Protesters disrupt a Netanyahu speech marking Oct. 7 attacks, chanting 'Shame on you'

RAMAT HASHARON, Israel — Protesters disrupted a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a ceremony Sunday remembering the victims of Hamas’ attack on southern Israel last year.

People shouted “Shame on you” and made a commotion, forcing Netanyahu to stop his speech shortly after it began. The major commemorative event is being broadcast live around the country.

Many Israelis blame Netanyahu for the failures that led to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack and hold him responsible for not yet bringing home the remaining hostages held by the militant group in Gaza.

The Israeli military said Sunday that four soldiers, including a military rabbi, were killed in fighting in southern Lebanon, without providing details about the circumstances. It said five other personnel were severely wounded. An explosive drone and a projectile fired from Lebanon wounded five people in Israel on Sunday, authorites said.

Netanyahu says strikes on Iran achieved Israel’s goals

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the strikes “severely harmed” Iran and achieved all of Israel’s goals.

“The air force struck throughout Iran. We severely harmed Iran’s defense capabilities and its ability to produce missiles that are aimed toward us,” Netanyahu said in his first public comments on the strikes.

Satellite images showed damage to two secretive Iranian military bases, one linked to work on nuclear weapons that Western intelligence agencies and nuclear inspectors say was discontinued in 2003 and another linked to Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s 85-year-old supreme leader, said “it is up to the authorities to determine how to convey the power and will of the Iranian people to the Israeli regime and to take actions that serve the interests of this nation and country.”

Khamenei would make any final decision on how Iran responds.

Apparent truck attack in Israel wounds dozens

In the city of Ramat Hasharon, northeast of Tel Aviv, the truck slammed into a bus at a stop as Israelis were returning to work after a weeklong holiday, leaving some people stuck under the vehicles. In addition to being near the Mossad headquarters and a military base, the bus stop is also close to a central highway junction.

Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said six of the wounded were in serious condition.

Asi Aharoni, an Israeli police spokesperson, told reporters that the attacker had been “neutralized,” without saying if the assailant was dead.

Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group praised the suspected attack but did not claim it.

Palestinians have carried out scores of stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks over the years. Tensions have soared since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, as Israel has carried out regular military raids into the occupied West Bank that have left hundreds dead. Most appear to have been militants killed during shootouts with Israeli forces, but Palestinians taking part in violent protests and civilian bystanders have also been killed.

The military said there was another attack near a checkpoint in the West Bank, in which a suspect tried to ram soldiers with his vehicle and then tried to stab them before being killed. No soldiers were wounded, it said.

Red Cross describes ‘horrific circumstances’ in northern Gaza

The Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service said that 11 women and two children were among the 22 killed in the strikes late Saturday on several homes and buildings in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. It said a further 15 people were wounded and that the death toll could rise. It listed the names of those killed, who mostly came from three families.

The Israeli military said it carried out a precise strike on militants in a structure in Beit Lahiya and took steps to avoid harming civilians. It disputed what it said were “numbers published by the media,” without elaborating or providing evidence for its own account.

Israel has been waging a massive air and ground offensive in northern Gaza since Oct. 6, saying that Hamas militants have regrouped there. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled to Gaza City in the latest wave of displacement in the yearlong war.

Aid groups have warned of a catastrophic situation in northern Gaza, which was the first target of Israel’s ground offensive and had already suffered the heaviest destruction of the war. Israel has severely limited the entry of basic humanitarian aid in recent weeks, and the three remaining hospitals in the north — one of which was raided over the weekend — say they have been overwhelmed by waves of wounded people.

The International Committee of the Red Cross on Saturday said that ongoing Israeli evacuation orders and restrictions on the entry of essential supplies to the north had left the civilian population in “horrific circumstances.”

“Many civilians are currently unable to move, trapped by fighting, destruction or physical constraint and now lack access to even basic medical care,” it said.

The war began when Hamas-led militants blew holes in Israel’s border wall and stormed into southern Israel in a surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023. They killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, around a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to the local Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count but says more than half of those killed were women and children. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The offensive has devastated much of the impoverished coastal territory and displaced around 90% of its population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of people have crowded into squalid tent camps along the coast, and aid groups say hunger is rampant.