JERUSALEM — The Israeli government said a drone struck the prime minister’s home on Saturday, though there were no casualties, as Iran’s supreme leader vowed that Hamas would continue its fight after killing the mastermind behind a deadly Oct. 7 attack last year.
Sirens blared in Israel, warning of incoming fire from Lebanon. The military said dozens of projectiles had been fired. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the drone struck his home in the Mediterranean coastal city of Caesarea, though neither he nor his wife were home.
The barrage comes as Israel weighs its likely response to an Iranian attack earlier this month and continues its offensives against Hamas militants in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In Gaza, Israeli forces fired on hospitals in the battered northern part of the Palestinian enclave, and attacks in the Strip killed more than 50 people, including children, in less than 24 hours, hospital officials and an Associated Press reporter there said.
In September, Houthi rebels in Yemen launched a ballistic missile toward Ben Gurion Airport as Netanyahu’s plane was landing. The missile was intercepted.
Barrages from Lebanon target northern Israel
In addition to the drone that was launched at Netanyahu’s private residence, the Israeli military said about 180 projectiles were fired from Lebanon early Saturday morning. A 50-year-old man was killed after being hit by shrapnel while sitting in his car in northern Israel, and four people were wounded, Israeli medical services said.
In the northern city of Kiryat Ata, sirens blared as people took cover and intercepted rockets exploded in the air. One rocket landed in the area, and Associated Press reporters saw burned cars and a damaged building. Itzik Billet, commander of the Haifa area, said nine people were lightly injured.
The Israeli fire department also said it was battling several fires caused by rockets in the Shlomi area, less than a mile (1 kilometer) from the Lebanese border.
Israel’s war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah — a Hamas ally backed by Iran — has intensified in recent weeks. Hezbollah said Friday it planned to launch a new phase of the fight by sending more guided missiles and exploding drones into Israel. The militant group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in late September, and Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon earlier in October.
On Saturday, the Israeli military issued new evacuation warnings for two buildings in the southern Beirut suburb of Haret Hriek. Israel has issued almost 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 had killed Hezbollah’s deputy commander in the southern town of Bint Jbeil. The military said Nasser Rashid had overseen attacks on Israel.
In Lebanon, the Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike hit a vehicle on a main road north of Beirut on Saturday, killing two people. It was unclear who was in the car when it was hit.
Israeli strikes pound Gaza as Hamas rejects hostage release
A standoff is also developing between Israel and Hamas, which it is battling in Gaza. Both sides have signaled their opposition to ending the war following the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar this week.
On Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Sinwar’s death was a painful loss, but noted that Hamas has continued despite the killings of other Palestinian militant leaders before him.
“Hamas is alive and will continue to live,” Khamenei said in his first comments on the killing.
Since Israel claimed Sinwar’s death on Thursday, which was confirmed by a senior Hamas official on Friday, Hamas has reiterated its position that the hostages taken from Israel a year ago will not be released until there is a ceasefire in Gaza and Israeli troops withdraw. The steadfast position opposes a statement by Netanyahu that his country’s military will continue fighting until the hostages are released and will remain in Gaza to prevent a severely weakened Hamas from rearming.
Sinwar was the chief architect of the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023, which killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted another 250. According to local health authorities, the Israeli retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians. They do not distinguish between fighters and civilians, but say more than half of the dead were women and children.
More attacks were carried out in Gaza on Saturday. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said in a statement that Israeli strikes hit the upper floors of the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya and that troops opened fire on the hospital building and its courtyard, causing panic among patients and medical staff.
At Al-Awda Hospital in Jabaliya, northern Gaza, the upper floors of the building were hit by attacks, injuring several staff members, the hospital said in a statement. Three houses in Jabaliya were hit on Friday night, 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 services. At least 80 people were injured.
In central Gaza, at least 10 people, including two children, were killed when a house was hit in the town of Zawayda, according to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where the victims were taken. Another attack killed 11 people, all from the same family, in the Maghazi refugee camp, the same hospital said. Associated Press journalists counted the bodies from both attacks at the hospital.
A United Nations school housing displaced people in western Gaza City was also hit, killing several people, the Hamas-run Civil Defense Service said.
The attacks knocked out internet networks in northern Gaza, Paltel, the Palestinian communications company, said on Facebook on Saturday.
The war has devastated large parts of Gaza, displacing about 90% of the population of 2.3 million people and leaving them struggling to find food, water, medicine and fuel.
Opportunity in Sinwar’s death
Sinwar’s killing appeared to be a fortuitous frontline encounter with Israeli forces on Wednesday, and it could change the dynamics of the war in Gaza even as Israel continues its offensive against Hezbollah with ground troops in southern Lebanon and airstrikes in other parts of the country.
Israel has vowed to politically destroy Hamas in Gaza, and Sinwar’s killing was a top priority for the military. But Netanyahu said in a speech announcing the killing on Thursday that “our war is not over.”
Still, Israel’s ally governments and Gaza’s exhausted residents expressed hope that Sinwar’s death would pave the way for an end to the fighting.
In Israel, families of hostages still trapped in Gaza demanded that the Israeli government use Sinwar’s killing as a way to resume negotiations to bring their loved ones home. About 100 hostages remain in Gaza, with Israel saying at least 30 are dead.
Associated Press reporters Jack Jeffery in Ramallah, West Bank, and Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Lebanon contributed to this report.