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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
World
Tom Ambrose (now); Joanna Walters and Yohannes Lowe (earlier)

Middle East crisis live: two more Palestinian journalists reportedly killed in Gaza; deadly Tel Aviv crash investigated as terrorist attack

Gaza Israel António Guterres Hamas Tel Aviv Stéphane Dujarric Terrorist Middle East Hezbollah Iran

Closing summary

  • The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, has expressed his shock at the appalling straits the remaining residents stuck in northern Gaza are in. His spokesman released a statement, with the UN chief calling the dire situation there “unbearable” as citizens remain trapped in extreme danger and deprivation, under siege by the Israeli military. Guterres was “shocked by the harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction in the north”.

  • The number of people reported injured when a truck rammed into a bus stop in Ramat Hasharon, north of Tel Aviv, in Israel earlier today has risen to “about 40”, according to an agency citing Israeli police – and the authorities are saying they suspect it was deliberate. One person was killed in the incident, which took place near a military base. The police said the investigation’s focus was on the suspicion that this was a terrorist attack.

  • The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said the Islamic Republican was not looking for war in the wake of air strikes on the country by Israel early on Saturday. “We do not seek war but we will defend the rights of our nation and country. We will give an appropriate response to the aggression of the Zionist regime,” he told his cabinet at a meeting today.

  • Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said that his government has proposed a two-day ceasefire in Gaza, after which talks should resume within 10 days in efforts to reach a permanent one. During the two days he suggested a swap of four hostages held in Gaza by Hamas for four Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. This comes as preliminary talks tentatively resume in Qatar with hopes of reviving ceasefire negotiations in earnest.

  • One person was killed and dozens of people were reported to have been injured after a truck hit a bus stop in Glilot, central Israel, near Tel Aviv. Many of those injured were reportedly elderly citizens who had disembarked from a bus ahead of a visit to a nearby IDF base. The driver of the truck was shot dead by a civilian at the scene.

  • Israeli military strikes killed at least 45 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, most of them in the north of the enclave, Palestinian health officials said. At least 20 people were killed following an Israeli airstrike on houses in Jabalia, while an airstrike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinian families in Shati camp in Gaza City killed nine people, medics said. Three local journalists were among those killed at the school in Shati.

  • An Israeli airstrike on Sidon, a city in coastal south Lebanon, killed at least eight people and wounded 25 on Sunday, the country’s health ministry said.

  • Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made his first public comments since Israeli warplanes attacked military targets in Iran early on Saturday. He said the attack “should neither be downplayed nor exaggerated”, without directly calling for a retaliation. He added that military officials would discuss Iran’s next steps, suggesting any retaliation may not be imminent.

  • Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel’s air attack on Iran was “precise and powerful” and achieved all its goals.

  • The directors of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence service will meet Qatar’s prime minister in Doha later today to begin negotiations for a new short-term Gaza ceasefire deal, an official told Reuters.

  • The Israeli military urged residents of 14 villages in southern Lebanon, where it says Hezbollah fighters are, to evacuate immediately and move north of the Awali river or risk being killed.

  • Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said Hezbollah and Hamas are no longer effective proxies for Iran. He also said “painful concessions” are needed to secure the release of hostages held in Gaza, without specifying what these would be.

The Middle East crisis live blog is now closing. Thanks for following along.

Updated

In case you missed it earlier, approximately 70 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in the past day, health officials in Gaza said, as Israel’s renewed campaign in the north of the strip shows no sign of slowing despite the revival of ceasefire talks after a three-month-long hiatus.

Separately, one person was killed when a truck rammed into a bus stop in Ramat Hasharon, north of Tel Aviv, on Sunday, in what Israeli police are treating as a suspected terrorist attack. About 40 people were injured to varying degrees, some seriously, and were taken to nearby hospitals, police said.

The Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad praised the suspected attack but did not claim it.

The driver of the truck was a Palestinian citizen of Israel, police said, and was “neutralised” by passersby carrying firearms.

Also on Sunday, the Israeli military said a Palestinian man was killed after he tried to stab a group of soldiers in the occupied West Bank town of Hizma.

Information about the situation in northern Gaza has become increasingly sporadic and difficult to verify as Israel’s new ground and aerial assault focusing on Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun enters its fourth week.

Internet and phone services have been down for hours at a time, and civil defence workers have been unable to reach the sites of recent strikes due to Israeli forces’ ever-tightening siege and attacks on their crews.

In Lebanon, the health ministry said that at least 21 people were killed today in Israeli strikes on three areas in the south of the country bordering Israel.

Nine people were killed and 38 wounded in a strike on Haret Saida, near the port city of Sidon, the ministry said, with at least seven others, including a nurse and three rescuers, killed in the southern village of Ain Baal and five in Burj al-Shemali.

Updated

Two more Palestinian journalists have been killed, Al Jazeera English has reported.

The 24-hour news channel, based in Doha, the capital of Qatar, cited authorities in Gaza in saying that the latest deaths bring the total number of journalists reported killed to 182 in the war that Israel launched in Gaza after Hamas, which controls the Palestinian territory, led a surprise attack on southern Israel on 7 October last year.

The network said authorities have named the two journalists as Nadia Imad Al-Sayed and Abdul Rahman Samir al-Tanani.

This reported toll comes in addition to the three journalists from the Hezbollah-affiliated TV stations Al Mayadeen and Al-Manar who were killed in southern Lebanon last Friday, in an Israeli airstrike on their press station in Hasbaya.

