This blog has now closed. You can read our latest report on the Israel-Gaza war here and all our coverage from the region here.
Yemen risks being dragged further into the military escalation in the Middle East, the UN special envoy for the Arab world’s poorest nation says, the Associated Press reports.
Hans Grundberg also told the UN security council on Tuesday that repeated attacks on international shipping by the Houthi rebels who control most of the country’s north “have significantly increased the risk of an environment disaster” in the Red Sea.
Both Grundberg and acting UN humanitarian chief Joyce Msuya urged the Iranian-backed Houthis to halt their attacks on shipping and release dozens of UN personnel, staff of non-governmental organizations and diplomatic missions, and members of civil society. Most have been detained since June.
Days after the June detentions, the Houthis said they had arrested members of what they called an “American-Israeli spy network,” an allegation vehemently denied by the UN and others.
Msuya warned that despite escalating needs, the issue continues to “significantly hinder our ability to provide lifesaving humanitarian assistance in Yemen.”
The number of Yemenis without enough to eat soared to “unprecedented levels” in August, she said.
The Israeli military says sirens in Safed and the surrounding area were triggered by a barrage of about 50 rockets fired from Lebanon around 1:40 a.m.
The IDF said it intercepted numerous missiles and other fallen projectiles were identified in the area.
בהמשך להתרעות שהופעלו לפני זמן קצר במרחב הגליל העליון, זוהו כ-50 שיגורים שחצו לשטח הארץ מלבנון, חלקם יורטו, זוהו נפילות במרחב
— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) October 15, 2024
Some more on this earlier Reuters report on Israel clearing landmines and establishing new barriers on the frontier between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and a demilitarised strip bordering Syria, a potential sign Israel may expand its ground operations against Hezbollah while bolstering its own defences.
The mine removal intensified as Israel began ground incursions on 1 October to fight Hezbollah along the mountainous terrain separating northern Israel from southern Lebanon about 20 km (12 miles) to the west, Reuters reported citing sources.
By extending its front in the east, Israel could tighten its squeeze on Hezbollah’s arms supply routes, some of which cut across Syria, Lebanon’s eastern neighbour and an ally of Iran.
Navvar Saban, a conflict analyst at the Istanbul-based Harmoon Center, said the operations in the Golan, a hilly, 1,200 square km (460 square mile) plateau that also overlooks Lebanon and borders Jordan, appeared to be an attempt to “prepare the groundwork” for a broader offensive in Lebanon.
“Everything happening in Syria is to serve Israel’s strategy in Lebanon – hitting supply routes, hitting warehouses, hitting people linked to the supply lines to Hezbollah,” he said.
The Israeli military said it “does not comment on operational plans”.
Two drones were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israel following sirens that sounded in Upper Galilee, the Israeli military said in a statement early on Wednesday, adding that no injuries were reported.
Fallen targets were identified in the area, the army said.
Summary of the day so far
It’s 1am in Beirut, Gaza and Tel Aviv. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that Israel will decide alone on the form of any retaliation to Iran’s missile attack earlier this month, although it would listen to advice from Washington. The comments came after reports that the Israeli prime minister had given an assurance to the US president, Joe Biden, that Israel would not attack sites associated with Iran’s nuclear programme or oilfields before the US presidential election. A statement from Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday denied any such commitment. A US air defence battery arrived in Israel on Monday to bolster its protection against Iranian ballistic missiles.
The Biden administration warned Israel to take immediate action to let more humanitarian aid into Gaza, or else face possible punishment, including the potential stopping of US weapons transfers. A letter written jointly by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, and Lloyd Austin, the defence secretary, urged Israel to lift restrictions on the entry of assistance into Gaza within 30 days or face unspecified policy “implications”.
A US state department spokesperson confirmed the authenticity of the letter and said it had been intended to be a private diplomatic communication. Matthew Miller declined to go into specific when asked what consequences Israel might face for refusing to meet American demands for greater aid access. He said that a previous letter Blinken had written in April had increased humanitarian aid flows into Gaza.
