Donald Trump claims to have visited Gaza, says it could be 'better than Monaco'
US presidential candidate Donald Trump has raised eyebrows after telling Hugh Hewitt, a rightwing radio host, that he had visited Gaza, where nearly 42,000 people have been killed and the majority of buildings badly damaged or destroyed in blistering Israeli military attacks responding to last year’s 7 October attack by Hamas. The Hamas attack killed 1,200 about Israelis and took about 250 hostage.
Asked by Hewitt if Gaza could be transformed into Monaco if properly rebuilt, Trump replied:
It could be better than Monaco. It has the best location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything. It’s got, it is the best, I’ve said it for years.
I’ve been there, and it’s rough. It’s a rough place … before all of the attacks and before the back and forth what’s happened over the last couple of years.
He went on: “
I mean, they have the back of a plant facing the ocean, you know. There was no ocean as far as that was concerned. They never took advantage of it. You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place – the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate. It could be so beautiful. It could be the best thing in the Middle East.
Hewitt did not challenge Trump’s assertion to have visited the territory, which had suffered substantial infrastructural damage in repeated clashes between Hamas, the militant group that has dominated it for years, and Israel even before the current war.
However, the New York Times said there was no record of Trump ever having gone there – either when he was president or before.
The paper quoted a campaign official, who said:
Gaza is in Israel. President Trump has been to Israel.
In fact, Gaza has never been part of Israel, although some far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current coalition government have called for its annexation.
Read the full report here:
Bob Woodward’s new book also portrays vice president Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, as a shrewd and loyal deputy to Joe Biden but not an influential voice in his administration’s foreign policy.
Excerpts in the Washington Post recount how her forceful public tone following a meeting in July with Benjamin Netanyahu – pledging that she would “not be silent” about Palestinian suffering – contrasted with her more amicable approach in private. The difference, according to Woodward, infuriated Netanyahu, who was taken aback by her public remarks.
From the Israeli viewpoint, however, Harris had little responsibility for the administration’s approach to the conflict.
“Until now, I didn’t feel that Vice President Harris had any impact on our issues,” Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador in Washington, is quoted as saying about the period before Harris replaced Biden on the ticket. “She was in the room, but she never had an impact.”
US vice president and presidential contender Kamala Harris has said the US must not lose hope of finding a resolution to the Israel-Gaza conflict, in an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Harris said:
We must have a ceasefire and hostage deal as immediately as possible. This war has got to end. It has to end. We cannot lose some belief in the possibility of it. Because then, to your point, we throw up our hands instead of rolling up our sleeves.
Asked what “close” means when the public has been told Israel and Hamas were close to a deal, Harris responded:
Close means that a lot of the details have been worked out but details remain. And so there has been some progress but it is meaningless unless a deal is actually reached, so I don’t want to suggest to you that we should be applauded for getting close at times to a deal ...
We must work and the United States must work and not lose hope and not throw up our hands around the role we must play in urging and seeking and building toward a resolution. And the first thing that’s going to unlock that is we’ve got to get a deal done and we’re not going to give up.
Negotiations on a ceasefire have repeatedly stalled, with both sides accusing the other of refusing to agree to a deal. Israel also assassinated Hamas’ top negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, in a strike on Tehran in July.
Veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, War, offers an unvarnished peek behind the curtains of President Joe Biden’s disagreements with Benjamin Netanyahu, even as he offered Israel support publicly in the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 attacks.
Excerpts of the book were released by Woodward’s two employers, the Washington Post and CNN.
“That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad fucking guy!” Biden declared privately about the Israeli prime minister to one of his associates in the spring of 2024 as Israel’s war in Gaza intensified, Woodward writes.
Biden, according to Woodward, was cautious about setting limits on Israel’s conduct lest Netanyahu blow past them. In a one-on-one call in April, Netanyahu promised Biden that the Rafah offensive would take only three weeks, a vow the American president never took seriously. “It’ll take months,” Biden replied.
To associates, Biden complained that Netanyahu was a liar only interested in his political survival. And he concluded the same of the prime minister’s associates, saying that 18 out of 19 people who work for Netanyahu are “liars.”
White House senior deputy press secretary Emilie Simons wouldn’t be drawn on the anecdotes, telling reporters Tuesday, “They have a long-term relationship. They have a very honest and direct relationship, and I don’t have a comment on those specific anecdotes.”
British foreign secretary David Lammy is to meet leaders in Bahrain and Jordan as part of efforts to prevent the conflict in the Middle East from escalating further, Reuters reports.
Lammy will arrive in the region on Wednesday and will “reaffirm the importance of working with regional partners to press the case for restraint and will demand Iran and its proxies stop their attacks,” the foreign office said in a statement. Lammy said further:
The situation is incredibly dangerous and further escalation or miscalculation in the region is in no one’s interests …
We must not waver at this critical period to achieve ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, to get more desperately needed aid into Gaza, and secure the release of all hostages.
Abarrage of messages in the middle of the night broke the news to Ahmed Alnaouq that his family home in Deir al-Balah was not the safest place in Gaza – as he had once thought. It was on that autumn night almost a year ago that he learned that almost his entire family had been wiped out in a single Israeli airstrike.
Thousands of miles away in London, he had woken from his sleep suddenly feeling a deep unease, he says. Moments before, his father, siblings, their children and a cousin were killed – 21 relatives altogether.
“That bomb that day changed my life for ever. I live here [in London] but they’re everything I care about,” says Alnaouq.
Only a cousin and their child survived the strike, which would have been even worse had it taken place a few days earlier. More than 50 relatives had been crowded into the house because of its perceived safety, right in the centre of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza – a long way from Gaza City, which had until then been the focus of Israeli operations. But many of those relatives left just before the strike on 22 October.
Alnaouq’s experience of family members being killed in war predates the past year’s conflict. In the 2014 war in Gaza his brother was killed in another Israeli airstrike. The nature of his grief then, he says, was different. That time, he had only one brother to mourn, but this time he lost his entire family. Whenever he thought of one person, he felt his thoughts drift to another.
Read on below:
Updated
Al Jazeera cameraman in critical condition after Israeli strike on hospital
An Al Jazeera cameraman has been seriously injured in an Israeli strike on a hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.
Ali al-Attar, 27, suffered a skull fracture and internal bleeding in the brain, after two pieces of shrapnel hit his head in the strike, which targeted a police checkpoint inside the hospital next to the journalists’ tent, the Qatar-based broadcaster reported.
Doctors said his condition was critical especially in light of the depleted medical facilities at the hospital.
Other journalists were appealing to international humanitarian and media organisation to intervene to have al-Attar transferred for treatment outside Gaza.
Al-Aqsa hospital is the only functioning hospital left in central Gaza and is also home to displaced people but it has been attacked by the Israeli military on multiple occasions.
Earlier this week a 19-year-old Palestinian freelance journalist, Hassan Hamad, who had contributed to Al Jazeera, was killed in an Israeli strike on northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 126 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel in the Gaza war. Israel has been accused of deliberately targeting journalists, which it denies.
Some more details on the Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Damascus on Tuesday, via AFP.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is now reporting nine people were killed, five of them civilians including a child.
Footage from the scene showed a building engulfed in smoke, with rubble and torn metal strewn on the ground.
Electrician Adel Habib, 61, who lives in the building which was hit, said the strike was like “Judgment Day”.
I was on my way home when the explosion happened and communications and electricity were cut off so I could no longer contact my family.
These were the longest five minutes of my life until I heard the voices of my wife, children and grandchildren.
The Syrian foreign ministry condemned “in the strongest terms this brutal crime against defenceless civilians” calling for “immediate measures” to stop Israel from dragging the region “into a confrontation that will have disastrous consequences”.
Al Jazeera has just reported “a massive airstrike” Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, about 30km east of Beirut, and at least four strikes on Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut believed to be a Hezbollah stronghold and where its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed a week and a half ago.
Summary of the day so far
It’s 1am in Tel Aviv, Gaza and Beirut. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
Seven people, including women and children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Damascus on Tuesday, the Syrian defence ministry said. The strike obliterated the first three floors of a building in the Mezzeh neighbourhood, east of Damascus, according to AP. At least 11 others were also wounded in the attack, the Syrian ministry said, adding that they were only preliminary figures as rescuers are still searching for survivors under the rubble.
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has cancelled plans for a visit to Washington scheduled for this week, according to a Pentagon spokesperson. The Israeli minister was expected to visit Washington and meet with his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, on Wednesday. The announcement came after reports that Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered Gallant not to travel to the Pentagon for talks on Iran until the Israeli prime minister receives a phone call with Joe Biden and until the Israeli security cabinet approves the response to Iran’s missile attack.
Israel said it is expanding its ground operation in Lebanon with the deployment of a fourth division. The number of Israeli troops on the ground is now likely to number 15,000. The rapid deployment of four divisions operating across south Lebanon, alongside evacuation orders for Lebanese villages on the coast upwards of 20 miles from the blue line and the intensive bombing of the country’s south and east and the capital, suggests Israel is preparing for a wider push north against the Lebanese militia.
The Israeli military launched new airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Tuesday. The night before, Israel again bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs where Hezbollah is headquartered and said it had killed Suhail Hussein Husseini, commander of Hezbollah’s logistical headquarters. Lebanon’s mayor, Abdallah Darwich, said there is “no safe place in Beirut” because of Israel’s attacks. Lebanon’s capital city has been the site of an intense Israeli bombing campaign over the last few weeks, flattening residential buildings and heavily populated civilian areas.