Updated

António Guterres, UN secretary-general, continues to blast the Israeli stranglehold on northern Gaza and calls not only once again for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Hamas but also “accountability under international law.”

The UN cites Gaza’s health ministry reporting that hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks and more than 60,000 others were forced to flee, AFP reports.

Guterres’s spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, has been issuing strong statements on behalf of the UN chief, earlier describing him as having said the harrowing levels of death and suffering are “unbearable.”

Repeated efforts to deliver humanitarian supplies essential to survive - food, medicine and shelter - continue to be denied by the Israeli authorities, with few exceptions, putting countless lives in peril. In the name of humanity, the Secretary-General reiterates his calls for an immediate ceasefire, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, and accountability for crimes under international law,” Dujarric said.

Updated

Plight of Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza "unbearable" - UN

The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, has expressed his shock at the appalling straits the remaining residents stuck in northern Gaza are in.

The plight of Palestinian civilians trapped in North Gaza is unbearable,” Guterres’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said today, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

Israel, vowing to stop Hamas militants from regrouping in the north of the Palestinian territory, launched a major air and ground assault on 6 October this year.

The UN spokesperson said that according to Gaza’s health ministry, hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks and more than 60,000 others were forced to flee.

The Secretary-General is shocked by the harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction in the north, with civilians trapped under rubble, the sick and wounded going without life-saving health care, and families lacking food and shelter,” Dujarric said.

Updated

The situation in northern Gaza continues to be utterly dire for Palestinians, with residents describing death and famine as the Gazan authorities say about 100,000 people are still trapped there, besieged by the Israeli military.

Israel, vowing to stop Hamas militants from regrouping in the north of the Palestinian territory, launched a major air and ground assault on 6 October this year, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports tonight.

Gaza civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal slammed Israel’s ongoing “siege” in Jabalia, Beit Hanun and Beit Lahia in northern Gaza.

For 22 days, not a drop of water or bread has entered the northern Gaza Strip. The occupation forces kill anyone who tries to provide services to the residents of north Gaza,” Bassal said in a statement.

Beit Lahia resident Bilal al-Hajri, 25, said the siege was unleashing a “famine” in the area.

We are really dying under a tight siege and famine. None of us can leave our homes to even provide some food and drink ... anyone who leaves is targeted,” he told AFP.

Updated

An emergency United Nations Security Council meeting will take place on Monday at Iran’s request, with Tehran calling for it to condemn the strikes by Israel early on Saturday which killed four Iranian soldiers.

Switzerland, which holds the council’s rotating presidency, said Russia, China and Algeria, the council’s Arab representative, supported the request.

Updated

Deadly ramming at bus stop north of Tel Aviv being investigated as terrorist attack – Israeli authorities

The number of people reported injured when a truck rammed into a bus stop in Ramat Hasharon, north of Tel Aviv, in Israel earlier today has risen to “about 40”, according to an agency citing Israeli police – and the authorities are saying they suspect it was deliberate.

One person was killed and it was known earlier that dozens had been injured in the incident, which took place near a military base. Hamas and Islamic Jihad praised the suspected attack but did not claim it.

The driver of the truck was a Palestinian citizen of Israel, police said, and was “neutralised” by passersby carrying firearms.

Reuters has reported that Israeli police said about 40 people were injured to varying degrees, including some seriously, and were taken to nearby hospitals.

All investigative directions are being examined with an emphasis on the suspicion that this is a terror attack. Initial investigations suggest that the truck driver, who was traveling near the Glilot base from north to south, veered off course and hit a bus and people waiting at the stop with the truck,” police said.

Israeli media reported that the attacker was an Israeli Arab from Qalansawe in central Israel.

Updated

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said today he had “received indications” of an attack before Israel’s strikes the day before.

We had received indications since the evening about the possibility of an attack that night,” Araghchi told reporters on Sunday, without specifying the nature of the indications, Agence France-Presse reports.

British foreign secretary David Lammy spoke to Araghchi by phone earlier today, and made a separate phone call to his Israeli counterpart, warning that a wider war in the Middle East would be a catastrophe.

Ehud Olmert is not an uncontroversial figure in Israel and internationally.

He was convicted of corruption in 2014 and in 2016 became the first Israeli premier to be imprisoned, capping a years-long legal saga that forced him to resign in 2009 during an intense round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, then released early, in 2017.

His appearance in London at a conference this weekend did not go down well with some. Here’s Shane Darcey on X, a senior lecturer at the Irish Centre for Human Rights in the National University of Ireland Galway.

Here is the 2009 article from the Guardian that he cites in the post.

Ehud Olmert, prime minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, and Nasser al-Kidwa, foreign affairs minister of the Palestinian National Authority from 2005 to 2006, who had not worked together previously, are promoting a two-state plan for peace.

They wrote a joint article for the Washington Post earlier this month in which they said: “This peace must be based on the existence of the states of Israel and Palestine, living side by side on the basis of the June 4, 1967, borders.” That’s when Israel expanded massively after the Six Day War. Their plan includes land swaps.

The piece begins: “The war in Gaza must end. The Israeli hostages held by Hamas must be returned to their families. And Israel will have to release the agreed number of Palestinian prisoners. Israel must also withdraw from Gaza. And the Palestinians must create a new, responsible and legitimate ruling entity in Gaza that is not composed of politicians from any of the Palestinian factions … organically linked to the Palestinian Authority but independent enough to gain the acceptance of the Palestinian people, the Arab neighbors and the international community.”

