct. 7. The Health Ministry in Gaza, which tracks the toll, on Thursday released a detailed list of names and identification numbers. The toll includes more than 2,900 minors and more than 1,500 women.
Photo: AP
More than 1,400 people in Israel, mostly civilians, were slain during the initial Hamas attack, the Israeli government has said. Hamas is holding at least 229 captives inside Gaza, including men, women, children and older adults.
The Israeli military said ground forces raided inside Gaza, striking dozens of militant targets over the past 24 hours. It said aircraft and artillery bombed targets in Shijaiyah, a neighborhood on Gaza City’s outskirts that was the scene of an urban battle in the 2014 Gaza war. It said the soldiers exited the territory without suffering any casualties.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the raids enable forces to “uncover the enemy,” to kill militants and to remove explosives and launch pads.
The aim is “to prepare the ground for the next stages of the war,” he added.
Palestinian militants have fired thousands of rockets into Israel since the war began.
Hamas’ military wing on Thursday said that Israeli bombardment has so far killed about 50 of the hostages. There was no immediate comment from Israeli officials, who have denied previous, similar claims.
The conflict has threatened to ignite a wider war across the region.
Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed ally of Hamas in Lebanon, has repeatedly traded fire with Israel along the border, and Israel has carried out airstrikes targeting Iran-linked groups in Syria.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that the strikes in eastern Syria were “a response to a series of ongoing and mostly unsuccessful attacks against US personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups that began on Oct. 17.”
He said the operation was separate from the Israel-Hamas war.
Iran-backed fighters later fired rockets at an oil facility housing US troops in eastern Syria, Syrian opposition activists said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the US strikes had wounded seven Iran-backed Iraqi fighters.
Egypt’s military said a drone crashed into a building in the Red Sea town of Taba, on the border with Israel, slightly wounding six people.
State media had initially said it was a rocket.
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
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