Closing summary
Twenty-one civil defence rescuers have been killed in two Israeli strikes on Lebanon, marking one of the deadliest days for rescue workers since the fighting began between Israel and Hezbollah 13 months ago. Thursday night’s airstrikes brought the total number of emergency workers killed by Israel in Lebanon to more than 200, most of them during the last two months.
Fifty-nine people were killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon on Thursday, bringing the total killed since October last year to at least 3,445, with 14,599 wounded, the Lebanese health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has asked Iran to help secure a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah and appeared to urge it to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border. The prime minister made the comments in talks with Ali Larijani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, AP reported.
Larijani said Iran will back any decision taken by Lebanon in talks to secure a ceasefire with Israel. He has been speaking with Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri and Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, in Beiurt.
An Israeli airstrike flattened a building near one of Beirut’s busiest traffic junctions, Tayouneh. The targeted building was located in an area where the southern suburbs meet other parts of the city, a more central target than most that Israel has hit in its deadly bombing campaign. It came after the Israeli military issued a warning identifying buildings in the southern suburbs of the capital and telling residents to evacuate, saying they were near Hezbollah facilities.
The Hamas-allied militant group, Islamic Jihad, released a new clip of Israeli hostage Sasha Trupanov, after issuing a first video earlier this week. Trupanov, 29, is a dual Russian-Israeli citizen who was abducted with his girlfriend, Sapir Cohen, from the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border.
At least 43,764 Palestinian people have been killed and 103,490 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said. Of those, 28 Palestinians were killed in the latest 24-hour reporting period. Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported that two Palestinian people were killed in an Israeli artillery attack in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza today. Three other Palestinians were reportedly killed in a separate Israeli airstrike near the general security junction in western Gaza City.
A senior Hamas official said the Palestinian militant group is “ready for a ceasefire” in Gaza and urged US president-elect Donald Trump to “pressure” Israel to “end the aggression”. It came as the UN warned that aid access in Gaza is at a low point with deliveries to parts of the north of the territory all but impossible.
That’s all from me, Tom Ambrose, and the Middle East crisis live blog for today. Thanks for following along.
Fifty-nine people were killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon on Thursday, bringing the total killed since October last year to at least 3,445, with 14,599 wounded, the Lebanese health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Twenty-one civil defence rescuers have been killed in two Israeli strikes on Lebanon, marking one of the deadliest days for rescue workers since the fighting began between Israel and Hezbollah 13 months ago.
Thursday night’s airstrikes brought the total number of emergency workers killed by Israel in Lebanon to more than 200, most of them during the last two months.
In Douris, a small town on the outskirts of the ancient city of Baalbek in the Bekaa valley, 15 paramedics and five bystanders were killed when an airstrike hit a state civil defence centre.
Members of the civil defence were still searching for the remains of their colleagues on Friday afternoon, turning over the shattered concrete and sifting through rubble to find whatever pieces of flesh they could salvage. Though 15 bodies had been found, at least five were unrecognisable due to the force of the blast. Funerals were put on hold until the remains could be taken for DNA testing.
“Most of the people that were here yesterday were new, they were volunteers. We were always joking around, we were like brothers … I wish I had been with them,” said Haidar al-Afi, who has worked with the civil defence in Douris since 2006, as he searched the rubble.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has asked Iran to help secure a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah and appeared to urge it to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border.
The prime minister made the comments in talks with Ali Larijani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, AP reported.
Larijani’s visit to Lebanon comes as the United States continued pushing both sides to agree to a deal to end 13 months of exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah.
Iran is a main backer of Hezbollah and for decades has been funding and arming the Lebanese militant group.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel the day after Hamas’s surprise attack into Israel on 7 October 2023 ignited the war in Gaza – prompting exchanges between the two sides ever since.
Since late September, Israel dramatically escalated its bombardment of Lebanon, vowing to cripple Hezbollah and end its barrages in Israel.
It was the morning of 8 June when Ahmed Damoo got the call that his home, a small concrete building in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, had been hit by an IDF rocket. When he returned to what was left of his house, he learned his family had been buried beneath the rubble.