And they want the Old City of Jerusalem – the centre of the religious sites “to be administered by a trusteeship of five states, including Israel and Palestine”.

Another view:

Updated

Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, said the Israeli opposition parties needed to show the guts to speak out in favour of a two-state solution since they know it is the only alternative to more blood and killing.

He was speaking at a London conference organised by the Israel liberal newspaper Haaretz alongside Dr Nasser al-Kidwa, a former Palestinian foreign minister and nephew of Yasser Arafat.

The two men have published a peace plan for the Palestinian conflict and it was the first time Kidwa had spoken at an Israeli-organised event.

Olmert, who dodged questions about whether he was returning to frontline politics, said of the two-state solution “no-one is prepared to say this publicly, openly because they do not have the guts to speak out. They know there is no other solution. Presently they are afraid to spell it out when soldiers are being killed on a daily basis”. He said his job “was to say not what was popular, but what was true”.

Their joint proposal calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, a full withdrawal of troops from Gaza and a release of all hostages held by Hamas. Also, Palestinian elections within 36 months, a temporary Arab security presence that would work with Palestinian forces to ensure stability.

And they endorsed the “territorial solution” land swaps of 4.4% of the disputed territory and the division of Jerusalem.

Olmert said a ceasefire should have been implemented eight or nine months ago since no further military purpose is being served by continuing the fighting.

He also questioned why world leaders gave Israel carte blanche to defend itself knowing the fighting would go on in some of the most densely populated land in the world, and the only possible ramifications would be mass killings.

The joint opinion piece that Olmert and al-Kidwa wrote for the Washington Post is here.

Updated

The conference where Ehud Olmert was speaking earlier also heard calls from Democratic party Knesset member Naama Lazimi for the UK to go further in clamping down on illegal settlements by Israel.

Asked about the increasingly lively discussions inside the British government concerning imposing sanctions on Israeli ministers Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli legislator described them as violent settlers, and although she insisted on Israel’s right to defend itself, she said she supported individual sanctions since the settlers were harming Israel.

Updated

UK foreign secretary David Lammy said he had spoken to his Israeli and Iranian counterparts in separate calls on Sunday, seeking from talks with both a strategy to avoid escalation into a “catastrophic” regional war after Israel struck Iranian military sites early on Saturday.

Today I held important calls with Israeli FM (Israel Katz) and Iranian FM (Abbas Araghchi). The UK continues to press for de-escalation and an end to the conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza. A regional war would be catastrophic and is in no one’s interests,” Lammy said in a statement, and Reuters reports.

He also posted the same message on X, tagging his counterparts.

Britain’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, has spoken with the foreign ministers of Israel and Iran today.

He warned the tension and airstrikes between the two countries could escalate into a wider regional war.

Lammy said a regional war in the Middle East would be “catastrophic” and “in no one’s interests,” Reuters reports.

We’ll bring you more on this very soon.

Updated

The Israeli attack on Iran on Saturday damaged facilities at a secretive military base southeast of the Iranian capital that experts in the past have linked to Tehran’s one-time nuclear weapons program and at another base tied to its ballistic missile program.

Satellite photos are coming through that have been analysed earlier today by The Associated Press.

Some of the buildings damaged sat in Iran’s Parchin military base, the agency writes, where the International Atomic Energy Agency suspects Iran in the past conducted tests of high explosives that could trigger a nuclear weapon. Iran long has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, though the IAEA, Western intelligence agencies and others say Tehran had an active weapons program up until 2003.

The other damage could be seen at the nearby Khojir military base, which analysts believe hides an underground tunnel system and missile production sites.

Iran’s military has not acknowledged damage at either Khojir or Parchin from Israel’s attack early Saturday, though it has said the assault killed four Iranian soldiers working in the country’s air defense systems. Iran announced Sunday a civilian also had been killed, but provided no details.

Here’s another image.

Updated

Iran not looking for war, says president Masoud Pezeshkian

Iran is not looking for war but will give an “appropriate response” to Israel’s recent attack, the country’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has just said, according to state media.

We do not seek war but we will defend the rights of our nation and country. We will give an appropriate response to the aggression of the Zionist regime,” he told a meeting of the Iranian cabinet, Reuters reports.

How the Islamic Republic chooses to respond to the unusually public Israeli aerial assault on its homeland could determine whether the region spirals further toward all-out war or holds steady at an already devastating and destabilising level of violence, the Associated Press says in an analysis.

A strike of the magnitude that Israel delivered early on Saturday would typically be met with a forceful response. A likely option would be another round of the ballistic missile barrages that Iran has already launched twice this year.

But a carefully worded statement from Iran’s military on Saturday night appeared to offer some wriggle room for the Islamic Republic to back away from further escalation. It suggested that a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon was more important than any retaliation against Israel.

Updated

Efforts are gradually resuming in Qatar to defuse the devastating war between Israel and Hamas that erupted just over a year ago.

Intelligence chiefs from Israel and its chief ally, the United States, are participating, with the directors of the Mossad and the CIA taking part, Reuters reports.

And Egypt is proposing a brisk, short ceasefire, leading to a full cessation.

There was no immediate comment from Israel or Hamas to the Egyptian president’s suggestion, but a Palestinian official close to the mediation effort told Reuters:

I expect Hamas would listen to the new offers, but it remains determined that any agreement must end the war and get Israeli forces out of Gaza.”

An official briefed on the talks told Reuters earlier today that negotiations in Doha, the capital of Qatar, will seek a short-term ceasefire and the release of some hostages being held by Hamas in exchange for Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners.

