US envoy Amos Hochstein said on Wednesday that he believes a war between Israel and Lebanon’s powerful militant group Hezbollah can be avoided.
When asked at a news conference after meeting Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a strong Hezbollah ally, whether Israel and Hezbollah could avoid a war, Hochstein replied: “I hope so, I believe so.”
Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 39,965 Palestinians and wounded 92,294 since 7 October the Palestinian health ministry said on Wednesday.
A total of 36 Palestinians have been killed and 54 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry said in a statement.
Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip overnight and into Wednesday killed at least 17 people, including five children and their parents, Palestinian health officials say.
The latest strikes came on the eve of new talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the 10-month-long war.
One strike hit a family home late on Tuesday in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, which dates back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.
It killed five children, ranging in age from two to 11, and their parents, according to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
An Associated Press reporter who saw the bodies arrive said they had been dismembered by the blast and that the two-year-old had been decapitated.
United States president Joe Biden said achieving a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was “getting hard” but he expressed his resolve at securing an end to the hostilities.
Leaders in the US, Egypt and Qatar had hoped ceasefire talks, to reach a deal between Israel and Hamas to pause the conflict in Gaza and see Israeli hostages returned to their families and Palestinian civilians returned to their homes, would begin in Doha or Cairo on Thursday.
But Hamas official Ahmad Abdul Hadi has said the group will not participate in the talks, according to reports by Sky News and the New York Times.
“We’ll see what Iran does and we’ll see what happens if there is any attack. But I’m not giving up,” Biden told reporters after arriving in New Orleans.
United Nations Security Council members have called for a Gaza ceasefire deal, AP reported.
But the council, which voted in June to embrace a United States proposal for a ceasefire, took no further action at Tuesday’s emergency meeting on Israel’s weekend airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza.
The US military said on Tuesday it destroyed two Houthi vessels in the Red Sea.
More to follow on this as we get it.
Three-month-old baby Reem Abu Hayyah is the only member of her family to survive an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip late on Monday.
A few miles to the north, Mohamed Abuel-Qomasan lost his wife and their twin babies - just four days old - in another strike.
More than 10 months into its war with Hamas, Israel’s relentless bombardment of the isolated territory has wiped out extended families, AP reported.
The Israeli strike on Monday destroyed a home near the southern city of Khan Younis, killing 10 people.
The dead included Reem Abu Hayyah’s parents and five siblings, ranging in age from five to 12, as well as the parents of three other children.
All four children were wounded in the strike.
“There is no one left except this baby,” said her aunt Soad Abu Hayyah.
“Since this morning, we have been trying to feed her formula, but she does not accept it, because she is used to her mother’s milk.”
The strike that killed Mr Abuel-Qomasan’s wife and newborns - a boy, Asser, and a girl, Ayssel - also killed the twins’ maternal grandmother.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.
The US has approved the sale of $20bn in fighter jets and other military equipment to Israel, as the Pentagon says it is “committed to the security of Israel”.
Secretary of state Antony Blinken approved the sale of F-15 jets and equipment worth nearly $19bn along with tank cartridges valued at $774m, explosive mortar cartridges valued at over $60m and army vehicles worth $583m, the Pentagon said in a statement.
The Boeing Co F-15 fighter jets were expected to take years to produce, and deliveries were expected to begin in 2029. Other equipment would begin delivery in 2026, according to the Pentagon.
The US, Israel’s biggest ally and weapons supplier, has sent Israel more than 10,000 highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs and thousands of Hellfire missiles since the start of the Gaza war in October, US officials told Reuters in June.
The approval comes as western diplomats have scrambled to prevent a major conflagration in the Middle East, after Iran and its allies blamed Israel for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month.
Iran has rejected western calls not to retaliate against Israel for the killing in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, late last month. “Such demands lack political logic, are entirely contrary to the principles and rules of international law, and represent an excessive request,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Nasser Kanani, said. A report on Tuesday from the official IRNA news agency said President Masoud Pezeshkian, in a phone conversation late on Monday with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, said that the west’s silence about “unprecedented inhumane crime” in Gaza, and Israeli attacks elsewhere in the Middle East, was “irresponsible” and encouraged Israel to put regional and global security at risk.
Only a ceasefire deal in Gaza stemming from hoped-for talks this week would hold Iran back from direct retaliation against Israel for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on its soil, three senior Iranian officials have told Reuters. A ceasefire in Gaza would give Iran cover for a smaller “symbolic” response, one of the sources said.
Asked on Tuesday if he thought Iran might forgo a retaliatory strike if a Gaza ceasefire was reached, Joe Biden said: “That’s my expectation.” The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Washington’s goal in the Middle East is to “turn the temperature down,” deter and defend against any future attacks, and avoid regional conflict. “That starts with finalising a deal for an immediate ceasefire with hostage release in Gaza. We need to get this over the finish line,” she told a UN security council meeting.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s ultranationalist national security minister, defied longstanding rules to lead hundreds of Israelis in singing Jewish hymns and performing religious rituals on the raised compound in Jerusalem’s Old City known as al-Haram al-Sharif to Muslims. Under a longstanding but fragile arrangement, Jews can visit the site but not pray there. The compound is the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest for Jews, who call it the Temple Mount. Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Ben-Gvir’s visit “deviated from the status quo” and that Israel’s policy on the Temple Mount remained unchanged.