One by one, his neighbours had dragged the bodies from the debris. Among the dead were Damoo’s in-laws and his two children, Hala, 13, and Mohannad, 10, who had been playing in the living room when they were killed. His wife, Areej, and toddler, Tala, had sustained serious injuries but were still alive.
His last child, 12-year-old Mazyouna, could not be located. When Damoo eventually found her, he almost passed out.
“Her face was ripped off and her jaw was literally hanging,” he recalls. “My beautiful little girl was completely unrecognisable.”
At al-Aqsa hospital, doctors used what little resources they had to stitch Mazyouna’s face back together and hold the remaining structure in place.
Mohammed Tahir, a British doctor who is volunteering in Gaza, saw her during his ward rounds. “It was one of the most shocking cases I’ve seen,” he says. “Half of her cheek was missing and her bones were exposed.
“The doctors tried their best but the extensive reconstructive work she requires cannot be provided here in Gaza.”
The Hamas-allied militant group, Islamic Jihad, released a new clip of Israeli hostage Sasha Trupanov, after issuing a first video earlier this week.
Trupanov, 29, is a dual Russian-Israeli citizen who was abducted with his girlfriend, Sapir Cohen, from the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has called for the release of Trupanov and another hostage, Maxim Herkin, who was reportedly kidnapped from the Supernova desert rave on 7 October 2023 by Hamas militants.
Updated
Afternoon summary
Ali Larijani, an advisor to Iran’s supreme leader, said Iran will back any decision taken by Lebanon in talks to secure a ceasefire with Israel. He has been speaking with Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri and Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, in Beiurt.
An Israeli airstrike flattened a building near one of Beirut’s busiest traffic junctions, Tayouneh. The targeted building was located in an area where the southern suburbs meet other parts of the city, a more central target than most that Israel has hit in its deadly bombing campaign. It came after the Israeli military issued a warning identifying buildings in the southern suburbs of the capital and telling residents to evacuate, saying they were near Hezbollah facilities.
At least 43,764 Palestinian people have been killed and 103,490 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said. Of those, 28 Palestinians were killed in the latest 24-hour reporting period. Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported that two Palestinian people were killed in an Israeli artillery attack in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza today. Three other Palestinians were reportedly killed in a separate Israeli airstrike near the general security junction in western Gaza City.
A senior Hamas official said the Palestinian militant group is “ready for a ceasefire” in Gaza and urged US president-elect Donald Trump to “pressure” Israel to “end the aggression”. It came as the UN warned that aid access in Gaza is at a low point with deliveries to parts of the north of the territory all but impossible.
David Smith is the Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief
Elizabeth Warren, a leading progressive voice in the US Senate, has denounced the Biden administration’s failure to punish Israel over the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and endorsed a joint resolution of disapproval in Congress.
The amount of aid reaching the territory has dropped to the lowest level in 11 months, official Israeli figures show. The White House last month gave Israel an ultimatum of 30 days to improve conditions or risk losing military support. As the deadline expired on Tuesday, international aid groups said Israel had fallen far short.
But the US state department announced it would not take any punitive action, insisting that Israel was making limited progress and was not blocking aid and therefore not violating US law.
Warren condemned the Biden administration’s decision to continue supplying arms to its ally.
“On October 13, the Biden administration told Prime Minister Netanyahu that his government had 30 days to increase humanitarian aid into Gaza or face the consequences under US law, which would include cutting off military assistance,” the Massachusetts senator said in a statement shared with the Guardian.
“Thirty days later, the Biden administration acknowledged that Israel’s actions had not significantly expanded food, water and basic necessities for desperate Palestinian civilians. Despite Netanyahu’s failure to meet the United States’ demands, the Biden administration has taken no action to restrict the flow of offensive weapons.”
You can read the full story here:
Updated
Israel carried out attacks on the Mazzeh suburb of Damascus on Friday, Syrian state news agency SANA said, a day after a wave of deadly strikes on what Israel said were militant targets in the Syrian capital.
Explosions were reported earlier on Friday in the vicinity of Damascus.