The objective, still elusive after multiple mediation attempts, is to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a halt in fighting for less than a month in the hope this would lead to a more permanent ceasefire.

Here’s a little more on the ceasefire proposal just mentioned by Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Speaking alongside the Algerian president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, during a press conference in Cairo, Sisi also said that talks should resume within 10 days of implementing the temporary ceasefire in efforts to reach a permanent one.

The leader of Egypt has suggested a very short ceasefire between Israel and Hamas to allow an exchange of people from each side and a path to talks for a permanent cessation.

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said moments ago that his government has proposed a two-day ceasefire in Gaza, Reuters reports.

The immediate purpose would be to exchange four Israeli hostages – out of the 100+ still believed held since Hamas’s attack on southern Israel last October and capture of hostages - with some Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in Israel.

Egypt and Qatar have acted as mediators between Israel and Hamas in months of talks that broke down in August without an agreement to end fighting.

A Hamas delegation, headed by chief negotiator and deputy Hamas Gaza chief Khalil Al-Hayya, reportedly arrived in Cairo, the Egyptian capital, last Thursday to meet with the head of the state’s general intelligence agency, Hassan Mahmoud Rashad.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu said at that time that he welcomed Egypt’s willingness to advance a deal.

Here’s Sisi last week at a meeting for the developing nations bloc known as BRICS.

Israel dramatically escalated its airstrikes on Lebanon late last month before launching a ground offensive in the south of the country, killing many civilians and sparking a refugee and humanitarian crisis. Here are some of the latest images coming out of Lebanon from the newswires:

Updated

Afternoon summary

  • One person was killed and dozens of people were reported to have been injured after a truck hit a bus stop in Glilot, central Israel, near Tel Aviv. Many of those injured were reportedly elderly citizens who had disembarked from a bus ahead of a visit to a nearby IDF base. The driver of the truck was shot dead by a civilian at the scene.

  • Israeli military strikes killed at least 45 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, most of them in the north of the enclave, Palestinian health officials said. At least 20 people were killed following an Israeli airstrike on houses in Jabalia, while an airstrike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinian families in Shati camp in Gaza City killed nine people, medics said. Three local journalists were among those killed at the school in Shati.

  • An Israeli airstrike on Sidon, a city in coastal south Lebanon, killed at least eight people and wounded 25 on Sunday, the country’s health ministry said.

  • Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made his first public comments since Israeli warplanes attacked military targets in Iran early on Saturday. He said the attack “should neither be downplayed nor exaggerated”, without directly calling for a retaliation. He added that military officials would discuss Iran’s next steps, suggesting any retaliation may not be imminent.

  • Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel’s air attack on Iran was “precise and powerful” and achieved all its goals.

  • The directors of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence service will meet Qatar’s prime minister in Doha later today to begin negotiations for a new short term Gaza ceasefire deal, an official told Reuters.

  • The Israeli military urged residents of 14 villages in southern Lebanon, where it says Hezbollah fighters are, to evacuate immediately and move north of the Awali river or risk being killed.

  • Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said Hezbollah and Hamas are no longer effective proxies for Iran. He also said “painful concessions” are needed to secure the release of hostages held in Gaza, without specifying what these would be.

Updated

Israeli forces have detained at least 12 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank over the last day, according to a joint statement by the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners Society.

The detentions were reported by Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, as having occurred across various areas, including Hebron, Ramallah, and Jenin.

It is estimated that over 11,400 Palestinians have been arrested in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since last October.

Human rights groups and international organisations have alleged widespread abuse of inmates detained by Israel in raids in the 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.

Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, has responded to Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, calling on the UN security council to meet over Israel’s air attack on Iran, which Araqchi described as “a grave threat to international peace and security”.

Danon said that Iran was “trying to act against us in the diplomatic arena with the ridiculous claim that Israel has violated international law”.

“As we have stated time and time again, we have the right and duty to defend ourselves and will use all the means at our disposal to protect the citizens of Israel,” he said.

UN secretary general Antonio Guterres appealed “to all parties to cease all military actions, including in Gaza and Lebanon, exert maximum efforts to prevent an all-out regional war and return to the path of diplomacy,” his spokesperson said yesterday.

Updated

As we have mentioned in a previous post, Iran has called for an urgent UN security council meeting to condemn Israel’s airstrikes on the country yesterday.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, sent a letter to the UN chief and the head of the council “demanding an urgent meeting of the security council to take a decisive position in condemning this aggression”, a ministry statement said.

He said “most of the projectiles fired were intercepted by Iran’s defence systems” but the attack led to damage at “the target points”, as well as the death of four soldiers.

Araghchi said the Israeli attack was a “clear violation of the sovereignty” of Iran which “reserves the inherent right... to respond to this criminal aggression”.

The Israeli military said it hit Iranian missile factories, missile installations and other systems in several regions, and warned Tehran against responding.

Iran has downplayed the attack, saying it caused “limited damage” to a few radar systems, signalling what observers say is Tehran’s reluctance to escalate further.

Updated

One person killed after truck rams into bus stop near an Israeli military base north of Tel Aviv

Medics and police have said that at least person was killed after a man rammed his truck into a crowd at a bus stop in central Israel’s Glilot, just north of Tel Aviv, on Sunday (see post at 10:00 for more details). The bus stop was at a major intersection near the Glilot military base and the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

At least 29 people were injured, including several in serious condition, emergency service providers Magen David Adom said. Many of the injured were pensioners on a day trip to a nearby museum, according to reports.

