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Israel today announced it has killed another senior Hezbollah commander during fresh assaults in Lebanon.
In a message posted on its official Telegram channel, Israel’s military claimed to have killed the militant chief who it named as Abu Ali Rida.
A spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces said Rida had been in command of the Baraachit area in southern Lebanon.
The IDF described him as being “responsible for planning and executing rocket and anti-tank missile attacks on IDF troops.”
In the operational update, the Israeli military added: “IDF troops continue to conduct limited, localised, targeted raids in southern Lebanon, dismantling terrorist infrastructure, locating weapons, and eliminating terrorists.”
But huge swathes of Lebanon’s population have been displaced from their homes by Israel’s military action ongoing against Hezbollah.
According to Lebanese authorities, more than 2,800 people have been killed inside Lebanon by Israeli attacks.
Tens of thousands of Israelis in the north of the country have also been displaced from their homes by near constant rocket fire from Hezbollah and other anti-Israeli forces inside Lebanon.
But as fighting continues both in Lebanon and in Gaza, Israel yesterday formally notified the United Nations it is to ban the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa from operating in Israel.
After earlier introducing new legislation, Israel’s foreign ministry formally announced the ban.
Unrwa operates 96 schools in the Israeli-occupied West Bank serving 45,000 students, as well as 43 health centres, food distribution services for refugee families, and psychological support services, according to the agency’s website.
It has played a crucial logistical role in facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid in Gaza, as well as providing shelters for displaced Palestinians.
“On the instruction of foreign minister Israel Katz, the ministry of foreign affairs notified the UN of the cancellation of the agreement between the state of Israel and Unrwa,” the foreign ministry said.
Israel has alleged that 12 Unrwa employees took part in the Hamas attack inside southern Israel on 7 October 2023.
The agency fired several staff members as a result of an independent inquiry, but says that Israel’s wider accusations of staff in Gaza supporting Hamas are unfounded.
In a statement, Mr Katz said “Unrwa, the organisation whose employees participated in the 7 October massacre and many of whose employees are Hamas operatives, is part of the problem in the Gaza Strip and not part of the solution.”
Unrwa’s mandate is to provide life-giving services to anyone who has “lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict”, a mission widened after the 1967 war, when the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories began.
Foreign minister Mr Katz disputed that cutting off Unrwa would damage the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, which has been besieged by Israeli forces and subjected to aerial bombardment for over a year.
Nearly all of the territory’s 2.4 million people have been displaced from their homes at least once.
“Even now, the vast majority of humanitarian aid to Gaza is delivered through other organisations, and only 13 percent of it is delivered through Uurwa,” Mr Katz said.
“The state of Israel is committed to international law and will continue to facilitate the entrance of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip in a manner that does not harm the security of the citizens of Israel.”
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