The Lebanese health ministry said on Tuesday that 36 people have been killed in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours. At least 1,400 Lebanese people, including civilians, medics and Hezbollah fighters, have been killed and 1.2 million – about a quarter of the population – have been driven from their homes since fighting escalated three weeks ago. In Gaza, at least 41,965 Palestinian people have been killed in Israeli strikes and 97,590 injured since 7 October 2023, according to figures by Gaza’s health ministry on Tuesday.
Fighting also continues to rage in Gaza. Israeli airstrikes killed 17 people in a refugee camp in the centre of the Palestinian territory on Tuesday, medics said. At least 15 people, including two women and four children, were killed on Tuesday in ground fighting in the Jabaliya neighbourhood of Gaza City, the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital said, after new Israeli evacuation orders for the city were issued on Monday. The IDF has intensified bombing of the area and moved in tanks. The Israeli military said it killed about 20 militants in Jabaliya and located a large quantity of weapons, including grenades and rifles.
The Israeli military also ordered the full evacuation of all three main hospitals in northern Gaza – Al-Awda, Indonesian, and Kamal Adwan hospitals, the territory’s health ministry said. Israeli forces shot at the administration office at the Kamal Adwan hospital, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which said that the complex was being besieged. Médecins Sans Frontières warned that the Israeli evacuation orders will worsen the humanitarian catastrophe in the Palestinian territory. The three northern Gaza hospitals “must be protected at all costs”, it added.
Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces have taken out the would-be successors of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, without naming them. The Israeli prime minister also warned the people of Lebanon they could face “destruction and suffering” like the Palestinians in Gaza. Earlier on Tuesday, Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant said Hashem Safieddine, the man expected to replace Nasrallah, had probably been “eliminated”. Hezbollah has not confirmed Safieddine’s death.
Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem, said that the question of who will succeed Nasrallah remains undecided. In a defiant speech on Tuesday, Qassem said the group’s military capabilities were still functional despite two weeks of heavy Israeli airstrikes. Hezbollah had replaced all of its senior commanders, he said, and Israeli ground troops had not made any advances after a week of fighting. Two Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut’s Shia-majority southern suburbs almost immediately after Qassem’s speech.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, warned Israel that any attack on Iran’s infrastructure will be met with retaliation, a week after Tehran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel. On Monday evening Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported that Tehran’s military had prepared at least ten scenarios preparing for an expected Israeli attack.
Hezbollah fired another barrage of rockets into Israel on Tuesday and warned that it would intensify attacks on Israel, including the northern port city of Haifa, if it continues to strike Lebanon. The IDF said Hezbollah launched more than 170 rockets across the border. The Israeli government warned residents north of the coastal city of Haifa to limit activities, prompting the closure of more schools.
Israel’s home front command tightened restrictions on civilians in the port city of Haifa on Tuesday in the wake of a barrage of rockets launched by Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah said it had fired rockets towards the Haifa and Krayot area in northern Israel, having launched “a large salvo of missiles”. About seven people were injured in the attack, according to reports. Hezbollah rockets also hit Haifa early on Monday morning, in what was the first direct attack on the city that evaded the military’s usually reliable air defence systems.
Hezbollah said it killed and injured Israeli soldiers crossing the Lebanese border near a UN position near the al-Labouneh forest, in the western section of the border area. Hezbollah said that the attack forced Israeli soldiers to withdraw behind the border.
Ireland’s prime minister, Simon Harris, said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdrawal from a firing position next to Irish peacekeepers on the Lebanese border was “extremely welcome”. Harris said he had spoken to UN secretary general, António Guterres, about his deep concerns about their safety after the IDF requested them to vacate their positions to make way for their war on Hezbollah.
António Guterres, the UN secretary general, warned that Lebanon is on the verge of “an all-out war” and Gaza is “in a death spiral.” Guterres, speaking to reporters on Tuesday, said that the Middle East “is a powder keg with many parties holding the match” and that the conflict is “getting worse by the hour”. He said he has written to Netanyahu warning him that draft Israeli legislation to prevent the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) from working in the occupied Palestinian territory would be a “catastrophe”.
The World Food Programme country director in Lebanon voiced concern about the country’s food supply, saying thousands of hectares of farmland across the country’s south has burned or been abandoned. “Agriculture-wise, food production-wise, (there is) extraordinary concern for Lebanon’s ability to continue to feed itself,” Matthew Hollingworth told reporters on Tuesday.
Joe Biden, the US president, pulled out of scheduled talks between the leaders of the US, UK, France and Germany on the Middle East and Ukraine on Saturday. Biden will no longer be travelling to Berlin in order to focus on the response to Hurricane Milton, expected to make landfall as an “extremely dangerous hurricane” in Florida on Wednesday night, local time, the White House said.
Israeli forces detained at least 30 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, including a journalist, Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reports, citing updates from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society and the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs. Over 11,000 Palestinians have been detained in Israeli raids across the occupied West Bank since last October, the groups have said.
Prosecutors in the Netherlands are considering a request to open a criminal case against senior Israeli intelligence officials for allegedly interfering with an investigation by the international criminal court (ICC).
Updated
US says Hezbollah ceasefire call shows it is 'getting battered'
A US state department spokesperson said Hezbollah’s call for a ceasefire earlier on Tuesday shows the group is on the back foot and “getting battered”.
Hezbollah’s acting secretary general, Naim Qassem, said during a speech earlier today that the group’s military capabilities were still functional despite two weeks of heavy Israeli airstrikes, including Beirut bombings that killed the group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and much of the militia’s top command.
Qassem also said the group supported the efforts of Lebanon’s speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, to secure a ceasefire, without providing further details on any conditions demanded by Hezbollah.
US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller, at a briefing in Washington on Tuesday, said:
For a year, you had the world calling for this ceasefire, you had Hezbollah refusing to agree to one, and now that Hezbollah is on the back foot and is getting battered, suddenly they’ve changed their tune and want a ceasefire.
He added that the US continues to want a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
Miller also said the Biden administration no longer supports an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon, according to the Washington Post’s John Hudson:
Biden administration no longer supporting an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon, says State Department spokesman Matthew Miller: "Yes, we do support Israel launching these incursions to degrade Hezbollah's infrastructure."
— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) October 8, 2024
Updated
Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported that a series of Israeli strikes on south Beirut caused “massive destruction” and razed four buildings on Tuesday
The Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs “are still being subjected to a series of strikes, the latest of which hit the main road at Al-Kafaat, and caused massive destruction” in several south Beirut neighbourhoods, AFP quoted NNA as saying.
The Lebanese agency said “four adjacent residential buildings collapsed in the Burj al-Barajneh area after the recent Israeli strike”.
Médecins Sans Frontières warned that the latest Israeli evacuation orders for parts of northern Gaza, which include three main hospitals in the area, worsen the humanitarian catastrophe in the Palestinian territory.
On Tuesday, Israel sent tanks deeper into Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip and issued evacuation orders to residents of Jabalia and nearby Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians were instructed to head to a humanitarian-designated zone in Al-Mawasi in the south of the crowded coastal territory.
These forced mass evacuations of homes and the bombing of neighbourhoods by Israeli forces are turning the north of Gaza into an “unlivable wasteland”, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Tuesday.
The medical organisation called for Israeli forces to “urgently halt evacuation orders, ensure the protection of civilians, and allow desperately needed humanitarian supplies to enter the north.”
It said that the so-called humanitarian zone where people were ordered to move to “remains unsafe for civilians and aid workers as Israeli forces continue to repeatedly strike the area.”
It said the three main hospitals in northern Gaza – Indonesian, Kamal Adwan, and Al-Awda hospitals – “must be protected at all costs”, adding that “Each time a medical facility is evacuated or attacked, people lose access to lifesaving medical care.”
Israeli forces orders evacuation of three main hospitals in northern Gaza
ActionAid said it is “gravely alarmed” by reports from Gaza’s health ministry that the Israeli military has ordered the full evacuation of the Al-Awda, Indonesian, and Kamal Adwan hospitals in northern Gaza.
Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan hospital, which lies between Beit Lahia and Jabalia, told CNN on Tuesday:
The army spoke to me directly in threatening language that tomorrow all the patients will be forced out of Kamal Adwan hospital … or else we would subject our lives to danger.
He said the hospital was the only operating hospital in northern Gaza and that it would continue to provide medical services. He added:
Putting the hospital out of service would be a big disaster for the people who need [it] … There are still many patients in the hospital and there are many babies and children in the neonatal unit, so it is difficult to evacuate.
Israeli forces shot at the administration office at the Kamal Adwan hospital, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which said that the complex was being besieged.
Similar evacuation orders were issued at the Indonesian hospital and the Al-Awda hospital, it said.
ActionAid said the Al-Awda hospital is a “vital healthcare facility serving the most vulnerable in Gaza”, and said that forcing its evacuation “is not only unconscionable but also a violation of international humanitarian law.”
We reported earlier that Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, cancelled his visit to Washington after reports that it was blocked by his prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Gallant was scheduled to meet with the US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, on Wednesday to discuss coordinating with the US around how the Israel will retaliate against Iran’s missile attack last week.
But on Tuesday evening, Netanyahu notified Gallant that his trip would not be approved until the prime minister receives a phone call with Joe Biden and until the Israeli security cabinet approves the response to Iran’s missile attack, Axios reported, citing Israeli officials.
Since the Iranian attack on Israel last week, Netanyahu has been trying to coordinate a phone call with Biden, but it still hasn’t happened, sources told the outlet.
Efforts are under way to schedule a phone call between the Israeli and US leaders, a source said, with a call expected to take place in the coming days.
Lebanese health ministry says 36 people killed, 150 injured in Israeli attacks on Tuesday
The Lebanese health ministry said 36 people have been killed in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours.