Israel continued to press its offensive in Gaza, with airstrikes killing a further 50 Palestinians on Tuesday. Palestinian health officials said at least 17 people were killed by Israeli fire near Al-Falouja in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, while 10 others were killed in Bani Suhaila in eastern Khan Younis in the south when an Israeli missile struck a house. Later on Tuesday, the Gaza health ministry said one doctor was killed when he tried to help the people wounded by Israeli strikes in Al-Falouja in Jabalia. It said Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 42,344 Palestinians and wounded 99,013 since 7 October 2023.
The UN human rights office said on Tuesday the Israeli military appeared to be “cutting off North Gaza completely from the rest of the Gaza Strip.” Tens of thousands of civilians have been trapped in the densely populated northern Gaza neighbourhood of Jabaliya by a new Israeli military operation there. Most are suffering appalling conditions and mounting casualties from Israeli shelling, bombs and missiles. The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the three hospitals in northern Gaza, said they were facing serious shortages of food, medication, and fuel, that could soon impact patients in their facilities.
In Lebanon, Israel’s military launched several strikes in eastern areas on Tuesday, a day after Netanyahu vowed to “mercilessly strike Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon – including Beirut”. The Lebanese health ministry said 41 people were killed and 124 were injured by Israeli strikes in Lebanon on Monday, meaning a total of 2,350 people have been killed in Lebanon since the fighting began between Hezbollah and Israel last October and the number of wounded has risen to 10,906. A US state department spokesperson said Washington has “made clear to Israel that we oppose the bombing campaign that they have been launching in recent weeks in Beirut.”
The UN rights office said an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in northern Lebanon that killed at least 22 people needs to be independently investigated. It said it had received reports that most of the victims of the Israeli airstrike on the northern Lebanon village of Aitou were women and children. “We have real concerns with respect to … the laws of war,” a UNHCR spokesperson said. The apartment building hit in the airstrike was in the small village of Aito, in the country’s Christian heartland and far from Hezbollah’s main areas of influence in Lebanon’s south and east.
More than a quarter of Lebanon is now affected by Israeli evacuation orders, according to the UN’s refugee agency. “People are heeding these calls to evacuate, and they’re fleeing with almost nothing,” Middle East director Rema Jamous Imseis told journalists on Tuesday. More than 1.2 million people in Lebanon have been displaced over the past year. More than 400,000 children in Lebanon have been displaced in the past three weeks, a top official with the UN children’s agency said Monday, warning of a “lost generation” in the small country grappling with multiple crises and now in the middle of war.
Israeli troops cleared landmines and established new barriers on the frontier between the occupied Golan Heights and a demilitarised strip bordering Syria, according to a report, in a sign Israel may expand its ground operations against Hezbollah while bolstering its own defences. The move suggests Israel may seek to strike Hezbollah for the first time from further east along Lebanon’s border, at the same time creating a secure area from which it can freely reconnoitre the armed group and prevent infiltration, security sources told Reuters.
An assailant shot dead an Israeli policeman and wounded five other people near the southern city of Ashdod on Tuesday in what police called a “terrorist” attack. The gunman was killed during the attack at the Yavne interchange along the highway connecting Ashdod to Tel Aviv, authorities said.
Netanyahu told Emmanuel Macron, the French president, in a phone call on Tuesday that he was opposed to agreeing to a “unilateral ceasefire” in Lebanon, his office said. The call came as Macron increased pressure on Israel to abide by UN decisions, telling his cabinet that the Israeli leader “must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN”, according to a report.
Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said she will visit Lebanon on Friday as she demanded security guarantees from Israel for her country’s troops there just days after UN peacekeeper bases came under attack. Italy’s government has been a strong supporter of Israel in the year since Hamas’s 7 October attacks but has sharply criticised attacks on Unifil and Israeli calls for the peacekeepers to withdraw.
The UK Foreign Office announced sanctions against seven organisations that support illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank, but held back from penalising two extremist members of the Israeli government, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and the national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Ireland’s prime minister, Simon Harris, said the country is not going to “wait” for the rest of the EU to take action against extremist Israeli settlers amid growing frustration in Dublin and Madrid over Brussels’ perceived inaction. It comes as Ireland looks afresh at drafting legislation which could block imports of products made in the occupied territories.
The Israeli military said it captured three members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces in south Lebanon. On Sunday, the Israeli military said it had captured a Hezbollah fighter from an underground tunnel shaft in south Lebanon.
