A drone targets Israeli prime minister's house while strikes in Gaza kill over 50

JERUSALEM — (AP) — Israel's government said a drone targeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's house Saturday, with no casualties, as fighting with Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Gaza -based Hamas showed no pause after the killing of the mastermind of last year's deadly Oct. 7 attack.

Israel's military said dozens of projectiles were launched from Lebanon, as sirens wailed, a day after Hezbollah announced a new phase in fighting. Netanyahu's office said the drone targeted his house in the Mediterranean coastal town of Caesarea, though neither he nor his wife were there.

Hezbollah did not claim responsibility for the drone attack but said it carried out several rocket attacks on northern and central Israel. The barrage came as Israel is expected to respond to an attack earlier this month by Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas.

Israel in turn carried out at least three airstrikes on Beirut's southern suburbs known as Dahiyeh, a heavily populated area home to Hezbollah's offices. Israel's military said it was looking into the reported strikes.

In Gaza, Israeli forces fired at hospitals in the battered north of the Palestinian enclave, and strikes killed more than 50 people, including children, in less than 24 hours, according to hospital officials and an Associated Press reporter there.

“The possibility of war in the region remains a serious concern,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said while visiting Turkey.

Israel's war with Lebanon's Hezbollah has intensified. Hezbollah said Friday it planned to send more guided missiles and exploding drones into Israel. The militant group's longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in September, and Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon early this month.

Israel’s military on Saturday said some 180 projectiles were fired from Lebanon. A 50-year-old man was killed after hit by shrapnel in northern Israel, and four people were injured, Israel’s medical services said.

In the northern city of Kiryat Ata, one rocket landed and Associated Press reporters saw burned cars and a damaged building. Itzik Billet, commander for the Haifa area, said nine people were lightly injured. The Israeli fire service said it was battling several blazes from missiles in the Shlomi area next to the Lebanese border.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in Baaloul village in the east killed five people, including the mayor of a nearby village, Sohmor. An Israeli military official confirmed that the IDF struck targets in the Bekaa valley.

Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli airstrike hit a vehicle on a highway north of Beirut, killing two people.

Israel has issued near-daily warnings for people to leave buildings and villages in parts of Lebanon. The fighting has displaced more than 1 million people, including some 400,000 children.

Israel also said Saturday it killed Hezbollah’s deputy commander in the southern town of Bint Jbeil. The army said Nasser Rashid supervised attacks against Israel.

Israel and Hamas have signaled resistance to ending the war in Gaza after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the chief architect of the raid on Israel a year ago that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped another 250.

Israel’s military on Saturday dropped leaflets in southern Gaza showing Sinwar dead in a chair, blood running down his forehead. "Sinwar destroyed your lives,” said the leaflet seen by The Associated Press. “Whoever lays down his weapons and returns the kidnapped people to us, we will allow him to leave and live in peace.”

Hamas has reiterated its stance that the hostages will not be released until there is a cease-fire in Gaza and Israeli troops withdraw. Netanyahu says Israel's military will fight until the hostages are released, and will remain in Gaza to prevent a severely weakened Hamas from rearming.

Israel's retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish combatants from civilians but say more than half the dead are women and children.

More strikes pounded Gaza on Saturday. The strikes knocked out internet networks in northern Gaza, the Palestinian communications company Paltel said.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli strikes hit the upper floors of the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, and forces opened fire at the building and courtyard, causing panic. At Al-Awda hospital in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza, strikes hit the top floors, injuring several staff members, the hospital said.

Three houses in Jabaliya were struck overnight Friday, killing at least 30 people, more than half of them women and children, said Fares Abu Hamza, head of the health ministry’s ambulance and emergency service. At least 80 people were injured.

In central Gaza, at least 10 people were killed, including two children, when a house was hit in the town of Zawayda, according to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Another strike killed 11 people, all from the same family, in the Maghazi refugee camp, the hospital said. AP journalists counted the bodies from both strikes.

A United Nations school sheltering displaced people in the west of Gaza City was also hit, killing several people, according to the Hamas-run civil defense first responders.

The war has destroyed vast swaths of Gaza, displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, and left them struggling to find food, water, medicine and fuel.

Sinwar's killing could shift the dynamics of the war in Gaza. Israel's allies and exhausted Gaza residents expressed hope that Sinwar's death would pave the way for an end to the fighting.

In Israel, families of hostages still held in Gaza demanded the Israeli government use Sinwar's killing as a way to restart negotiations to bring home their loved ones. About 100 hostages remain in Gaza, at least 30 of whom Israel says are dead.

Israel has pledged to destroy Hamas politically in Gaza, and killing Sinwar was a top military priority. But Netanyahu said in announcing the killing that “our war is not yet ended.”

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Associated Press reporters Jack Jeffery in Ramallah, West Bank and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

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