Another 150 people have been injured in Lebanon, it said.
The latest figure brings the total number of people killed in Lebanon since October 2023 to 2,119, most of them in the past two weeks, the ministry said.
Lebanon’s transport minister, Ali Hamieh, said his country has received “assurances” that Israel will not target its international airport but that those assurances fell short of guarantees.
Beirut “seeks to keep its public airport, seaports and land crossings – chief among them the Rafik Hariri International Airport – functional,” he told AFP on Tuesday.
“Ongoing international calls have given us a sort of assurance” the airport will be spared Israeli strikes, Hamieh added, however “there is a big difference between assurances and guarantees”.
On Monday, the US warned Israel not to attack the Beirut airport or the roads leading to it, after repeated Israeli strikes near the facility.
Hamieh denied Israeli accusations that Hezbollah was using the airport and border crossings to smuggle weapons. The airport “is subject to Lebanese laws and to the scrutiny of various relevant departments and security agencies”, he said.
Hezbollah has warned today that it would intensify attacks on Israel, including the northern port city of Haifa, if it continues to strike Lebanon.
The Israeli enemy’s intensifying strikes” mean that “Haifa and other locations will be targeted by our rockets just as much as Kiryat Shmona, Metula, and other” locations, the group said, referring to locations right on the line with Lebanon in norther Israel, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
The Israeli army earlier reported that 85 projectiles were fired from Lebanon at northern Israel, including Haifa.
Early pictures are coming through of the additional Israeli strikes on southern Beirut tonight.
As air strikes continue.
This is all still unfolding and we hope to have more images soon from closer to the affected areas.
Here is a post from Israeli public broadcasting.
דיווחים בלבנון על גל תקיפות בבקעת הלבנון ובביירות@OmerShahar123 pic.twitter.com/AbtEyTfuqj
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) October 8, 2024
Updated
New Israeli airstrikes reported in south Beirut
Israel’s military has launched fresh airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, according to reports.
From the BBC’s Nafiseh Kohnavard:
Thick clouds of smoke rise from Beirut’s southern suburbs after the Israeli airstrike a few min ago pic.twitter.com/rntvuCslPg
— Nafiseh Kohnavard (@nafisehkBBC) October 8, 2024
As we reported earlier, the Israeli military issued a new evacuation warning earlier on Tuesday for residents in specific buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs including Haret Hreik.
Ireland’s prime minister, Simon Harris, has said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdrawal from a firing position next to Irish peacekeepers on the Lebanese border was “extremely welcome”.
Harris said he had spoken to UN secretary general António Guterres about his deep concerns about their safety after the IDF requested them to vacate their positions to make way for their war on Hezbollah. Harris said:
The safety of our soldiers is paramount and when I spoke to Secretary General Guterres last night he was completely at one with me on the urgency of the situation.
Guterres said after speaking to Harris that he had a number of “démarches with different entities” and that those Israeli tanks and “other armed elements” have left.
Here are some of the latest images coming out of the newswires from Lebanon.
Israeli defence minister Gallant cancels visit to Washington
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has cancelled plans for a visit to Washington scheduled for this week, according to a Pentagon spokesperson.
The Israeli minister was expected to visit Washington and meet with his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, on Wednesday.
The Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, Sabrina Singh, said on Tuesday:
We were just informed that Minister Gallant will be postponing his trip to Washington DC. Secretary Austin looks forward to seeing him soon.
Asked the reason for the delay, she referred reporters to Israeli officials. She said the two defence ministers had not spoken by phone on Tuesday, and that she was not aware of any planned call.
The announcement comes after reports that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had been blocking Gallant’s visit to the US.
The Jerusalem Post reported that Netanyahu had ordered Gallant not to travel to the Pentagon for talks on Iran until such time as Joe Biden calls him.
Sources indicated to the outlet that Netanyahu had probably cancelled the flight to prevent Gallant from getting any credit for solidifying a joint US-Israel strategy on Iran.
Seven civilians including women and children killed in Israeli airstrike in Damascus, says defence ministry
The Syrian defence ministry said seven people, including women and children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Damascus on Tuesday.
At least 11 others were also wounded in the attack, the ministry said, adding that they were only preliminary figures as rescuers are still searching for survivors under the rubble.
As we reported earlier, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four people were killed in the airstrike.
The strike obliterated the first three floors of a building in the Mezzeh neighbourhood, east of Damascus, according to an AP journalist at the scene. The AP report says:
The debris covered the surrounding area, crushing several cars. Ambulances and excavators arrived at the scene to rescue survivors and clear the wreckage.
Four people were killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting a building in Damascus on Tuesday, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Israeli strike hit a building “frequented by senior Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah operatives, as well as a car parked in front of the building,” AFP reported, citing the war monitor.
As we reported earlier, Syrian state media reported that an Israeli strike targeted a residential building in the Mezzeh neighbourhood of Damascus. Loud explosions were reported in the Syrian capital.
The UN secretary general, António Guteres, has told Irish broadcaster RTÉ that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have left the peace-keeping post, post 6-52, on the Lebanese border where Irish troops were stationed. Guterres said:
I can now tell you that those Israeli tanks and other armed elements that were around 652 position have left.
The close proximity of the Israeli position to the Irish UN troops has triggered high level concern within the UN and Ireland over the safety of Unifil troops.
Summary of the day so far
It’s 9.15pm in Gaza, Beirut and Tel Aviv. Here’s where things stand:
Israel said it is expanding its ground operation in Lebanon with the deployment of a fourth division. The number of Israeli troops on the ground is now likely to number 15,000. The rapid deployment of four divisions operating across south Lebanon, alongside evacuation orders for Lebanese villages on the coast upwards of 20 miles from the blue line and the intensive bombing of the country’s south and east and the capital, suggests Israel is preparing for a wider push north against the Lebanese militia.
The Israeli military issued new evacuation warnings for residents in specific buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Tuesday ahead of expected Israeli airstrikes. Overnight, Israel again bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs where Hezbollah is headquartered and said it had killed Suhail Hussein Husseini, commander of Hezbollah’s logistical headquarters. Lebanon’s mayor, Abdallah Darwich, said there is “no safe place in Beirut” because of Israel’s attacks. Lebanon’s capital city has been the site of an intense Israeli bombing campaign over the last few weeks, flattening residential buildings and heavily populated civilian areas.
At least 1,400 Lebanese people, including civilians, medics and Hezbollah fighters, have been killed and 1.2 million – about a quarter of the population – have been driven from their homes since fighting escalated three weeks ago. In Gaza, at least 41,965 Palestinian people have been killed in Israeli strikes and 97,590 injured since 7 October 2023, according to figures by Gaza’s health ministry on Tuesday.
Fighting also continues to rage in Gaza. Israeli airstrikes killed 17 people in a refugee camp in the centre of the Palestinian territory on Tuesday, medics said. At least 15 people, including two women and four children, were killed on Tuesday in ground fighting in the Jabaliya neighbourhood of Gaza City, the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital said, after new Israeli evacuation orders for the city were issued on Monday. The IDF has intensified bombing of the area and moved in tanks. The Israeli military said it killed about 20 militants in Jabaliya and located a large quantity of weapons, including grenades and rifles.
Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces have taken out the would-be successors of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, without naming them. The Israeli prime minister also warned the people of Lebanon they could face “destruction and suffering” like the Palestinians in Gaza. Earlier on Tuesday, Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant said Hashem Safieddine, the man expected to replace Nasrallah, had probably been “eliminated”. Hezbollah has not confirmed Safieddine’s death.
Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem, said that the question of who will succeed Nasrallah remains undecided. In a defiant speech on Tuesday, Qassem said the group’s military capabilities were still functional despite two weeks of heavy Israeli airstrikes. Hezbollah had replaced all of its senior commanders, he said, and Israeli ground troops had not made any advances after a week of fighting. Two Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut’s Shia-majority southern suburbs almost immediately after Qassem’s speech.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, warned Israel that any attack on Iran’s infrastructure will be met with retaliation, a week after Tehran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel. On Monday evening Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported that Tehran’s military had prepared at least ten scenarios preparing for an expected Israeli attack.
António Guterres, the UN secretary general, warned that Lebanon is on the verge of “an all-out war” and Gaza is “in a death spiral.” Guterres, speaking to reporters on Tuesday, said that the Middle East “is a powder keg with many parties holding the match” and that the conflict is “getting worse by the hour”. He said he has written to Netanyahu warning him that draft Israeli legislation to prevent the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) from working in the occupied Palestinian territory would be a “catastrophe”.
Hezbollah said it killed and injured Israeli soldiers crossing the Lebanese border near a UN position near the al-Labouneh forest, in the western section of the border area. Hezbollah said that the attack forced Israeli soldiers to withdraw behind the border.
Israel’s home front command tightened restrictions on civilians in the port city of Haifa on Tuesday in the wake of a barrage of rockets launched by Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah said it had fired rockets towards the Haifa and Krayot area in northern Israel, having launched “a large salvo of missiles”. About seven people were injured in the attack, according to reports. Hezbollah rockets also hit Haifa early on Monday morning, in what was the first direct attack on the city that evaded the military’s usually reliable air defence systems.
The World Food Programme country director in Lebanon voiced concern about the country’s food supply, saying thousands of hectares of farmland across the country’s south has burned or been abandoned. “Agriculture-wise, food production-wise, (there is) extraordinary concern for Lebanon’s ability to continue to feed itself,” Matthew Hollingworth told reporters on Tuesday.
