An Is­raeli airstrike killed an elite Hezbol­lah com­man­der in south­ern Lebanon on Mon­day, the lat­est in an es­ca­lat­ing ex­change of strikes along the bor­der that have raised fears of an­oth­er Mideast war even as the fight­ing in Gaza ex­acts a mount­ing toll on civil­ians.

The strike on an SUV killed a com­man­der in a se­cre­tive Hezbol­lah force that op­er­ates along the bor­der, ac­cord­ing to a Lebanese se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty ac­cord­ing to reg­u­la­tions. Hezbol­lah iden­ti­fied the slain fight­er as Wis­sam al-Taw­il with­out pro­vid­ing de­tails.

He is the most se­nior mil­i­tant in the armed group to have been killed since Hamas’ Oct. 7 at­tack in­to south­ern Is­rael trig­gered all-out war in Gaza and low­er-in­ten­si­ty fight­ing be­tween Is­rael and Hezbol­lah, which has es­ca­lat­ed since an Is­raeli strike killed a se­nior Hamas leader in Beirut last week.

U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken, who is back in the re­gion this week, ap­pears to be try­ing to head off a wider con­flict.

Is­rael says it has large­ly wrapped up ma­jor op­er­a­tions in north­ern Gaza and is now fo­cus­ing on the cen­tral re­gion and the south­ern city of Khan You­nis. Is­raeli of­fi­cials have said the fight­ing will con­tin­ue for many more months as the army seeks to dis­man­tle Hamas and re­turn scores of hostages tak­en dur­ing the mil­i­tant group’s Oct. 7 at­tack that trig­gered the war.

The of­fen­sive has al­ready killed over 23,000 Pales­tini­ans, dev­as­tat­ed vast swaths of the Gaza Strip, dis­placed near­ly 85% of its pop­u­la­tion of 2.3 mil­lion and left a quar­ter of its res­i­dents fac­ing star­va­tion.

‘SICK­EN­ING SCENES’ IN GAZA’S OVER­WHELMED HOS­PI­TALS

Medics, pa­tients and dis­placed peo­ple fled from the main hos­pi­tal in cen­tral Gaza as the fight­ing drew clos­er, wit­ness­es said Mon­day. Los­ing the fa­cil­i­ty would be an­oth­er ma­jor blow to a health sys­tem shat­tered by three months of war.

Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders and oth­er aid groups with­drew from Al-Aqsa Mar­tyrs Hos­pi­tal in Deir al-Bal­ah in re­cent days, say­ing it was too dan­ger­ous. That spread pan­ic among peo­ple shel­ter­ing there, caus­ing many to join the hun­dreds of thou­sands who have fled to the south of the be­sieged ter­ri­to­ry.

Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple have sought shel­ter in Gaza’s hos­pi­tals, which are al­so strug­gling to treat dozens of peo­ple wound­ed each day in Is­raeli strikes. On­ly 13 of Gaza’s 36 hos­pi­tals are even par­tial­ly func­tion­ing, ac­cord­ing to the U.N. hu­man­i­tar­i­an of­fice.

Omar al-Darawi, an em­ploy­ee at Al-Aqsa Mar­tyrs Hos­pi­tal, said the fa­cil­i­ty has been struck mul­ti­ple times in re­cent days. He said thou­sands of peo­ple left af­ter the aid groups pulled out, and that pa­tients have been con­cen­trat­ed on one floor so the re­main­ing doc­tors can tend to them more eas­i­ly.

“We have large num­bers of wound­ed who can’t move” he said. “They need spe­cial care, which is un­avail­able.”

More dead and wound­ed ar­rive each day as Is­raeli forces ad­vance in cen­tral Gaza fol­low­ing heavy airstrikes. Gaza’s Health Min­istry said Mon­day that 249 Pales­tini­ans have been killed and 510 oth­ers were wound­ed across the ter­ri­to­ry in the last 24 hours.

World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion staff who vis­it­ed Sun­day saw “sick­en­ing scenes of peo­ple of all ages be­ing treat­ed on blood-streaked floors and in chaot­ic cor­ri­dors,” Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus, the head of the U.N. agency, said in a state­ment. “The blood­bath in Gaza must end.”