One of those injured died later of his injuries, said the hospital where he was taken for treatment.

Police did not say whether it was an attack, but added that civilians at the scene “shot the truck driver and neutralised him”.

In a statement, Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, said the ramming attack carried out near “Mossad headquarters … was in response to the crimes committed by the Zionist occupation” against Palestinians.

Updated

Details have emerged suggesting Israel used precision air and drone strikes in its unprecedented attack on Iran this weekend to target air defence systems protecting crucial oil and gas facilities, as well as military sites linked to Tehran’s nuclear programme and ballistic missile production.

Israel openly attacked Iran for the first time on Saturday in the latest direct confrontation between the regional enemies, bringing the Middle East another step closer to a full-scale conflagration.

In the immediate aftermath, Iran appeared to downplay the airstrikes, which killed four soldiers. Fearing all-out war and shocks to the global oil industry, western leaders had urged Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, not to target oil or nuclear facilities in the widely anticipated response to an Iranian ballistic missile salvo on Tel Aviv and military bases on 1 October. Iranian officials had repeatedly warned attacks on nuclear or energy infrastructure would cross a “red line”.

Satellite imagery of affected sites in Iran and details reported by the New York Times suggest the Israeli leader heeded allies’ advice, but the locations of the strikes nonetheless signalled that Israel is capable of hitting high-value targets if the escalation continues.

You can read the full story by my colleague Bethan McKernan here:

At least 45 Palestinians killed in Gaza by Israeli attacks on Sunday, including those sheltering in a school - reports

Israeli military airstrikes have killed at least 45 Palestinian people across the Gaza Strip today, most of them in the north of the territory, Palestinian health officials said.

At least 20 people were killed following an airstrike on houses in Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps. An Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinian families in Shati camp in Gaza City killed nine people and injured 20 others, with many in critical condition, medics said.

Three local journalists were reportedly among those killed at the school in Shati: Saed Radwan, head of digital media at Al-Aqsa television, Hanin Baroud and Hamza Abu Selmeya. Their deaths bring the total number of journalists killed in Gaza since last October to 180, according to Al Jazeera.

Israeli forces began the devastating offensive in the north about three weeks ago with the declared aim of preventing Hamas fighters from regrouping. Residents, however, say the troops have besieged shelters, levelled civilian infrastructure, forced displaced people to leave with nowhere safe to go, while killing many civilians in deadly airstrikes. Medics say at least 800 Palestinians have been killed in northern Gaza since the renewed offensive was launched by the Israeli military early this month. Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported earlier today that about 1,000 Palestinian people had been killed by the Israeli military.

Updated

We have some more details on Benjamin Netanyahu being heckled by bereaved families at a ceremony in Jerusalem put on in memory of the victims of the Hamas-led October 7 attacks last year, in which about 1,200 people were killed (see post at 12.58 for more details).

The Israeli prime minister stood motionless at a lectern as audience members in the crowd shouted, interrupting him for more than a minute, according to a live broadcast of the speech. People were heard saying “Shame on you!” One of the protesters repeatedly shouted: “My father was killed”.

Cutting off Unrwa would deeply harm Israel’s reputation, says UK minister

Patrick Wintour is the Guardian’s diplomatic editor

Israel’s reputation as a democracy will be “deeply harmed” if the Israeli Knesset presses ahead with bills this week that would end all Israeli government cooperation with the Palestinian relief agency, Unrwa, Hamish Falconer, the Middle East minister, warned on Sunday.

He said such a move at a time when the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is catastrophic and worsening would “neither be in Israel’s interest or realistic”.

His remarks are the strongest criticism made by a western minister of the legislation that could be voted on as early as this week unless the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu intervenes.

Falconer also demanded more aid be allowed to enter Gaza and told Israel too many civilians are being killed in Israeli attacks on Hamas in Gaza.

He was speaking to a conference in London convened by Haaretz newspaper and attended predominantly by more liberal minded Jews.

Falconer insisted the measures taken by the Labour government so far did not indicate any decline in Labour support for the state of Israel, but his remarks were as sharp as any delivered by a Labour minister.

He said:

We are deeply concerned by legislation currently under consideration by the Israeli Knesset which would critically undermine Unrwa. It is neither in Israel’s interest nor realistic.

Given the agency’s vital role in delivering aid and essential services at a time when more more aid should be getting into Gaza, it is deeply harmful to Israel’s international reputation as democratic country that its lawmakers are taking steps that would make the delivering of food water medicines and healthcare more difficult.

He said: “The international community are clear that Unrwa and other humanitarian organisations must be fully able to deliver aid.”

Many Israelis regard Unrwa too closely linked with Hamas, and also committed to the Palestinian refugees right of return.

He said humanitarian access remains wholly inadequate, adding he had recently been on the Egyptian Gaza border. He said:

I saw for myself thousands of trucks waiting to cross the border. Some had been there for months.

There were warehouses full of life saving items - medical equipment sleeping bags, and tarpaulin for the winter.

There have been repeated attacks on humanitarian convoys and the level of aid getting in is far too low.

Updated

Israeli airstrike kills at least 8 people in Lebanese city of Sidon, health ministry says

In an earlier post, we reported on a deadly Israeli airstrike that officials said killed at least two people near the southern Lebanese city of Sidon. Giving an updated death toll, Lebanon’s health ministry said at least eight people were killed and 25 others injured in the attack that hit a densely-populated area in a Sidon suburb that saw an influx of families displaced from areas further south. “The Israeli enemy’s raid on Haret Saida resulted in a... toll of eight killed,” the health ministry said. Lebanon’s state run national news agency said a child was among the victims.