Joe Biden, the US president, has pulled out of scheduled talks between the leaders of the US, UK, France and Germany on the Middle East and Ukraine on Saturday. Biden will no longer be travelling to Berlin in order to focus on the response to Hurricane Milton, expected to make landfall as an “extremely dangerous hurricane” in Florida on Wednesday night, local time, the White House said.
Israeli forces detained at least 30 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, including a journalist, Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reports, citing updates from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society and the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs. Over 11,000 Palestinians have been detained in Israeli raids across the occupied West Bank since last October, the groups have said.
Prosecutors in the Netherlands are considering a request to open a criminal case against senior Israeli intelligence officials for allegedly interfering with an investigation by the international criminal court (ICC).
Israeli strike targets Damascus residential building – Syrian state media
An Israeli strike targeted a residential building in the Mezzah suburb west of Damascus, Syria’s state news agency reported.
Preliminary reports indicated that the strike had resulted in injuries among civilians, according to state media, Reuters reported.
Earlier state media reports said Syrian air defences had intercepted “hostile” targets in the vicinity of Damascus, the country’s capital.
Israeli military issues new evacuation orders in Beirut's southern suburbs
The Israeli military has issued new evacuation warnings for residents in specific buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs ahead of expected Israeli airstrikes.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted maps of the specific buildings to X, ordering people to evacuate the buildings and surrounding area.
#عاجل ‼️ انذار عاجل إلى سكان الضاحية الجنوبية في حارة حريك وحدث بيروت وتحديدًا في المباني المحددة في الخرائط وتلك المجاورة لها:
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) October 8, 2024
🔴أنتم متواجدون بالقرب من منشآت ومصالح تابعة لحزب الله وسيعمل ضدها جيش الدفاع على مدى الزمني القريب
🔴من أجل سلامتكم وسلامة أبناء عائلتكم عليكم اخلاء… pic.twitter.com/W00ws3Q8bh
Here’s the full video statement by Benjamin Netanyahu, who said Israeli forces killed former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s potential replacement, Hashem Safieddine.
Netanyahu said Israel’s military had “degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities” and that it “took out thousands of terrorists, including Nasrallah himself and Nasrallah’s replacement, and the replacement of the replacement.”
The Israeli leader also warned the people of Lebanon they could face “destruction and suffering” like the Palestinians in Gaza. Addressing the Lebanese people, Netanyahu said:
You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza. I say to you, the people of Lebanon: Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.
This is a message to the people of Lebanon: pic.twitter.com/btMQR0Xwtn
— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) October 8, 2024
Lisa O’Carroll is a senior correspondent for the Guardian
Moshe Tur-Paz, an Israeli MP, has said that there is nothing it can do if UN peace keeping forces on the border with Lebanon do not respond to its request to move for their own safety.
In an interview on public radio in Ireland, where the prime minister has expressed deep concern about the safety of the Irish troops on the so-called blue line, Tur-Paz said:
Yes, Israel is calling uniform forces to move back because the terrorists of the terror organisation Hezbollah, which is threatening not only Israel, but all the Western world, is shooting towards Israel for now over a year, … including from the kilometres close to the border where the Unifil soldiers are stationed at the moment
So we have told the Unifil soldiers, including the Ireland soldiers to move back in in order for us to fight the terror organisation Hezbollah without threatening the soldiers of Unifil.
Asked by RTE what would happen if they do not move, he responded: “There is nothing I can do if someone wants to put his head in a lion’s mouth.”
He went on to say Unifil had “failed” to defend the Israeli citizens, but added that as a former soldier he knew the Israeli Defence Force would “know how to take care” and make sure UN soldiers were not hurt.
Irish UN troops maintain a large base, Camp Shamrock, and two outposts along the Blue Line – the de facto border between Israel and Lebanon.
Over the weekend, Ireland’s foreign minister Micheál Martin said Irish personnel were operating on level 3 which means they are to shelter in place and remain in bunkers.
On Monday night, the taoiseach also raised the matter with UN secretary general António Guterres. But RTE phone-ins have been hearing from concerned families of Irish solders who want them to evacuate.
Netanyahu warns people in Lebanon could face destruction 'like Gaza'
Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Lebanese people that they could face “destruction and suffering” like the Palestinians in Gaza if they don’t “free” the country from Hezbollah.
“You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza,” the Israeli prime minister said in a video address directed to the people of Lebanon.
I say to you, the people of Lebanon: Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.
Almost 42,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since last October, according to the territory’s health ministry.
Much of Gaza’s health care system has been destroyed in the attacks, along with its infrastructure and schools. The destruction has not only forced millions of people to leave their homes but also made it impossible for many to return.
Israel says the aim of its assault on Lebanon is to allow approximately 60,000 displaced people to return to their homes across northern Israel.
Updated
Netanyahu says Israel has 'taken out' former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's successors
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israeli forces have taken out the would-be successors of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, without naming them.
Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message:
We’ve degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities. We took out thousands of terrorists, including Nasrallah himself and Nasrallah’s replacement, and the replacement of the replacement.
Earlier, Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said Hashem Safieddine, the man expected to replace Nasrallah, who was assassinated by the Israeli military late last month in Beirut, had probably been “eliminated” (see post at 14.12 for more details).
It was not immediately clear whom Netanyahu meant by the “replacement of the replacement”.
Updated
'No place is safe in Gaza', UN secretary general says
Here are some more comments from the UN secretary general, António Guterres, who has been addressing the UN.
He was quoted by Al Jazeera as having said:
The nightmare in Gaza is now entering an atrocious, abominable second year. This has been a year of crises. Humanitarian crisis. Political crisis. Diplomatic crisis. And a moral crisis…
International law is unambiguous: civilians everywhere must be respected and protected – and their essential needs must be met, including through humanitarian assistance.
“No place is safe in Gaza, and no one is safe,” Guterres, who has told world leaders that Lebanon is on the brink of becoming a second Gaza, said.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said he has written to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, warning him that draft Israeli legislation to prevent the UN Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa) from working in the occupied Palestinian territory would be a “catastrophe”.
He said:
Such a measure would suffocate efforts to ease human suffering and tensions in Gaza, and indeed, the entire occupied Palestinian territory. It would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.
In July, the Israeli parliament gave preliminary approval to a bill that declares Unrwa a terrorist organisation and proposes to sever relations with the body, which Israel has accused of collaborating with Hamas, something vehemently denied by the organisation.
Unrwa provides education, health and aid to millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, with the agency acting as the backbone of aid operations in Gaza since last October.
Updated
The Israeli military says it has detected and intercepted two launches crossing the Gaza Strip, shortly after the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) said it had launched rockets towards Sderot in southern Israel. The PIJ the second largest armed group in Gaza. It rejects any political peace process. More details soon…
Updated
Israel tightens restrictions on civilians in Haifa area after Hezbollah rocket attack
Israel’s Home Front Command has tightened restrictions on civilians in the port city of Haifa in the wake of a barrage of rockets launched by Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“The activity scale will be changed from partial activity to limited activity, meaning educational activities are prohibited,” the military said, adding that the rest of the country’s guidelines remain unchanged.
Hezbollah said earlier today it had fired rockets towards the Haifa and Krayot area in northern Israel, having launched “a large salvo of missiles”. About seven people were injured in the attack, according to reports.
The Israeli military said “85 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory”, with the IDF later saying a further 20 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory.
Hezbollah rockets also hit Haifa early on Monday morning, in what was the first direct attack on the city that evaded the military’s usually reliable air defence systems. Several people were reported to have been injured in that attack.
Haifa is Israel’s biggest port and contains petrochemical plants and oil refineries, making it a target for Hezbollah to try to strike.
Updated
We reported earlier that the leaders of the US, UK, France and Germany were set to hold talks on the Middle East and Ukraine in Berlin on Saturday (see post at 13.59).
It has since been announced that the US president, Joe Biden, is pulling out of the trip to focus on the response to Hurricane Milton, expected to make landfall as an “extremely dangerous hurricane” in Florida on Wednesday night, local time.
A statement from the White House reads:
Given the projected trajectory and strength of Hurricane Milton, President Biden is postponing his upcoming trip to Germany and Angola in order to oversee preparations for and the response to Hurricane Milton, in addition to the ongoing response to the impacts of Hurricane Helene across the southeast.
The office of Keir Starmer, the UK’s prime minister, said he still plans to travel to Berlin on Saturday for talks with the leaders of France and Germany, two of the three other members of the so called “quad”.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images coming out of the newswires from Gaza:
Several civilians have been killed and others injured in Israeli attacks today across the Gaza Strip, Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported.
Several civilians were reported to have been killed at the western entrance to the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
One man was killed and others injured after an Israeli warplane targeted land near the entrance to the Gaza town of Zawayda, according to the Wafa report, which has not been verified by the Guardian.
Elsewhere, three civilians were reportedly injured by an Israeli airstrike on a tower in the the al-Alami area of the Jablia refugee camp in the territory’s north, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic urban refugee camps.
The Israeli army has surrounded the northern city of Jabalia since Sunday, as well as other nearby neighbourhoods, ordering residents to flee southward towards the so-called “humanitarian zone” of al-Mawasi, even though it has been targeted in deadly Israeli airstrikes and is severely overcrowded.
The Israeli military claims its forces are in Jabalia to fight Hamas militants, dismantle military infrastructure and prevent Hamas from regrouping.
There have also been reports today of a house being bombed in the al-Rimal neighbourhood in the centre of Gaza city.
Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 43 Palestinians in Gaza have so far been killed by the Israeli military on Tuesday.
Updated
Prosecutors in the Netherlands are considering a request to open a criminal case against senior Israeli intelligence officials for allegedly interfering with an investigation by the international criminal court (ICC).