“Israeli aggression targets Mazzeh area in Damascus,” SANA said in a news flash. It gave no other details.
There was no immediate comment from Israel.
Commanders in Lebanon’s Hezbollah armed group and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards based in Syria have been known to reside in Mazzeh, according to residents who fled after recent strikes that killed some key figures in the groups.
Mazzeh’s high-rise blocks have been used by the authorities in the past to house leaders of Palestinian factions including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Gaza aid access 'at a low point', UN official warns as conditions in the north deteriorates
Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs, has told journalists that aid access in Gaza is at a low point with deliveries to parts of the north of the territory all but impossible.
“From our perspective, on all indicators you can possibly think of in a humanitarian response, all of them are going in the wrong direction,” Laerke told a press briefing.
“Access is at a low point. Chaos, suffering, despair, death, destruction, displacement are at a high point,” he said.
Laerke voiced particular concern about north Gaza where residents have been ordered to head south amid the Israeli military’s renewed assault on northern Gaza, launched early last month.
Laerke said:
We have seen and been particularly concerned about the situation in the north of Gaza, which is now effectively under siege and it is near impossible to deliver aid in there. So the operation is being stifled.
One of my colleagues described it as, for humanitarian work... you want to jump. You want to jump up and do something. But what he added was: but our legs are broken. So we are being asked to jump while our legs are broken.
The US said earlier this week that Israel had not breached American laws on blocking aid supplies, after a month-long deadline it gave Israel on 13 October to increase aid access in Gaza or risk punishment – such as the potential stopping of US weapons transfers - lapsed.
Aid groups, however, say Israel has failed to meet the demands, with a committee of global food security experts recently warning that there is a “strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas” of the northern Gaza Strip.
The US has said it is watching to ensure that its ally’s actions on the ground show it does not have a “policy of starvation” in the north, parts of which Israel has placed under a tight siege as part of what it claims is a military push against Hamas.
However, Palestinians as well as Israeli human rights groups and some Israel Defence Forces soldiers say Israel is putting into practice a blueprint known as the “generals’ plan”, a “surrender or starve” campaign aimed at depopulating northern Gaza.
Hamas official says militant group is 'ready' for Gaza ceasefire
A senior Hamas official has said the Palestinian militant group is “ready for a ceasefire” in Gaza and urged US president-elect Donald Trump to “pressure” Israel to “end the aggression”.
“Hamas is ready to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip if a ceasefire proposal is presented and on the condition that it is respected” by Israel, Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “We call on the US administration and Trump to pressure the Israeli government to end the aggression,” he said.
Naim added:
Hamas informed the mediators that it is in favour of any proposal submitted to it that would lead to a definitive ceasefire and military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, allowing the return of displaced people, a serious deal for a prisoner exchange, the entry of humanitarian aid and reconstruction.
The latest round of talks in mid-October failed to produce a deal, with Hamas rejecting a short-term ceasefire proposal, according to Reuters. Israel has previously rejected some proposals for longer truces. Disagreements have centred on the long-term future of Hamas and Israel’s presence in Gaza.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s newly reinforced position now Trump has won the US presidency could lead to further intensification of Israel’s wars in both Gaza and Lebanon – although Trump has said he wants to swiftly end both conflicts.
Updated
Death toll from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza reaches 43,764, says health ministry
At least 43,764 Palestinian people have been killed and 103,490 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Of those, 28 Palestinians were killed in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry said.
Gaza’s health ministry has said in the past that thousands of other dead people are most likely lost in the rubble of the territory.
Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, is reporting that two Palestinian people were killed in an Israeli artillery attack in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. Three other Palestinians were killed in a separate Israeli airstrike near the general security junction in western Gaza City, according to Wafa. A renewed Israeli assault was launched on the northern part of the Gaza Strip last month, with the Israeli military claiming it was to stop Hamas fighters regrouping there. The blockage of aid and food deliveries and the targeting of civilian infrastructure, however, have led to accusations that Israel is committing the war crime of seeking to forcibly displace the remaining population. The entirety of northern Gaza has been under Israeli evacuation orders but it is unclear how many people remain.