Updated
Israel says it is reviewing letter from US urging improvement in Gaza humanitarian situation
Israel is reviewing a letter sent by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and defense secretary Lloyd Austin calling on Israel to improve Gaza’s humanitarian situation or risk losing US military aid, an Israeli official said.
Reuters cites the Israeli official as saying:
Israel takes this matter seriously and intends to address the concerns raised in this letter with our American counterparts.
That comes after Blinken and Austin warned their Israeli counterparts in a letter dated Sunday that Israel must ease humanitarian suffering in the territory by lifting restrictions on the entry of assistance within 30 days.
The letter, which restates US policy toward humanitarian aid and arms transfers, was sent amid deteriorating conditions in northern Gaza and an Israeli airstrike on a hospital tent site in central Gaza that killed at least four people and burned others.
A similar letter that Blinken sent to Israeli officials in April led to more humanitarian assistance getting to the Palestinian territory, state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Tuesday. But that has not lasted.
“In fact, it’s fallen by over 50% from where it was at its peak,” Miller said at a briefing, the Associated Press reported. Blinken and Austin “thought it was appropriate to make clear to the government of Israel that there are changes that they need to make again, to see that the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up from the very, very low levels that it is at today.”
For Israel to continue qualifying for foreign military financing, the level of aid getting into Gaza must increase to at least 350 trucks a day, Israel must institute additional humanitarian pauses and provide increased security for humanitarian sites, Austin and Blinken said in their letter, which was first reported by Axios.
“The letter was not meant as a threat,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters. “The letter was simply meant to reiterate the sense of urgency we feel and the seriousness with which we feel it, about the need for an increase, a dramatic increase in humanitarian assistance.”
Updated
The UN’s humanitarian office has warned that the situation is “catastrophic” in northern Gaza, where only three hospitals are operating and Israeli military operations have intensified.
The escalation in the north of the Palestinian territory is “severely compromising people’s access to means of survival, Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN’s secretary general António Guterres said on Tuesday.
He said that the three remaining hospitals “have dire shortages of fuel, of blood, of trauma items and medications.”
About 285 patients remain in Kamal Adwan hospital, Al-Adwa hospital and the Indonesian hospital, he said.
Hezbollah said it downed a second Israeli drone on Tuesday, adding that it was seen “burning” over Israeli territory.
Hezbollah fighters “shot down a second Israeli Hermes 450 drone”, the group said, adding that “it was seen burning in the skies of occupied Palestine,” AFP reported.
The Biden administration has warned Israel that it faces possible punishment, including the potential stopping of US weapons transfers, if it does not take immediate action to let more humanitarian aid into Gaza.
A letter written jointly by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, and Lloyd Austin, the defence secretary, exhorts Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to ease humanitarian suffering in the territory by lifting restrictions on the entry of assistance within 30 days or face unspecified policy “implications”.
Its authenticity was confirmed by a state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, at a news briefing on Tuesday.
Updated
Northern Gaza being 'wiped off the map' by Israel's 'horrifying level of atrocity', say humanitarian groups
Dozens of UK and international global humanitarian organisations have warned that Israel’s assault on Gaza has escalated to a “horrifying level of atrocity” in a joint statement on Tuesday.
Northern Gaza is being wiped off the map, according to the joint statement by 38 humanitarian groups including Oxfam, ActionAid and Islamic Relief.
Under the guise of ‘evacuation’, Israeli forces have ordered the forced displacement of an estimated 400,000 Palestinians trapped in northern Gaza, including Gaza City. This is not an evacuation — this is forced displacement under gunfire.
“The world cannot continue to stand by as the Israeli government commits these atrocities,” the statement continues, as it calls on global leaders to “act now”.
This is not a time for silence - this is a time for action. The people of Gaza cannot wait. The world must intervene now before more innocent lives are lost.
Elie Alwan sheltered a displaced Shiite family from southern Lebanon in his peaceful Christian-majority village, believing they would be safe - instead an Israeli air strike killed them, destroyed his home and injured his mother, AFP writes.
The October 14 strike on the north Lebanon village of Aito in the Zgharta district killed 23 people, including at least 12 women and two children, many of them displaced from south Lebanon, according to the official National News Agency. (The Guardian uses the spelling Aitou).