The request was filed last week by a group of 20 complainants, most of whom are Palestinian, asking the Dutch prosecution service to examine allegations Israel tried to derail the ICC’s inquiry into alleged crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.
According to lawyers for the group, the criminal complaint was filed in response to an investigation by the Guardian revealing how Israeli intelligence attempted over a nine-year period to undermine, influence and allegedly intimidate the ICC chief prosecutor’s office.
The joint investigation with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call prompted the Dutch government to raise concerns earlier this year with Israel’s ambassador to the Netherlands.
You can read the full story by my colleague, Harry Davies, here:
During a briefing with the military’s northern command, Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said Hezbollah “is a battered and broken organisation, without significant command and fire capabilities, with a disintegrated leadership following the elimination of Hassan Nasrallah”.
He earlier suggested that Hashem Safieddine, the most likely replacement for Nasrallah, has also most likely been killed (see post at 14.12 for more details).
On Friday, the Israeli military said it had killed about 250 Hezbollah fighters, including a number of battalion and company commanders, since the start of its ground invasion. These figures have not been independently verified by us yet.
There is no safe place left in Beirut, city's mayor says
As we have been reporting, Beirut, Lebanon’s capital city, has been the site of an intense Israeli bombing campaign over the last few weeks, which has flattened residential buildings and heavily populated civilian areas. The Israeli attacks have largely focused on Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut where airstrikes have frequently hit what Israel claimed to be Hezbollah targets. Beirut bombings by the Israeli military last month killed Hezbollah’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah and much of the militia’s top command. Many civilians were reported to have been killed in the attacks on the capital, which have sparked a humanitarian and refugee crisis.
The city’s mayor, Abdallah Darwich, has given an interview to the BBC, in which he says there is “no safe place in Beirut” because of Israel’s attacks.
He said that it is not just Hezbollah strongholds being targeted, but other areas too.
Darwich told BBC News:
You do not know who is living in this building or that building, so you do not know if there is a target there. You can no longer say Beirut is safe. Where the next Israeli target is, nobody knows.
The BBC reports:
Darwich has closed all of the city’s 139 public schools and repurposed them into shelters. But all are now full, holding 51,000 refugees in largely unsanitary conditions. More people are on the streets around Beirut.
After the 2006 war, before Hezbollah became the major force in Lebanon, Gulf states donated vast sums of money to help the country rebuild. Banners hung in Beirut proclaiming, ‘Thank You Qatar’ and ‘Thank You Saudi’.
“Now there is no ‘Thank You Qatar’, no ‘Thank You Saudi’,” the mayor says. “Now nobody is promising to help us rebuild.”
The city was still reeling from the combined effects of the 2019 financial crisis, the port blast, and an earthquake, before this war began.
“Give us peace in Beirut, and we can fix everything,” Darwich says. “But we cannot live in this cycle of destruction.”
Here are some more quotes from Matthew Hollingworth, the World Food Programme country director in Lebanon, who has been speaking to a Geneva press briefing (see his earlier comments at the post at 13.45).
He voiced concern about Lebanon’s food supply, saying thousands of hectares of farmland across the country’s south has burned or been abandoned, adding that harvests will not occur and produce is rotting in fields.
Hollingworth told reporters:
Agriculture-wise, food production-wise, (there is) extraordinary concern for Lebanon’s ability to continue to feed itself.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said as far back as April that Israeli airstrikes had turned southern Lebanon into a “devastated agricultural area” (Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire since last October – it is over the last few weeks that Israeli attacks on Lebanon have intensified).
“Eight hundred hectares have been completely damaged, 340,000 heads of livestock have died, and about 75% of farmers have lost their final source of income,” Mikati said at the time. “This problem will extend to the coming years,” he added.
Hezbollah says it has killed and injured Israeli soldiers crossing the Lebanese border
William Christou has been reporting for the Guardian from Beirut
Hezbollah has claimed in a statement to have killed and injured Israeli soldiers crossing the Lebanese border near a UN position near the al-Labouneh forest, in the western section of the border area. Hezbollah said that the attack forced Israeli soldiers to withdraw behind the border. These claims have not been independently verified yet.
Israel deployed a fourth division to its northern border today in support of its “Operation Northern Arrow”, which started with an intense aerial campaign on 23 September and expanded on Monday to include ground offensives across the border.
The Hezbollah attack came after its deputy secretary general Naim Qassem said in a speech today that the group is still capable of repelling an Israeli advance into Lebanese territory in the south.
Updated
Warning sirens are sounding again in northern Israel, the IDF reports. Earlier two significant barrages of projectiles were aimed at Haifa. The current alert is for Rosh HaNikra, in Israel’s far north, close to southern Lebanon.
In its lead editorial this morning, Israeli newspaper Haaretz has accused finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of “promoting a dangerous agenda”, claiming the pair “are shamelessly exploiting 7 October to re-settle Gaza.”
In the editorial, it writes:
Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir are sticking to their mission of exploiting what they see as a historic opportunity that fell into the Jewish people’s lap last 7 October.
Their goal is to occupy the Gaza Strip and settle it with Jews, and this goal dictates their positions, including their irresponsible willingness to sacrifice the hostages. This is also what lies behind their demand to transfer responsibility for humanitarian aid in Gaza to the Israel Defense Forces. The problem is that their hunger for occupation is receiving an attentive ear from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Smotrich doesn’t care what the IDF thinks … and he doesn’t hide the fact that his goals are different from the ones set by the government. And even though he is finance minister, he is similarly indifferent to the heavy economic costs of administering Gaza’s aid. All these are esoteric considerations for someone who views transferring responsibility for humanitarian aid as a step on the road to imposing a de facto military government on Gaza.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are promoting a dangerous agenda that contradicts the declared goals of the war as well as the interests of sovereign Israel, which still sees itself as part of the family of nations. They must not be allowed to carry out their plan and thereby endanger Israel.
Updated
Israel’s Kann network reports that Israeli forces have raised their flag in Maroun El Ras inside southern Lebanon. Earlier Israel’s military claimed to have taken “operational control” of what it said was a Hezbollah combat compound. The village is adjacent to the UN-drawn blue line that separates the two countries, on the Lebanese side.
דגל ישראל מונף במארון א-ראס שבדרום לבנון@ItayBlumental pic.twitter.com/fW5MiculIL
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) October 8, 2024
Israel has described the invasion into Lebanese territory as “limited, localised, targeted operational activities”. 1.2 million Lebanese people have been forced from their homes by Israel’s airstrikes on Lebanon. Tens of thousands of Israelis have also had to flee northern Israel due a year long campaign of fighting between Israel, Hezbollah and other anti-Israeli forces in the region.
A shipment of medical aid from France has arrived in Beirut. Lebanon’s National News Agency reports that caretaker public health minister Dr Firas Abiad was there to receive it. He is quoted as saying:
This is the third plane to arrive today at Rafic Hariri international airport. The effort we see is a joint effort between the state of Qatar and France to deliver aid to Lebanon, and this will result in greater ease and a greater quantity of aid that will reach Lebanon.
Earlier aid also arrived from Qatar, with a representative of the Qatari government saying “This is a message to the international community as a whole that the door of cooperation is open with the Lebanese Republic in order to support our brothers in Lebanon, especially since we are talking about more than 1.2 million displaced persons.”
Israel defense minister Gallant says most likely Hezbollah replacement for Nasrallah has also likely been killed
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, has suggested that the most likely replacement for assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has also most likely been killed.
Israeli media reports that in comments during a visit to the IDF Northern Command, Gallant referred to senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, saying:
Hezbollah is an organization without a leader, Nasrallah was eliminated, his replacement was probably also eliminated. This has a dramatic effect on everything that happens. There is no one to make decisions, no one to act.
The actions we are taking are being observed all over the Middle East. When the smoke in Lebanon clears, they will realise in Iran that they have lost their most valuable asset, which is Hezbollah.
Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem, said earlier today in a speech broadcast in Lebanon that the question of who will succeed Nasrallah remains undecided, with Qassem saying the group will choose a new leader soon but that it is a complex procedure.
Qassem claimed that Israel’s military operation inside southern Lebanon had been a failure, and that the group’s military capabilities were intact. At least 100 projectiles are estimated to have been launched by Hezbollah on Tuesday aimed in the direction of the Israeli city of Haifa. Buildings were damaged and one person was reported lightly wounded.
Israel has said it is expanding its ground operation there with the deployment of a fourth division.
The leaders of the US, UK, France and Germany are set to hold talks on the Middle East and Ukraine in Berlin on Saturday, the spokesperson for British prime minister Keir Starmer has said.
“The prime minister will travel to a meeting of the Quad in Berlin on Saturday. Leaders will discuss the situation in Ukraine as well as the concerning developments in the Middle East,” Starmer’s spokesperson told reporters, referring to the ‘Quad’ grouping of the UK, the US, France and Germany.
Starmer has rejected repeated calls for a complete ban on UK arms exports to Israel. Addressing the House of Commons on the anniversary of the 7 October Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed, Starmer said yesterday that “to do so would include a ban on arms for defensive purposes”, something he opposed.
“Over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed, tens of thousands orphaned, almost 2 million displaced, facing disease, starvation, desperation, without proper healthcare or shelter,” Starmer said. “It is a living nightmare and it must end,” he said, as he reiterated calls for a ceasefire and for Israel to allow more aid into the territory ahead of the winter.
Updated
UN warns Lebanon could face same 'spiral of doom' as seen from Israel's war in Gaza
UN humanitarian officials have warned that urgent action is needed to prevent the escalating conflict in Lebanon from spiralling into a similar scene of devastation that has resulted from Israel’s war on Gaza.