Updated

Protesters disrupt speech by Benjamin Netanyahu

Protesters disrupted a speech by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a ceremony on Sunday remembering the victims of Hamas’ attack on southern Israel last year, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.

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

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

Updated

Iran reserves the right to respond to Israel’s “criminal aggression”, foreign minister Abbas Araqchi told the UN secretary-general in a letter calling for an urgent security council meeting, Iran’s foreign ministry said on Sunday.

Updated

Lebanon’s health ministry said at least two people were killed and 11 others injured on Sunday in an Israeli strike near the southern city of Sidon, where an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent said a building was targeted.

“The Israeli enemy’s raid on Haret Saida resulted in an initial toll of two killed,” the health ministry said, as an AFP correspondent said an apartment was destroyed in the strike on a building in the area that was targeted for the first time since Israel launched its assault on Lebanon last month.

Updated

Hezbollah said it fired rockets at a military base in northern Israel on Sunday, a day after it declared several areas in the region a “legitimate target” due to the presence of Israeli troops.

The Iran-backed Lebanese militant group said it targeted a “military industries base north of Haifa (a northern city in Israel)... with a large rocket salvo”, after it issued an evacuation warning on Saturday for large swathes of northern Israel.

Summary of the day so far...

  • Dozens of people are reported to be injured after a truck hit a bus stop in Glilot, central Israel, near Tel Aviv. Many of those injured, according to local reports, were elderly citizens who had disembarked from a bus ahead of a visit to a nearby IDF base.

  • Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made his first public comments since Israeli warplanes attacked military targets in Iran early on Saturday. He said the attack “should neither be downplayed nor exaggerated”, without directly calling for a retaliation. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel’s air attack on Iran was “precise and powerful” and achieved all its goals.

  • The directors of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence service will meet Qatar’s prime minister in Doha later today to begin negotiations for a new short term Gaza ceasefire deal, an official told Reuters.

  • The Israeli military urged residents of 14 villages in southern Lebanon, where it says Hezbollah fighters are, to evacuate immediately and move north of the Awali river or risk being killed.

  • Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said Hezbollah and Hamas are no longer effective proxies for Iran. He also said “painful concessions” are needed to secure the release of hostages held in Gaza, without specifying what these would be.

Updated

The directors of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence service will meet Qatar’s prime minister in Doha today to begin negotiations for a new short term Gaza ceasefire deal and the release of some hostages by Hamas in exchange for Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners, an official has told Reuters.

The official said the talks aim to get the two sides to agree to a ceasefire that would last less than a month but that will hopefully lead to a more permanent agreement afterwards. Israel and Hamas accused each other of making new and unacceptable demands over the summer and negotiations ground to a halt in August.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously been accused of blocking a ceasefire deal over his insistence on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, which separates Gaza from Egypt, and central Gaza’s Netzarim corridor, a strategic route bisecting Gaza.

Hamas has demanded a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Egypt has said that a heavy Israeli military presence on its border threatens the peace treaty between the countries.

'Painful concessions' needed to secure release of hostages in Gaza, Gallant says

Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has been speaking at a memorial ceremony in Jerusalem. “Not all objectives can be achieved through military operations alone… to realise our moral duty to bring our hostages home, we will have to make painful concessions,” he said in a speech. It is reported that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas in the 7 October attacks last year remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.

Gallant was also quoted as having said that Iran is no longer able to effectively use its ally Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group it backs, against Israel.

“Over the past year, the security establishment led by the Israel Defense Forces turned the tide of the war and had unprecedented achievements in all arenas of fighting,” Gallant said.

Gallant said Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, was no longer functioning as a military network in Gaza, while Hezbollah’s senior command and most of its missile capabilities had been wiped out. He said both groups “are no longer an effective tool” to be used by Iran.

In other developments, Gallant briefed his American counterpart Lloyd Austin on the “success” of Israel’s airstrikes on Iran and discussed “strategic opportunities” that may have arisen, his office said in a statement.

Gallant’s office said:

Gallant discussed initial assessments regarding the success of the strikes against missile manufacturing facilities, surface-to-air missile arrays and Iranian aerial capabilities.

Minister Gallant also discussed the strategic opportunities that have risen as a result of operational achievements, in both the northern and southern arenas (referring to fighting in Lebanon and Gaza).

Updated

Here is a video of the aftermath of a truck hitting a bus stop in Glilot, just north of Tel Aviv, which caused dozens of injuries, as we reported on in an earlier post:

Updated

Israel urges residents of 14 Lebanese villages to move north of Awali River

The Israeli military has urged residents of 14 villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate immediately and move north of the Awali river, which flows from the western Bekaa valley into the Mediterranean.

In a post on X, Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee claimed that Hezbollah elements, facilities or weapons are nearby, and those who stay risk being killed.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has repeatedly issued evacuation orders during its assault on Lebanon over the last month.

“For your own safety, you must evacuate your homes immediately and move to the north of the Awali River. To ensure your own safety, you must evacuate without delay,” Adraee wrote in the post on X.

“You are prohibited from going south. Any movement south could be dangerous to your life. We will inform you in due time to return to your homes as soon as the conditions are right.”

