Israeli strikes kill 12 in Gaza as arrests made over flares fired at Netanyahu's home
Tel Aviv, Nov 17: Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip overnight killed 12 people, Palestinian medical officials said on Sunday.
Israeli police meanwhile arrested three suspects after flares were fired at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's private residence in the coastal city of Caesarea.
In Lebanon, Israeli warplanes pounded the southern suburbs of Beirut after the military warned people to evacuate from several buildings.
The Hezbollah group has a strong presence in the area, known as the Dahiyeh, and the strikes came as Lebanese officials are considering a United States-brokered cease-fire proposal. One of the strikes hit central Beirut for the first time in weeks.
Netanyahu and his family were not at the residence when two flares were fired at it overnight, and there were no injuries, authorities said. A drone launched by Hezbollah struck the residence last month, also when Netanyahu and his family were away.
The police did not provide details about the suspects behind the flares, but officials pointed to domestic political critics of Netanyahu. Israel's largely ceremonial president, Isaac Herzog, condemned the incident and warned against “an escalation of the violence in the public sphere”.
Netanyahu has faced months of mass protests over his handling of the hostage crisis unleashed by Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack into Israel, which ignited the ongoing war in Gaza.
Critics blame Netanyahu for the security and intelligence failures that allowed the attack to happen and for not reaching a deal with Hamas to release scores of hostages still held inside Gaza. Israelis rallied again in the city of Tel Aviv on Saturday night to demand a cease-fire deal to return them.
Overnight strikes in central Gaza kill 12
Israeli strikes killed six people in Nuseirat and another four in Bureij, two built-up refugee camps in central Gaza dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation.
Another two people were killed in a strike on Gaza's main north-south highway, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah, which received all 12 bodies.
The war between Israel and Hamas began after Palestinian Hamas group stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead.
The Health Ministry in Gaza says around 43,800 Palestinians have been killed in the war. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but has said women and children make up more than half the fatalities. Around 90 per cent of Gaza's population of 2.3 million Palestinians have been displaced, and large areas of the territory have been flattened by Israeli bombardment and ground operations.
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Prez Putin receives US invitation to join Trump's Gaza Peace Board: Kremlin
Moscow (PTI): Russian President Vladimir Putin has received an invitation to join US President Donald Trump's Gaza Peace Board, and the invitation is under consideration, the Kremlin said on Monday.
"Indeed, President Putin also received an offer through diplomatic channels to join this Peace Board," the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
"We are currently studying all the details of this proposal, and we hope to contact the American side to clarify all the details," he said.
Several other countries have received offers from the US to join this body. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Shehbaz Sharif have also received invitations to join the Peace Board.
The US president unveiled the board as part of the second phase of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
In October, Israel and militant group Hamas agreed to Trump's peace plan.
The board is being projected by Washington as a new international body to usher in peace and stability in Gaza and beyond, triggering speculations that it may respond to other global conflicts as well.
"Russia sees the Gaza Peace Board as the US attempt to create a rival of the United Nations Organisation with a broader mandate," Russia's Channel- 1 TV said on Monday in its 'Pryamoi Efir' (Live Broadcast) political show.