“We need to do everything we can to stop that from happening,” Matthew Hollingworth, Lebanon country director for the UN’s World Food Programme, told reporters.
Hollingworth said he had spent the first half of the year coordinating WFP’s operations in Gaza before taking the helm of its Lebanon office, and was deeply concerned by the similarities.
He said:
It is in my mind from the time I wake until the time I sleep, that we could go into the same sort of spiral of doom... We shouldn’t allow that to happen.
Almost 42,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since last October, according to the territory’s health ministry. Much of Gaza’s health care system has been destroyed in the attacks, along with its infrastructure and schools. The destruction has not only forced millions of people to leave their homes but also made it impossible for many to return.
Israel says the aim of its assault on Lebanon is to allow approximately 60,000 displaced people to return to their homes across northern Israel.
Summary of the day so far...
The Israeli military said its soldiers had begun a ground offensive in southwestern Lebanon, marking a shift as previously its invasion had focused on the eastern side of the border.
Three weeks of intense Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed more than 1,400 people and displaced another 1.2 million, according to Lebanese authorities.
The deputy leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, accused the US of being a partner in what he described as crimes taking place in Gaza. He also said that Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon had been a failure, that the group’s military capabilities were intact, pledging that its attacks would force more people in northern Israel from their homes.
Two Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut’s Shia-majority southern suburbs almost immediately after Qassem’s speech.
Israeli media reported that a 70-year-old woman has received a shrapnel wound to her hand in Haifa after an earlier barrage of about 85 rockets fired at the northern Israeli city.
The situation in Lebanon is getting worse by the day, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, told the European Parliament, as he reiterated calls for a ceasefire. About 20% of the Lebanese population had been forced to move due to Israeli airstrikes, he said.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, warned Israel that any attack on Iran’s infrastructure will be met with retaliation, a week after Tehran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel.
The Israeli military said it killed Suhail Hussein Husseini - commander of Hezbollah’s logistical headquarters - in a strike in an area of Beirut, where Israeli airstrikes continued overnight.
In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes killed 17 people in a refugee camp in the centre of the Palestinian territory on Tuesday, medics said. The health ministry said Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip has killed at least 41,965 Palestinian people and injured 97,590 since 7 October 2023.
Updated
Israeli forces have detained at least 30 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank over the past day, including a journalist, Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reports, citing updates from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society and the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs.
23 detentions were reported to have taken place in Hebron, while the others were in Nablus, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem.
Over 11,000 Palestinians have been detained in Israeli raids across the occupied West Bank since last October, the groups have said.
Human rights groups and international organisations have alleged widespread abuse of inmates detained by Israel in raids in the occupied West Bank. They have described alleged abusive and humiliating treatment, including holding blindfolded and handcuffed detainees in cramped cages as well as beatings, intimidation and harassment.
Updated
In the US, the Axios news website is carrying a story suggesting that senior officials in the Biden administration have been losing trust in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government.
In the report by Barak Ravid, which Axios describes as a scoop, he writes:
The Biden administration has in recent weeks grown increasingly distrustful of what the Israeli government says about its military and diplomatic plans in the multi-front war it is fighting, four US officials told Axios.
“Our trust of the Israelis is very low right now and for a good reason,” one US official said. Officials say the Biden administration has been surprised several times recently by Israeli military or intelligence operations. In some cases, the US wasn’t consulted or notified in advance. Or, it was given a heads up as Israeli jets were already on their way to conduct an airstrike somewhere in the Middle East.
US officials said secretary of defense Lloyd Austin was fuming when his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant told him about the [Hassan] Nasrallah assassination minutes before the Israeli jets dropped their bombs over Beirut. Austin saw it as a breach of trust by Gallant because the late notification didn’t allow the Pentagon to take measures to protect US forces in the region.
This image from Beirut taken today shows an airplane taking off from the international airport in the background as the smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike on Lebanon’s capital.
Local media is reporting an Israeli airstrike on the Lebanese city of Nabatieh in the south of the country.
More details soon …
Al Jazeera reports that medical sources have told it 43 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks inside Gaza today.
The Hamas-led health ministry has also issued updated casualty figures, claiming that 41,965 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s Gaza offensive since 7 October last year. It says that in addition at least 97,590 people have been wounded.
It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.
Lebanese news outlet Al Mayadeen reports that Israel has carried out 26 airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut in the last 24 hours.
Israel claims to have taken 'operational control' of a Hezbollah 'combat compound' in southern Lebanon
Israel’s millitary has announced that it has taken “operational control of a Hezbollah combat compound in Maroun El Ras that poses a direct threat to the residents of northern Israel”.
It claims in a statement that the compound included “a residential building and an olive grove, where a launcher, loaded and ready to fire at communities in northern Israel, was found.”
“Additionally,” the IDF claimed, “underground infrastructure, terrorist hideouts, living quarters, and staging areas used by Hezbollah terrorists were identified.”
Israel’s military released a video claiming to show the location, and said that a cache of weapons had been destroyed. The claims have not been independently verified.
Hezbollah fires rockets at the northern Israeli city of Haifa and its suburbs - reports
The mayor of Kiryat Motzkin, which is on Israel’s west coast, slightly to the north of Haifa, has told Israeli media that today’s barrages fired at that area were “unprecedented” in their number. A first barrage of about 85 projectiles was followed by a second barrage of about 20 projectiles, according to reports in the Israeli media and statements from Israel’s military. One woman has sustained slight shrapnel injuries, and some buildings have been damaged.
Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, said it had launched a “large rocket salvo” at Haifa and its northern suburbs.
Updated
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq group has claimed responsibility for what it said were five drone attacks against military targets in Israel. The claims have not been independently verified. Israel’s military has on occasion reported intercepting UAVs heading towards the country from the east.
Israeli media is reporting that a 70-year-old woman has received a shrapnel wound to her hand in Haifa after an earlier barrage of about 85 rockets fired at the Israeli city. The Magen David Adom emergency services described her as “lightly-moderately wounded”. The rocket barrage also damaged buildings.
Footage from the site of a rocket impact in the Haifa area in the earlier Hezbollah barrage. pic.twitter.com/Le6PHqKs14
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) October 8, 2024
Israel’s military has said that “approximately 20 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory” in the Haifa Bay and Upper Galilee regions of Israel. It said “a number of projectiles were intercepted”. There were no reports of any casualties.
The claim has not been independently verified.
Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that one of its correspondents said “there were dozens of martyrs and wounded lying in the streets of Jabalia [camp in Gaza], and as a result of the intensity of the bombing, medical crews and civil defence were unable to reach them.”
It reports that Israeli forces were “carrying out extensive bulldozing operations there”.
Earlier Wafa reported that eight people had been killed by an Israeli drone attack “at a water filling station north of Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip.”
The claims have not been independently verified.
William Christou reports from Beirut for the Guardian
After the Hezbollah official Naim Qassem’s speech earlier [See 9.26 GMT], Israel carried out two airstrikes on Dahiyeh in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires from Lebanon.
WHO warns of disease outbreaks in Lebanon due to crowded conditions in displacement shelters and hospital closures
A World Health Organization (WHO) official warned of disease outbreaks in Lebanon due to crowded conditions in displacement shelters and hospital closures as medics have fled Israel’s assault.
“We are facing a situation where there is a much higher risk of disease outbreaks, such as acute watery diarrhoea, hepatitis A, and a number of vaccine preventable diseases,” Reuters reports the WHO’s Ian Clarke, deputy incident manager for Lebanon, told a Geneva press briefing by video link from Beirut.
The UN health agency has already warned that the system is overstretched and so far five hospitals in the country have closed and four are only partly functional since Israel stepped up its aerial bombardment of what it claims is Hezbollah infrastructure inside Lebanon.
William Christou reports from Beirut for the Guardian
Deputy secretary general of Hezbollah Naim Qassem said in a speech commemorating one year of Hezbollah-Israel fighting that the group will not engage in any discussions before a ceasefire in Lebanon is achieved, but that the group supports political efforts towards a ceasefire.
Qassem added that despite “painful blows” to the group’s leadership, that the group is still “strictly organised”. Israel has eliminated almost all senior military members of the group, as well as its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah who it killed nearly two weeks ago.
The question of who will succeed Nasrallah remains undecided, with Qassem saying the group will choose a new leader soon but that it is a complex procedure.
Qassem said that Hezbollah has so far prevented Israel’s intrusion into south Lebanon, and that the Israeli army would “suffer great losses.”
Since announcing its ground incursion into Lebanon last week, Israel has set up at least two positions inside Lebanese territory, in the border villages of Maroun al-Ras and Yaroun. Hezbollah has killed at least 10 Israeli soldiers in clashes on the border, while Israel claims it has killed 250 members of the group – a claim Hezbollah denies.
Hezbollah deputy leader: group's military capabilities are intact and Israel's ground mission in Lebanon is a 'failure'
The deputy leader of Hezbollah has said that Israel’s ground mission into Lebanon had been a failure, that the group’s military capabilities were intact, pledging that its attacks would force more people in northern Israel from their homes.
Al Jazeera quotes Naim Qassem saying:
Our military capabilities are fine. What our enemies say about our fighting capabilities is an illusion. They are lying. Our fighters on the frontline are solid. What happened over the last 10 days is [that] the pain of the Israelis is increasing. We are telling them, more and more Israelis will be displaced from the settlements. The Israeli plan is to kill Lebanese civilians and empty villages to cause chaos. But I tell them, your efforts are a failure.
Qassem said that after days of its operation inside Lebanon, Israel’s forces had failed to advance.
