March 29, 2024 - Israel-Hamas war

A series of Israeli airstrikes targeting areas close to the Syrian city of Aleppo on Friday have led to casualties among both civilians and military personnel, according to the Syrian state news agency SANA.

Thirty-eight people were killed, according to Reuters, including five members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah. One of the Hezbollah fighters was a local field commander whose brother was killed in an Israeli strike on southern Lebanon in November, Reuters said. This makes the strikes some of the deadliest since Israel intensified its military campaign against Iran-backed groups in Syria and others last year.

Israeli warplanes initiated an attack around 1:45 a.m, local time from the direction of Athriya, southeast of Aleppo, according to a military source quoted by SANA.

The Israel Defense Forces declined to comment on the attack.

Israel has previously launched attacks on Aleppo and the Syrian capital Damascus, including before the October 7 war, saying it feared that Iran would turn Syria into “a base for aggression” against the Jewish state.

Remember: Both Syria and Israel consider each other enemies and do not share diplomatic relations.

Israel will conduct its military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria and anywhere else they find the militant group, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a post on X Friday.

The Israel Defense Forces said that Ali Abed Akhsan Naim, allegedly the deputy commander of Hezbollah's Rocket and Missile Unit, had been killed in an airstrike in the area of Bazouriye in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah and Israel have been engaging in deadly cross-border strikes the last few months, which has displaced tens of thousands of Lebanese and Israeli residents from their homes. 

A Palestinian boy dressed in light blue pajamas cries out for his mother. Doctors in Kamal Adwan Hospital, in northern Gaza, tenderly douse his face in lotion, but he is still whimpering in pain.

CNN video from the hospital in Gaza City on March 21 shows Mosaab Al-Homss' swollen eyelids and deep red scabs that cover his whole body. The little boy, age 2-and-a-half, sustained severe burns after an Israeli strike on his grandfather’s home in the Abu Iskander area, west of Jabalya, on March 18, according to health officials at the hospital. At least 80 Palestinians were sheltering in the residential building when it was struck, the health officials said, adding that five members of the Al-Homss family were killed — all of whom were children. Mosaab's mother was severely injured, hospital officials said.

Dr. Ayesh Hossam Abu Warda, a neurosurgeon caring for survivors of the strike in the Kamal Adwan Hospital, said they sustained multiple injuries in the upper and lower limbs.

Health workers treating wounded Palestinians in Gaza previously told CNN the vast majority of patient arrivals include children with traumatic burns, missing limbs and shrapnel injuries to the chest and abdomen.

Responding to CNN's questions about the attack on the Al-Homms' family home in northern Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said it is "operating to dismantle Hamas military and administrative capabilities."

CNN's Benjamin Brown contributed reporting to this post.

Ireland has become the latest nation to say it will intervene in the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, in a reflection of the country’s longstanding position of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

Ireland announced this week it would file its intervention, adding to growing international pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to dial back its devastating assault on Gaza and end severe restrictions on food aid pushing Palestinians toward famine.

The case was brought to the ICJ by South Africa, and in an initial ruling in January, the court ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza, but stopped short of accusing it of genocide. According to reports, Ireland is expected to include in its intervention the argument that Israel’s blocking of food aid to Gaza could be considered an act of genocide.

In a speech on Wednesday, Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin said that both the Hamas October 7 attack in Israel and Israel’s war in Gaza “represents the blatant violation of international law on a mass scale.”

Zoë Lawlor, who leads the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), said there has been “deep empathy and sympathy in Ireland with Palestinian people.” That solidarity is largely born out of a shared experience of subjugation by an occupying state. The island nation was under English and then British rule for more than 800 years, after Anglo-Norman invaders seized huge stretches of land from the native Irish in the 12th Century.

Read more about how Ireland’s position on the Israel-Hamas conflict has made it an outlier among European governments.

The Israel Defense Forces told CNN that 20 rockets and two anti-tank missiles were fired from Lebanon toward Israel on Friday.

The IDF said the two anti-tank missile launches were identified as coming from Ayta ash Shab in southern Lebanon. The IDF said it struck the launcher and what it alleged was a Hezbollah military compound adjacent to the launcher.

The IDF also says it struck other Hezbollah targets, including what it described as “military compounds and terrorist infrastructure,” in the area of Chebaa in southern Lebanon.

Earlier on Friday, the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon announced it had launched attacks in retaliation to what it claimed were Israeli attacks on Damascus and Aleppo.

The Israeli military said it killed a high-ranking Hezbollah missile commander in an airstrike in Lebanon Friday.

The Israel Defense Forces said that Ali Abed Akhsan Naim, allegedly the deputy commander of Hezbollah's Rocket and Missile Unit, had been killed in an airstrike in the area of Bazouriye in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah on Friday acknowledged his death in a statement without giving his title or saying how he died.

The IDF said Friday that he was considered "a significant source of knowledge" in Hezbollah and a "leader in the field of rockets." It added he was one of the Iranian-backed militia's leaders for heavy-warhead rocket fire and "responsible for conducting and planning attacks against Israeli civilians."

Lebanon's National News Agency (NNA) reported on a drone strike on a car near Bazouriye Friday. It said that two people had died in the strike without providing information on their identities.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel on Thursday to enable the unhindered flow of aid into Gaza "without delay" to avert a famine, as Israel's siege condemns Gazans to severe hunger.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military's raid on Al-Shifa Hospital, in northern Gaza, entered its twelfth day. More traumatic allegations of abuse emerged from Palestinians who fled the facility, and those still trapped there — including two malnourished teenage siblings who've had limbs amputated.

Here are the latest developments:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has authorized an Israeli negotiating delegation to travel to Qatar and Egypt in the coming days for talks on the release of hostages still held in Gaza, according to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.

The Israel Security Agency (ISA), also known as Shin Bet or Shabak, is Israel’s domestic security agency.

Some background: Israel’s Mossad Director David Barnea and Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar traveled back to Israel last Saturday without a breakthrough in indirect ceasefire-hostage talks with Hamas, mediated by Qatar and Egypt. CIA Director Bill Burns was also in Doha late last week to meet with Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari counterparts. Burns put forward a proposal that was accepted by Israel and sent back to Hamas, according to a source and an Israeli official.

On Tuesday morning, Israel was informed that the proposal was rejected by Hamas, the Israeli official said, and Israel decided to pull back the team of negotiators that had remained in Doha after Burns and Barnea had left Qatar.

An Israeli airstrike killed at least 14 Palestinians sheltering inside a house in Rafah, in southern Gaza, a Rafah hospital official told CNN. 

Among those killed were four women and seven children, according to a list of victims shared by the Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah.

Emergency workers recovered a number of victims from the rubble of the blown-out house in the northeast neighborhood of Al-Nasr, according to Gaza's Civil Defense. Pictures shared by the Civil Defense showed huge concrete slabs strewn across the site of the attack, where rescue personnel carried shrouded bodies.

Crews rescued a woman from the rubble of the house, according to Gaza's Civil Defense. It transported "a number of injured people," according to a statement on Friday.

Asked for a response by CNN, the Israel Defense Forces said it did not have the required information to comment on the attack, despite being provided by CNN with the date, time and a rough location of the strike.

This post has been updated with the number and description of people killed, according to the hospital.