Updated
Iran backs Lebanon's government over ceasefire talks, advisor to Iran's supreme leader says
We have some comments coming through from Ali Larijani, the senior advisor to Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei. He has been speaking with Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri and Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, in Beiurt.
Larijani said Iran would support any decision taken by the Lebanese government and Lebanon’s “resistance” (Hezbollah) in current talks on a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Lebanon.
“We are not looking to sabotage anything. We are after a solution to the problems,” Larijani said after meeting with Mikati and Berri.
Ali Hassan Khalil, the political aide to Berri, on Wednesday said Lebanese negotiators reached a preliminary understanding with US envoy Amos Hochstein on a framework for a ceasefire.
In an interview with the broadcaster Aljzaeera on Wednesday evening, Khalil said that this proposal was conveyed to the Israeli side through Hochstein.
He said any potential deal must be firmly based on UN Resolution 1701, adopted in 2006, to help the Lebanese army keep its southern border area with Israel free of weapons or armed personnel other than those of the Lebanese state. Khalil said Lebanon had no objection to US or French participation in overseeing ceasefire compliance. Israel has said that Hezbollah would need to retreat north of the Litani, 18 miles from its northern border, to ensure the “security” of north Israel.
Updated
Here is a video showing the Israeli airstrike levelling a building in the Tayouneh neighbourhood of Beirut:
As we have been reporting, a series of Israeli airstrikes have struck Beirut today. Reuters is now reporting that one of them flattened a building near one of the Lebanese capital’s busiest traffic junctions. The attack reportedly struck near the Tayouneh junction in an area where the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs meet other parts of the city. It is a more central location than most Israel has hit in its deadly bombing campaign over recent weeks.
In a post on X, Ali Larijani, a special envoy for Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, says he is travelling from the Syrian capital Damascus to the Lebanese capital of Beirut.
He was later pictured with Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri.
Yesterday, an Israeli missile reportedly hit a building in Damascus close to where Larijani, a former speaker of Parliament, was meeting with the director of Syria’s national security committee. Larijani was not injured, according to reports, which we have not yet independently verified. Local Iranian media reported that Larijani had been on a “special mission” to Syria on behalf of Khamenei, the ultimate authority in Iran as supreme leader.
Updated
Julian Borger is the Guardian’s senior international correspondent
A UN special committee has said that Israeli policies and practices in Gaza are “consistent with the characteristics of genocide”.
The committee, set up in 1968 to monitor the Israeli occupation, also said in its annual report that there were serious concerns that Israel was “using starvation as a weapon of war” in the 13-month-old conflict, and was running an “apartheid system” in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
The international court of justice (ICJ) is investigating a claim put forward by South Africa that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza is genocidal, and has ordered Israel to take interim measures to prevent genocide taking place.
The new report is by the special committee to investigate Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the occupied territories. The committee, set up in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, is made up of representatives from three member states: Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Senegal.
You can read the full story here:
New Israeli airstrike hits south Beirut after military evacuation order
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency has reported a “heavy strike” carried out with two missiles fired by an “enemy aircraft” in the neighbourhood of Bourj al-Barajneh in Beirut’s southern suburbs. The Israeli military says it has identified several buildings in the suburbs of Ghobeiry (see opening summary for more details) and Bourj al-Barajneh that the military plans to target as it claims Hezbollah targets are there.
“For your safety and the safety of your family members, you must evacuate these buildings and those adjacent to them immediately and stay away from them for a distance of no less than 500 meters,” Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote in a post on X.
#عاجل إلى جميع السكان المتواجدين في منطقة الضاحية الجنوبية وتحديدًا في المباني المحددة في الخرائط المرفقة والمباني المجاورة لها في المناطق التالية:
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) November 15, 2024
🔸برج البراجنة
🔸الغبيري
⭕️أنتم تتواجدون بالقرب من منشآت ومصالح تابعة لحزب الله حيث سيعمل ضدها جيش الدفاع على المدى الزمني القريب… pic.twitter.com/5MqqIm5CCc
Updated
The World Bank has estimated that Lebanon, already reeling from a severe economic crisis that has gripped the country since 2019, has been hit by $8.5bn (£6.7bn) in physical damages and economic losses from 13 months of Israel’s war.