Earlier today Israel announced that it had committed a further division of troops to what it described as “limited, localised, targeted operational activities” against what it says are “Hezbollah terror targets and infrastructure in southwestern Lebanon”. The IDF now has four divisions engaged.
Israel’s Arabic language spokesperson again issued a message that residents of southern Lebanon should flee their homes, and that anybody moving south was in danger. Over a fifth of Lebanon’s population are thought to currently be displaced. About 60,000 people in northern Israel have also had to flee the fighting over the course of the last year.
Lebanese media reported continued Israeli airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut and in the east and the south of the country.
Hezbollah deputy leader: US is essential partner of Israel in assault on Gaza
The deputy leader of Hezbollah has said that its former leader “put fear” into the hearts of Israel, and accused the US of being a partner in what he described as crimes taking place in Gaza.
In a message broadcast on Lebanese television, Naim Qassem praised the group’s assassinated former leader Hassan Nasrallah for putting “fear in the hearts of Zionists and fighting the criminals of occupation.”
Qassem described last year’s Hamas attack on southern Israel as “the first step for change” and criticised Israel for, he said, “killing women, killing children, killing elderly” in Gaza.
He said the US was an essential partner of Israel in the attacks being carried out in Gaza, and said that Iran is determined to stand by and support resistance against Israel
Updated
EU's Borrell: the situation in Lebanon worsens daily
The European Union’s foreign top diplomat Josep Borrell has told the European Parliament that the situation in Lebanon is getting worse every day.
Noting that 20% of the Lebanese population has now been displaced from their homes due to Israeli airstrikes and the orders of Israel’s military for Lebanese civilians to flee from the south of the country, Borrell said it was important to achieve a ceasefire.
Borrell also warned that the Lebanese army remained a weak outfit that could not act as a counterweight to Hezbollah, and he cautioned that it is not in a position to ensure the territorial integrity of Lebanon.
Earlier the Lebanese army issued a statement saying it was ready to defend Lebanon against what it described as “the increasing barbaric attacks by the Israeli enemy on various Lebanese regions.”
In a statement Israel’s military has claimed that recent attacks on Gaza have killed three Hamas fighters it says participated in the 7 October attack on southern Israel.
It claims Muhammad Rafai was killed in a 30 September strike on a school in Gaza City, while Muhammad Zanun and Bassel Akhars were killed on 1 October in a strike on Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Warning sirens have sounded in Tiberias, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, and Israeli media reports that about 30 rockets were fired towards it from the direction of Lebanon.
Reuters reports that the Emirates airline has cancelled all its flights to and from Iran.
Here are the fuller quotes from Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi, who has threatened Iran will retaliate if Israel carries out an attack:
Operations True Promise 1 and 2 [Iran’s previous direct strikes on Israel] demonstrated the impressive willpower and determination of the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran such that everyone knows that any strategic mistake by the enemy Israel will receive a harsher response. In doing so, we will not hesitate or rush.
An attack on the infrastructure of the Islamic Republic of Iran will certainly face a more decisive response, and our enemies are aware of the targets within the Zionist regime of Israel that are within our reach for attack, and they have seen the power and accuracy of our missiles with their own eyes.
The message of the Islamic Republic of Iran during my visit to Beirut and Damascus was clear, which is that Tehran will continue to support the resistance by all means, and no one should doubt that. We have been, are and will continue to support the resistance, and the temporary blows that have been dealt to the resistance will not affect the determination and strength of the will of the resistance, the resistance fighters and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett has called for Israel to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities, saying there is a “one-time window of opportunity” for Israel to act “without fearing a terrible and intolerable reaction.”
The Times of Israel quotes Bennett saying Iran’s nuclear programme “casts a dark shadow over our futures.”
He continued:
For the first time, we have the ability to act against Iran without fearing a terrible and intolerable reaction. The Iranian regime of terrorism and murder is exposed and vulnerable for the first time. This is a one-time window of opportunity in which we have both the legitimacy and the ability to severely damage the Iranian regime and its nuclear programme.”
Bennett was in office as prime minister in Israel from June 2021 to June 2022.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi will visit Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region this week, starting today.
Reuters quotes a statement from the minister on state TV, in which he said “Our dialogue continues in regards to the developments in the region to prevent the shameless crimes of the Zionist regime in Lebanon [and] continuation of the crimes in Gaza.”
He continued “Starting today I’ll start a trip to the region, to Riyadh and other capitals in the region and we will strive to have a collective movement from the countries of the region … to stop the brutal attacks in Lebanon.”
Earlier Araqchi said that Tehran would retaliate should Israel launch an attack on Iran.
Israel’s Arabic language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, has again issued a warning to Lebanese residents in the south of the country that they should move north.
In the message, he says:
To the people of South Lebanon, be careful! The IDF continues to attack Hezbollah sites in and near your village, and for your own safety you are prohibited from returning to your homes until further notice. You should refrain from heading south, anyone who heads south is putting their life in danger.
#عاجل الى سكان جنوب لبنان ديروا بالكم!
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) October 8, 2024
يستمر جيش الدفاع في مهاجمة مواقع #حزب_الله في قريتكم وبالقرب منها وذلك يحظر عليكم العودة الى بيوتكم حتى اشعار آخر وذلك حفاطًا على سلامتكم.
عليكم الامتناع عن التوجه جنوباً, كل من يتوجه جنوبا فهو يعرض حياته للخطر. pic.twitter.com/QzsbgCmhB8
The Lebanese caretaker government has said that at least 1.3 million people, more than a fifth of the country’s population, have been displaced from their homes due to Israel’s stepped up air campaign.
Over the previous year tens of thousands of people in southern Lebanon and northern Israel had already been forced to flee by continued fighting between Israel, Hezbollah and other anti-Israeli forces.
Lebanon’s army has issued a lengthy statement saying that it “maintains its readiness to defend the land within the available capabilities, based on the decisions of the political authority and its directives to do what it deems appropriate in order to protect Lebanon.”
It says it has issued the statement “in light of the increasing barbaric attacks by the Israeli enemy on various Lebanese regions, and the resulting deaths, injuries and great destruction.”
The army states “experience has proven that the army is the institution that forms the backbone of Lebanon” and that “we look forward to the success of international efforts to stop the Israeli aggression as soon as possible.”
It criticises “campaigns of slander, fabrication and treason” against the army in the media.
في ظل الاعتداءات الهمجية والمتزايدة من جانب العدو الإسرائيلي على مختلف المناطق اللبنانية، وما ينتج عنها من سقوط شهداء وجرحى ودمار كبير، يهم قيادة الجيش أن توضح أن الجيش اللبناني، إذ ينتشر على كامل مساحة الوطن بما فيها الحدود الجنوبية، يتولى مسؤولياته الوطنية ويقدّم الشهداء ويحافظ… pic.twitter.com/JlIEkIg9Xq
— الجيش اللبناني (@LebarmyOfficial) October 8, 2024
Several soldiers from Lebanon’s army have been killed by Israeli strikes in the last couple of weeks.
Iran’s Isna news agency is carrying a readout from a call between Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and his Egyptian counterpart, Badr Abdelatty.
Araghchi is said to have told the Egyptians that Hezbollah is “in a good situation” and “fully ready to confront a potential ground invasion of Lebanon.”
Israel says is it conducting 'limited, localised, targeted operational activities' inside southwestern Lebanon
In a statement Israel’s military has said it has deployed its reserve 146th division into Lebanon, where it claims it is conducting “limited, localised, targeted operational activities” against what it says are “Hezbollah terror targets and infrastructure in southwestern Lebanon.”
The divsion, it says, had previously been carrying out defensive duties in northern Israel for the last year.
On its official Telegram channel, the IDF says “The soldiers are operating alongside the 213th artillery brigade and additional forces in order to expose and dismantle terrorist infrastructure in the area.”
Israel’s military issued pictures of the soldiers getting ready for deployment.
Lebanon’s National News Agency has reported that Israeli forces have continued to launch air attacks on Beirut and across eastern and southern Lebanon this morning.
Updated
Iran warns it will retaliate if Israel launches expected attack
Tehran has warned Israel that any attack on Iran’s infrastructure will be met with retaliation.
Reuters reports that Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, made the statement on Tuesday morning.
On Monday evening Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported that Tehran’s military had prepared at least ten scenarios preparing for an expected Israeli attack.
It quoted a military source saying “Iran’s response will not be necessarily reciprocation at the same level of the Israelis’ action, but it may be harsher and aim for different targets that would intensify the effectiveness of the response.”
On 1 October Iran launched its second direct attack on Israel this year, triggered, it said, by Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Two Israelis were lightly wounded in the 1 October attack, and one Palestinian was killed by falling debris in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Iran successfully managed to hit and damage at least one military base in Israel.
Imran Khan has been reporting for Al Jazeera from Hasbaiyya in southern Lebanon. He tells the news network:
In southern Lebanon, about 130 towns and villages have been ordered to evacuate by the Israeli military. It’s got people worried because they’re wondering what the definition of Israel’s “limited” ground offensive is.
They’re hearing about the mass staging of troops on the Israeli side of the border, reserves being brought up. And just in the last few hours, Hezbollah says it’s hit Israeli soldiers.
Al Jazeera has been banned from operating inside Israel by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
Turkey will evacuate its citizens who have applied to leave Lebanon by sea on Wednesday, the Turkish foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
Reuters reports it said in a statement that two Turkish navy ships were expected to set off for Beirut on Tuesday with a total capacity of about 2,000 passengers, adding that the evacuation process will continue in the following days if necessary.
Donald Trump marked the first anniversary of the 7 October Hamas attacks, which he called “one of the darkest days in all of history”, with a commemoration for victims and hostages at his golf resort in Miami on Monday night.