Netanyahu says 'precise and powerful' attack on Iran achieved Israel’s objectives

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has commented on Israel’s airstrikes on Iran, which the IDF said targeted missile factories and other sites near Tehran and western Iran on Saturday morning.

In a speech, Netanyahu said:

The air force attacked throughout Iran. We hit hard Iran’s defence capabilities and its ability to produce missiles that are aimed at us.

The attack in Iran was precise and powerful, and it achieved all its objectives.

The Israeli airstrikes on Iran killed four Iranian soldiers, Iran’s army said. As my colleague Patrick Wintour writes in this story, a debate has been set off inside Iran on whether the attack, more limited than some had predicted, warrants a military response and if the country will be seen as weak if it does nothing.

Israel’s airstrikes were in retaliation for the 1 October attack by Iran, which fired about 200 missiles at Israel, though most were intercepted by the country’s air defences.

“Iran attacked Israel with hundreds of ballistic missiles and this attack failed,” Netanyahu added.

Updated

At least three people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on Zawtar al-Sharkiya in southern Lebanon, the country’s health ministry said. The ministry added that five people were killed an one injured after an Israeli airstrike targeted Marjayoun, also in southern Lebanon, on Saturday.

Israel’s medical service, Magen David Adom (MDA), says emergency workers “evacuated” about 20 “casualties”, including six severely injured, following the truck-ramming at a bus stop in central Israel’s Glilot, just north of Tel Aviv (see post at 08.39 for more details). Many of those injured, according to local reports, were elderly citizens who had disembarked from a bus ahead of a visit to a nearby IDF base in Glilot.

Police said the truck driver rammed his vehicle into a crowd of people at a bus stop, injuring at least 24 people before he was “shot and neutralised”.

The police did not say whether it was a terror attack or not. It did confirm that civilians at the site of the incident “shot the truck driver and neutralised him”.

Of those injured, at least 16 people had been transported to nearby hospitals, MDA said in a statement. Tel Aviv’s Ichilov hospital said one of the victims is in very serious condition. “His life is in danger and he is currently being treated in an operating room,” the hospital said.

Updated

Palestinian medics said an Israeli airstrike on a house in Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, killed several people and injured others this morning.

Medics said the airstrike damaged several houses in Jabalia, the epicentre of a renewed Israeli assault on the northern part of the Strip in recent weeks, which the Israeli military claims was launched to stop Hamas fighters regrouping there.

But the blockage of aid and food deliveries and the targeting of civilian infrastructure have led to accusations that Israel is committing the war crime of seeking to forcibly displace the remaining population.

Local health authorities told Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, that 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli assault on northern Gaza was launched early this month.

The Israeli military said in a statement it “eliminated over 40 terrorists” in the Jabalia area in the past 24 hours, as well as dismantling infrastructure and locating “large quantities of military equipment”.

The entirety of northern Gaza is under Israeli evacuation orders. The Israeli army has ordered residents to flee towards the so-called “humanitarian zone” of al-Mawasi, even though it has been targeted in deadly airstrikes and is severely overcrowded.

Updated

Four Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military said on Sunday, bringing to 36 the total number of Israeli soldiers killed since the start of the ground offensive in Lebanon on 30 September. The troops all served with the Alon Brigade’s 8207th battalion.

Updated

What do we know about the Israeli airstrikes on Iran?

World leaders have called for restraint after the first open Israeli airstrikes on Iran were launched in the early hours of Saturday.

The Israeli airforce struck about 20 military bases across Iran, including missile and drone manufacturing sites and air defence systems. Here is what we know about the attack (you can read the full story here):

  • Israel struck military sites in Iran early on Saturday, saying it was in response to “months of continuous attacks from the regime in Iran against the state of Israel”. The strikes were widely expected after Tehran’s attacks on Israel this month. The Israeli public broadcaster Kan said dozens of fighter jets were involved.

  • The attack killed four Iranian soldiers, Iran’s army said.

  • The Israeli military said on Saturday morning it hit missile manufacturing sites and aerial defences in several areas and had completed its “targeted” air attacks, and that its planes had safely returned home. Israel’s public broadcaster said three waves of strikes had been completed.

  • The UK and US have warned against further escalation, while nations including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan have all condemned the attacks.

  • Israel bears “full responsibility” for the escalation of conflict in the Middle East, the Pakistan foreign ministry has said, adding that the Israeli strikes “undermine the path to regional peace and stability”.

  • Iran is “entitled and obligated to defend itself against external aggressive acts”, its foreign ministry has said. The ministry called the Israeli attack a violation of international law and said Tehran “recognises its responsibilities towards regional peace and security”.

  • Iran said its air defence system successfully countered Israel’s attacks on military targets in the provinces of Tehran, Khuzestan and Ilam, with “limited damage” to some locations. A semi-official Iranian news agency vowed a “proportional reaction” to Israeli moves against Tehran.

In a post on X following the truck-ramming incident at the Glilot junction, near Tel Aviv, Magen David Adom said 10 injured people were being taken to Beilinson and Ichilov hospitals. Four people are seriously injured, two are in a “moderate condition” and four are in a “mild condition”, the ambulance service said.

Dozens of people injured after truck slams into bus stop in central Israel

Israel’s medical service Magen David Adom has reported dozens of injuries after a suspected attack on a bus station in Glilot, central Israel, near Tel Aviv. Police say that officers are heading to the scene after a truck rammed into members of the public waiting at a bus stop, according to reports. The exact circumstances around the incident – which is under investigation - remain unclear. We will bring you the latest as we get it.