DIRE CON­DI­TIONS IN THE ISO­LAT­ED NORTH

The sit­u­a­tion is even more dire in north­ern Gaza, which Is­raeli forces cut off from the rest of the ter­ri­to­ry in late Oc­to­ber.

En­tire neigh­bour­hoods have been de­mol­ished, and hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple have fled, while those who re­main face se­vere short­ages of food and wa­ter. The WHO said late Sun­day it has not been able to de­liv­er sup­plies to north­ern Gaza in 12 days.

Even there, Is­rael is still bat­tling what it de­scribes as pock­ets of mil­i­tants.

An airstrike ear­ly Sun­day flat­tened a four-sto­ry home filled with dis­placed peo­ple in the ur­ban Ja­baliya refugee camp, killing at least 70, in­clud­ing women and chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to Mah­moud Bas­sal, a spokesman for Gaza’s civ­il de­fense. There was no im­me­di­ate con­fir­ma­tion from the Health Min­istry, which has strug­gled to main­tain its op­er­a­tions in the north.

Search ef­forts were still un­der­way on Mon­day. The civ­il de­fense cir­cu­lat­ed a graph­ic video show­ing the af­ter­math of at­tack, with sev­er­al bod­ies scat­tered among the rub­ble.

Ja­baliya, which was built for Pales­tin­ian refugees from the 1948 war sur­round­ing Is­rael’s cre­ation and is now a dense, built-up neigh­bour­hood, has seen weeks of heavy fight­ing.

More than 23,00 Pales­tini­ans have been killed, and more than 58,000 wound­ed, since the war be­gan, ac­cord­ing to the Health Min­istry in Hamas-run Gaza. The death toll does not dis­tin­guish be­tween com­bat­ants and civil­ians. Health of­fi­cials say about two-thirds of those killed have been women and mi­nors.

Is­rael blames Hamas for civil­ian ca­su­al­ties be­cause the group op­er­ates in heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed res­i­den­tial ar­eas, but the mil­i­tary rarely com­ments on in­di­vid­ual strikes. The mil­i­tary says it has killed some 8,000 mil­i­tants, with­out pro­vid­ing ev­i­dence, and that 176 of its own sol­diers have been killed in the of­fen­sive.

SEEK­ING TO HEAD OFF A WIDER WAR

Blinken, who met with the lead­ers of Jor­dan and Qatar on Sun­day, once again spoke of the need for Is­rael to ad­just its mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions to min­i­mize harm to civil­ians and al­low more aid in­to the ter­ri­to­ry.

But his main fo­cus ap­peared to be pre­vent­ing the war from spread­ing.

A Hezbol­lah rock­et bar­rage hit a sen­si­tive air traf­fic base in north­ern Is­rael on Sat­ur­day in one of the biggest at­tacks in three months of low-in­ten­si­ty fight­ing along the bor­der. The mil­i­tant group said was an “ini­tial re­sponse” to the killing of Hamas’ deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Saleh Arouri in Beirut last week.

Is­rael has most­ly sought to lim­it the fight­ing in its north, but its lead­ers say their pa­tience is wear­ing thin, and that if the ten­sions can­not be re­solved through diplo­ma­cy, they are pre­pared to go to war. They have ex­pressed par­tic­u­lar con­cern about the Rad­wan Force, the elite Hezbol­lah unit in which al-Taw­il was a com­man­der, which op­er­ates along the bor­der.

Hezbol­lah be­gan fir­ing rock­ets short­ly af­ter Hamas’ Oct. 7 at­tack ig­nit­ed the war. Hamas and oth­er mil­i­tants killed about 1,200 peo­ple in south­ern Is­rael that day, most­ly civil­ians, and took some 250 peo­ple hostage, over 100 of whom were re­leased dur­ing a cease-fire in No­vem­ber.

Hezbol­lah has said its at­tacks, which have dri­ven tens of thou­sands of Is­raelis from their homes, aim to ease pres­sure on Gaza. But the group ap­pears wary of risk­ing an all-out war that would bring mas­sive de­struc­tion to Lebanon.

Shu­rafa re­port­ed from Deir Al-Bal­ah, Gaza Strip, and Magdy from Cairo.

BEIRUT (AP) —