He also repeated a previous claim that the attack on Israel would never have happened if he was still in the White House.
Blaming Harris and Joe Biden for the “weakness” he said gave Hamas the confidence to launch the attack, the Republican presidential nominee told a crowd of about 300 supporters, mostly from the Jewish community, that a wave of anti-Israel sentiment, which he said was sweeping the US and wider world, could be blamed on their administration.
“Almost as shocking as 7 October itself is the outbreak of antisemitism that we have all seen in its wake,” he said.
After claiming the attacks would not have taken place had he been elected to a second term, Trump said he would restore the closeness with Israel he insisted the US had lost, despite Biden and Harris both expressing support for Israel’s right to defend itself.
“If, and when, they say, when I’m president, the US will once again be stronger and closer [to Israel] than it ever was. But we have to win the election,” he said.
Kamala Harris questioned on Middle East in 60 Minutes interview
Kamala Harris refused to call Benjamin Netanyahu a close ally during a wide-ranging sit-down interview that aired on Monday.
With the presidential race between Harris and Donald Trump effectively deadlocked, Harris has launched a media blitz.
Harris navigated around the thorny question of whether the Israeli prime minister was “a real close ally”, saying: “The better question is: Do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people? And the answer to that question is yes.”
In a sign Harris intends to hew closely to Joe Biden’s approach to foreign policy, the vice-president said that Israel had a right to defend itself, while adding that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed”.
Air raid alerts have continued to sound in northern Israel.
In the last hour, sirens have gone off in communities around Meron in the country’s north.
Overnight, sires were heard in Kiryat Shmona and Rosh Hanikra, both locations which lie right on the border with Lebanon.
Gaza’s health ministry says it has identified 34,344 Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks in the territory, publishing a list of names, ages, sex and ID numbers that cover more than 80% of Palestinians killed in the war so far.
The Guardian used this list to seek out the families of the oldest victim, a 101-year-old, and one of the very youngest, a newborn who lived only two hours.
Ahmed al-Tahrawi
Tahrawi was born in 1922 in al-Masmiyya, which today exists only as a handful of ruins, fading memory and the name of an Israeli road junction about half an hour’s drive from Gaza’s northern border.
Its residents fled during the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948, in which about 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland after the creation of Israel.
Tahrawi was 26 that year, a father to two young sons. The family left their old life behind on foot, carrying little more than the key to the village home they would never see again, his grandson Abd al-Rahman al-Tahrawi said.
The boys did not survive the flight into exile, and so in Bureij, a refugee camp in Gaza, Ahmed al-Tahrawi and his wife started again, rebuilding their family, their home and their lives from scratch.
Tahrawi’s single-storey home in Bureij had a corrugated asbestos roof, so at the start of the war he moved in with one of his daughters, hoping her concrete roof would offer more protection from Israeli airstrikes, but on 23 October, the daughter’s house was bombed.
Twelve people were killed immediately and eight were injured including Tahrawi. He was taken to hospital with internal bleeding, but because wards were overwhelmed and medical equipment in short supply, doctors prioritised the young.
He died a week later, leaving his family bereft.
Waad Walid Samir al-Sabah
Waad was not yet born when an Israeli airstrike buried her mother, Salam al-Sabah, under an avalanche of rubble. The target of the airstrike on 15 February was a neighbour’s house, but the bomb was so big that it brought down parts of the Sabah family home too.
Rescuers raced to the site but had to work without heavy equipment so it took more than an hour to free Sabah, who was nine months pregnant. Already mother to four sons, she had been hoping to meet her first daughter within days.
Her uncle by marriage, Eid Sabah, is director of nursing at the Kamal Adwan hospital. He was on duty when his relatives were brought in so covered in dust and soot from the explosion that he did not recognise them at first.
It was too late for his niece, but the unborn baby in her womb was still fighting for life, so doctors performed an emergency caesarian and rushed Waad to intensive care. She survived for two hours.
“What saddened me the most was the release of the birth certificate and the death certificate of Waad at the same time,” Eid Sabah said. Both mother and daughter could have been saved if they had got treatment faster, he added.
China will provide emergency medical supplies to Lebanon, the official China International Development Cooperation Agency said on Tuesday.
Li Ming, spokesperson for the agency, said in a statement that as the fighting escalated recently, explosions and air strikes “have occurred in many places in Lebanon, causing a large number of casualties”.
“At the request of the Lebanese government, the Chinese government has decided to provide emergency humanitarian medical supplies to Lebanon to help Lebanon carry out medical assistance,” the statement said.
IDF says it 'eliminated' a Hezbollah commander in Beirut
The Israeli military has said it killed Suhail Hussein Husseini - commander of Hezbollah’s logistical headquarters - in a strike in an area of Beirut.
In a statement online, an IDF spokesperson said Husseini was a “partner in the agreements to transfer combat equipment between Iran and Hezbollah and was responsible for distributing smuggled combat equipment to various units in Hezbollah”.
The Guardian was unable to verify the claim and Hezbollah has so far made no comment.
In New York, protests marking 7 October have seen pro-Palestinian demonstrations grow to a blocks-long column that marched through Manhattan streets, avenues and landmarks.
Protesters spread a large Palestinian flag on a street near the New York Stock Exchange early on Monday afternoon, while a smaller group of counter-protesters held an Israeli flag.
Associated Press journalists saw several people being taken into police custody at various points in the march. Police said multiple arrests were made; no further information was immediately available.
While the protesters paused to conduct a Muslim evening prayer at the south-western corner of Central Park, the parents of American-Israeli hostage Omer Neutra shared their anguish from the park’s SummerStage venue.
“We would never have imagined we would still be standing here a whole year later, with no news of him,” his mother, Orna Neutra, told hundreds of people at an event that drew New York’s governor, mayor, US senators and other elected officials. Her son, a New York-born Israeli soldier, turns 23 next week.
Israel targets Beirut's southern suburbs in late Monday strikes
Lebanese state media said new strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight, after Israel’s military issued a warning to inhabitants of the area.
An AFP correspondent saw smoke rise from the suburbs, and the country’s National News Agency reported that the area was “the target of two raids”.
Israel launched an intense wave of air raids on southern Lebanon on Monday, with 100 aircraft targeting about 120 sites in the space of an hour, according to the Israeli military (IDF).
An IDF Arabic spokesperson issued an urgent warning to Lebanese civilians to avoid being on the beach or on boats on the coast from the Awali River southward until further notice.
The wave of strikes came as Israelis marked the anniversary of last year’s 7 October attacks by Hamas, the trigger for a year of escalating war in the region.
On Monday evening, sirens sounded in central Israel after several projectile launches were identified crossing from Lebanon. The Israeli military said some projectiles were intercepted, while the rest fell in open areas.
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the Middle East crisis.
Israel launched new strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Monday, within hours of intense Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon where 100 aircraft targeted about 120 sites in the space of an hour, according to the IDF.
Lebanese state media said two new strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs on Monday night, shortly after Israel’s military issued a warning to inhabitants of the area.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched around 190 rockets at Israel, the IDF reported, adding that most were targeting the north of the country.
Late on Monday, Hezbollah said that it had launched a “barrage” of rockets at a military intelligence base on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
Air raid alerts were activated across the centre of the country. The IDF said “about five launches were detected that crossed from Lebanon, some of them were intercepted by the Air Force and the rest fell in an open area”.
More on that in a moment’s – first here’s a summary of the day’s other main events.
Israel’s military declared areas around a number of towns in north-west Israel as closed to the public on Monday. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that a “new closed military zone” would be imposed along the border with Lebanon and would include the towns of Shlomi, Rosh Hanikra, Hanita, Arab al-Aramshe and Adamit. A separate IDF statement warned Lebanese civilians to avoid being on the beach or on boats on the coast from the Awali River southward until further notice.
At least 1,400 Lebanese people including civilians, medics and Hezbollah fighters have been killed and 1.2 million driven from their homes, Lebanese officials announced. In southern Lebanon an Israeli strike late on Sunday killed at least 10 firefighters, the latest in a series of attacks that have killed dozens of first responders, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported more than 30 strikes overnight into Sunday.
Israel also intensified its bombardment of northern Gaza, calling for evacuations of the north of the territory amid renewed military operations. Israeli tanks advanced on Monday into Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic urban refugee camps, after encircling it, residents said. “We are in a new phase of the war,” the Israeli military said in leaflets dropped over the area. “These areas are considered dangerous combat zones.”
Ceremonies were held across Israel on Monday marking the first anniversary of the 7 October Hamas attacks. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed in a televised address to continue fighting to “thwart any future threat against the state of Israel”. As memorial events took place across Israel, violence continued to rage on multiple fronts, with Israel also expanding its ground operation into Lebanon with elements of a third division joining the fighting. Demonstrations and memorials marking the anniversary of the 7 October attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza took place across the world.
Families of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza gathered near Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence and stood during a two-minute siren, replicating a custom from Holocaust Remembrance and Memorial Day. Out of 251 people taken hostage on 7 October 2023, an estimated 97 are still being held inside the Gaza Strip, including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead.
Joe Biden commemorated the anniversary of the 7 October attacks in Israel with a candle-lighting ceremony at the White House. The US president in a statement earlier on Monday marked “the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust” and condemned the “vicious surge in antisemitism in America” since the attacks. Biden also spoke with Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, on Monday.
The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, urged all sides to pull back from the brink in the Middle East as he addressed the House of Commons on the anniversary of the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel. Starmer said stopping all arms sales to Israel would “never” be his position. The UK has withdrawn the families of its embassy staff working in Israel due to the escalation in fighting.