Updated

Iran's supreme leader says it 'would be wrong to say Israeli attack did not matter'

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has made his first public comments since the Israeli airstrikes on his country. He said that Israel’s attack on Iran this weekend “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed,” though he stopped short of calling for retaliation. Here is some of what he said in a meeting with the families of the four members of the armed forces who were killed in the attack:

  • “The evil committed by the Zionist regime (Israel) two nights ago should neither be downplayed nor exaggerated”, IRNA cited Khamenei as saying.

  • He described the Israeli airstrikes as “malignant”.

  • “The calculation error of the Zionist regime must be disrupted. They do not know Iran, its youth, its nation. They have not yet been able to fully comprehend the power, capabilities, initiative and will of the Iranian nation, we must make them understand it,” Al Jazeera quoted the Iranian supreme leader – the ultimate authority in Iran – as saying.

  • “It would be wrong for us to say that it was nothing and it did not matter,” Khamenei said, adding that Israel has tried to exaggerate the impact of the airstrikes.

Updated

Opening summary

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of Israel’s wars on Gaza and Lebanon.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is expected to speak on Sunday about the airstrikes by Israel that saw waves of IDF fighter jets and drones attack military sites across the country, the New York Times reports.

Saturday’s attack focused on air defence, radar sites, and long-range missile production facilities and marked the first time Israel has openly attacked Iran after decades of shadow warfare. Four soldiers were killed, Iranian media said.

At least 40 Palestinian people were killed and 80 others injured in Israeli airstrikes on several houses in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya on Saturday, Palestinian news agency Wafa said on Sunday, citing medical sources.

The attack targeted a block of at least five homes near the western roundabout in Beit Lahiya, according to Wafa journalists. Officials say it means that about 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed assault on northern Gaza launched by the Israeli military at the start of October.

Here is a summary of the latest developments:

  • “I hope this is the end,” the US President Joe Biden told reporters on Saturday after the Israeli airstrikes on Iran. Biden said Israel gave him a heads up and it appeared “they didn’t hit anything but military targets” in their attacks. Israel’s president, Issac Herzog, hailed the US – Israel’s biggest arm supplier – as his country’s “true ally” after the airstrikes. The office of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, denied a report that Israel initially planned to strike Iran’s oil and natural gas facilities, but changed its plan to focus on Iranian military targets after pressure from the US.

  • Four soldiers were killed in the Israeli airstrikes on Iran, Iranian media said. Iran said the airstrikes targeted military bases in Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran provinces, causing “limited damage”. Iran’s mission to the UN said Israeli warplanes attacked several Iranian military and radar sites from Iraqi airspace, and blamed the US for what it called its “complicity”. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, described the Israeli attack as “reckless and cowardly”, adding that his country was determined to defend itself.

  • The Israeli strikes reportedly hit Iranian facilities used to produce solid fuel for long-range ballistic missiles. Satellite images obtained by Reuters appear to confirm that the Israeli attacks hit buildings that Iran used for mixing solid fuel for ballistic missiles. Israel struck Parchin, a massive military complex near Tehran, as well as Khojir, a sprawling missile production site near the Iranian capital, the news agency reported, citing two US researchers. Israel hit 12 “planetary mixers” used to produce solid fuel for long-range ballistic missiles, which make up the bulk of Iran’s missile arsenal, Israeli sources told Axios. The UN’s nuclear watchdog (IAEA) said Iran’s nuclear programme was not affected by Saturday’s strikes.

  • Iran’s military suggested it would prioritise an agreement to end Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon over any retaliation against Israel. The carefully worded statement released on Saturday night suggests at least parts of Iran’s government want to avoid further escalation. Iran’s foreign ministry said it had a right to self-defence after Saturday’s attack. The statement said Iranian radar sites were damaged but some were already under repair, and added that Israel used so-called “standoff” missiles over Iraqi airspace to launch it attacks. They had lighter warheads to travel to targets inside Iran.

  • The strikes were restrained enough for Iranian officials to belittle the scale and effectiveness of the incursion and for Israeli hardliners to denounce their government for timidity. Israel’s military could have “exacted a higher price”, opposition leader Yair Lapid said in a post on X after the bombing ended. National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Saturday’s attack was “an opening blow” and strikes on the country’s strategic assets “must be the next step”.

  • Israel’s military announced it was easing some safety restrictions for residents in areas of northern Israel on Saturday, a possible indication that it does not expect any immediate large-scale attack from Iran or its proxies in the region. The decision followed a “situational assessment”, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on Saturday.

  • Israeli troops withdrew from the Kamal Adwan hospital in Jabalia on Saturday, after storming the medical facility and detaining dozens of its staff. Israeli forces seized 44 of the 70-strong team at the hospital, only 14 have since been released. Almost all male staff at the hospital had been taken away by Israeli forces, the head of the World Health Organsation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, describing the situation in the area as “catastrophic”. Among those missing is Dr Mohammed Obeid, an orthopedic surgeon working for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which said it was “deeply concerned” about his safety.

  • The UN’s acting humanitarian chief, Joyce Msuya, called for an urgent halt to the devastating Israeli assault on north Gaza, attacks on health facilities and mass detentions there. “The entire population of northern Gaza is at risk of dying,” she said.

  • Israeli media reported that a drone attack – targeting a factory producing aviation components - in Karmiel in the north of the country has injured two people. The Israeli military said the drone was launched from Lebanese territory.

  • The UN security council is expected to convene on Monday at the request of Iran to discuss the recent Israel airstrikes.

Updated

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