Damages to physical infrastructure alone were valued at $3.4bn (£2.7bn), while economic losses totaled $5.1bn (£4bn). Housing has borne the brunt of the destruction with nearly 100,000 units damaged, totaling $3.2bn (£2.5bn) in destruction and losses.
The UN security council’s 10 elected members – Ecuador, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Switzerland, Algeria, Guyana, South Korea, Sierra Leone and Slovenia – have circulated a draft resolution demanding “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza.
The draft resolution, which was sent to the council’s five permanent members yesterday, reiterates the council’s demand “for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages” seized during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage. Israel says about 100 hostages are still being held, though not all are believed to be alive.
The US, Israel’s closest ally and biggest weapons supplier, holds the key to whether the security council adopts the resolution. The four other permanent members – Russia, China, Britain and France - are expected to support it or abstain.
The draft, obtained by The Associated Press, also demands immediate access for Gaza’s civilian population to humanitarian aid and essential services (the UN relief and works agency, Unrwa, said earlier this week that “aid entering the Gaza Strip is at its lowest level in months”).
The draft “underscores” that Unrwa “remains the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza”.
Last month, the Knesset – the Israeli parlimanet - banned Unrwa from conducting “any activity” or providing any service inside Israel, including the areas of annexed East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. A second vote declared Unrwa a terror group, effectively banning any direct interaction between the agency and the Israeli state. Unrwa provides education, health care and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees across the region. The head of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the Knesset vote was “intolerable” and would have “devastating consequences”.
Updated
Five paramedics reportedly killed in Israeli attack in southern Lebanon as residents ordered to leave Beirut suburb
We are restarting our live coverage of Israel’s wars in Lebanon and Gaza.
The Israeli military has ordered residents to immediately evacuate the Beirut southern suburb of Ghobeiry, where it says Hezbollah fighters are located.
“You are located near Hezbollah facilities and interests, against which the IDF will act forcefully in the near future,” Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote in a post on X.
Al Jazeera reports this morning that several attacks on the area have taken place, with footage on social media showing large explosions and smoke bellowing out of buildings.
Lebanon’s state-run national news agency (NNA) said the Ghobeiry area “witnessed heavy gunfire” from Israeli forces. The number of people killed or injured is not clear yet.
Citing Lebanon’s health ministry, the NNA also earlier reported that six people had been killed in a “horrific massacre” carried out by Israeli soldiers on a civil defence centre in the town of Arabsalim in southern Lebanon. Six people were reported to have been killed in the attack, including five paramedics.
Here are some of the other latest developments:
In Gaza, at least two people were killed and several others injured after an overnight Israeli airstrike hit a residential apartment in the centre of Deir al-Balah, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa. In a separate attack, the outlet reports that two members of the same family – a father and son – were killed in an Israeli missile strike that targeted a home in the village of al-Nasr, northeast of the southern city of Rafah.
The Israel Defense Forces said two rockets launched from Lebanon at the Haifa Bay area of Israel were successfully intercepted by air defenses. There were no immediate reports of any injuries.
Canada’s foreign minister has expressed deep concern about “catastrophic” humanitarian conditions across Gaza and warned about “the life-threatening levels of acute malnutrition.” The country’s foreign affairs minister, Melanie Joly, cited a 8 November report by the Famine Review Committee that found a strong likelihood that famine is occurring or imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip. She said Israel must abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law and provide a significant and sustained increase to humanitarian assistance for Palestinians.
Israel is using evacuation orders to pursue the “deliberate and massive forced displacement” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, according to a report by Human Rights Watch, which says the policy amounts to crimes against humanity. The US-based group added it had collected evidence that suggested “the war crime of forcible transfer [of the civilian population]”, describing it as “a grave breach of the Geneva conventions and a crime under the Rome statute of the international criminal court” (you can read more about the report’s findings here).
