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Israel kills 31 in Gaza as 750,000 Israelis join mass protests

09-09-2024

JERUSALEM/ GAZA CITY: At least 31 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza on Saturday, according to medical sources.

An estimated 750,000 Israelis have taken to the streets in one of Israel’s biggest-ever protests as anger boils over at the government’s failure to bring those held captive home.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has condemned Israel’s “blatant violation” of “human values” after three paramedics were killed on Saturday in an attack in southern Lebanon.

At least 40,939 people have been killed and 94,616 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza. At least 1,139 people were killed in Israel in the Hamas-led attacks on October 7. Some 239 people were taken captive.

Hezbollah rocket barrages have continued overnight in northern Israel, Israeli army radio reports, with around 100 rockets fired over the past day.

A building in Kiryat Shmona was directly hit, Israeli army radio added, but no injuries were reported.

Hezbollah has claimed a number of attacks on northern Israel since yesterday, including the settlement of Kiryat Shmona and an Israeli army base.

The armed Lebanese group said it was responding to an Israeli attack that killed three paramedics and wounded two others, in southern Lebanon.

In the past week, the Israeli military has stepped up its attacks on the occupied West Bank, raiding villages and towns and destroying key infrastructure.

The municipality of Beita, the Palestinian town where US-Turkish activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was shot dead, has issued a statement condemning her “execution” by Israeli forces.

“Aysenur passed away while carrying out her noble message in solidarity and support for the legitimate and just rights of the Palestinian people,” the municipality said in a statement.

Eygi was protesting the Israeli settlement on Mount Sabih, in Beita, where the municipality said 14 Palestinians have been killed since an “extremist group of settlers” set up an outpost three years ago.

Media reported earlier that some 750,000 Israelis took to the streets to call on Netanyahu’s government to secure the release of the remaining captives held by Hamas in Gaza.

Libby Lenkinski, the vice president for public engagement at the New Israel Fund, says that increasing numbers of Israelis recognize that a lasting ceasefire is the only way that can be achieved.

“There were groups of protesters calling for a ceasefire as early as November and December [last year], and I think that number has been growing in a pretty steady way,” she told media in an interview from New York.

“I think the number has grown pretty dramatically in the past week, while an increasing number of Israelis who are protesting understand that a ceasefire is actually the only way that the hostages will come home. I think that’s now a pretty common understanding among protesters. You do see a rising number of Israelis wanting this to end whether they are in the streets or not.”

Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, told media that the heads of the CIA and MI6 jointly calling for a ceasefire in Gaza was probably meant to “put gentle pressure on Israel” from two of its strongest supporters.

Israeli settlers destroyed about 12 olive trees near the Palestinian village of Deir Istiya, in the occupied West Bank governorate of Salfit, on Saturday, local sources told the Wafa news agency. (Int’l News Desk)

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