A man carries a toddler into the Al-Shifa hospital following the bombing of a house during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza City’s Mansura neighbourhood, in the eastern suburb of Shujaiya, on 4 November 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. Picture: Bashar TALEB / AFP
Since then, Israel has relentlessly bombarded the Gaza Strip and sent in ground troops, with the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory saying 9 488 people have been killed, about two-thirds of them women and children.US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Jordan on Saturday for talks with counterparts from five Arab countries, after visiting Israel in his efforts to secure humanitarian “pauses” in the war.
It said “troops encountered a terrorist cell exiting a tunnel shaft. In response, the troops fired shells toward the terrorists and killed them.”The Israeli military said on Saturday it had struck “two terrorist cells” and a Hezbollah post in response to attempted firing from Lebanon. Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder told the BBC that Hezbollah was unlikely to escalate the violence, saying “a broader regional conflict has been deterred”.