It’s a massacre that happened in my home,” said 42-year-old Alwan.
The attack, which wiped out an entire family, was the first time the mountain village has been struck by Israel, which has mostly targeted Shiite-dominated Hezbollah strongholds.
The four-storey building where Alwan lived was destroyed and the displaced family whom he had known for 15 years were wiped out.
They were a decent family. I welcomed them as friends,” said the father of four, blood stains still visible on the rubble-strewn ground beside him.
Hezbollah’s acting leader declared today that the Lebanese militant group is focused on “hurting the enemy” by targeting Haifa and other parts of Israel, including Tel Aviv.
Sheikh Naim Kassem, Hezbollah’s deputy chief, vowed in a televised speech to “defeat our enemies and drive them out of our lands.” It was his third appearance since Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike in a southern suburb of Beirut, the Associated Press reports.
The United Nations human rights office meanwhile called for an independent probe into an Israeli airstrike that hit an apartment block in Aito in northern Lebanon, killing at least 22 people, including 12 women and two children.
Israeli air strikes continue in Lebanon and Gaza. The strike in Aitou (the Guardian used this spelling, while AP uses Aito) occurred yesterday.
Updated
An Israeli air strike on Qana in southern Lebanon has killed 10 and wounded 15 today, according to multiple reports.
Al Jazeera English cited Lebanon’s national news agency in posting its report.
Qana is near the larger coastal city of Tyre.
There are reports that have not been independently verified that a residential building was hit.
Over 12 Israeli airstrikes have hit South Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley in the past three hours, including a health facility in Qana near Tyre, reports Al Jazeera's
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 15, 2024
Ali Hashem.
🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/e4t7TLLwZ8 pic.twitter.com/bd0g4qJuDD
Updated
Summary of the day so far
It’s just past 10.30pm in Gaza, Beirut and Tel Aviv. Here’s where things stand:
Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that Israel will decide alone on the form of any retaliation to Iran’s missile attack earlier this month, although it would listen to advice from Washington. The comments came after reports that the Israeli prime minister had given an assurance to the US president, Joe Biden, that Israel would not attack sites associated with Iran’s nuclear programme or oilfields before the US presidential election. A statement from Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday denied any such commitment. A US air defence battery arrived in Israel on Monday to bolster its protection against Iranian ballistic missiles.
The Biden administration warned Israel to take immediate action to let more humanitarian aid into Gaza, or else face possible punishment, including the potential stopping of US weapons transfers. A letter written jointly by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, and Lloyd Austin, the defence secretary, urged Israel to lift restrictions on the entry of assistance into Gaza within 30 days or face unspecified policy “implications”.
A US state department spokesperson confirmed the authenticity of the letter and said it had been intended to be a private diplomatic communication. Matthew Miller eclined to go into specific when asked what consequences Israel might face for refusing to meet American demands for greater aid access. He said that a previous letter Blinken had written in April had increased humanitarian aid flows into Gaza.
Israel continued to press its offensive in Gaza, with airstrikes killing a further 50 Palestinians on Tuesday. Palestinian health officials said at least 17 people were killed by Israeli fire near Al-Falouja in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, while 10 others were killed in Bani Suhaila in eastern Khan Younis in the south when an Israeli missile struck a house. Later on Tuesday, the Gaza health ministry said one doctor was killed when he tried to help the people wounded by Israeli strikes in Al-Falouja in Jabalia. It said Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 42,344 Palestinians and wounded 99,013 since 7 October 2023.
The UN human rights office said on Tuesday the Israeli military appeared to be “cutting off North Gaza completely from the rest of the Gaza Strip.” Tens of thousands of civilians have been trapped in the densely populated northern Gaza neighbourhood of Jabaliya by a new Israeli military operation there. Most are suffering appalling conditions and mounting casualties from Israeli shelling, bombs and missiles. The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the three hospitals in northern Gaza, said they were facing serious shortages of food, medication, and fuel, that could soon impact patients in their facilities.
In Lebanon, Israel’s military launched several strikes in eastern areas on Tuesday, a day after Netanyahu vowed to “mercilessly strike Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon – including Beirut”. The Lebanese health ministry said 41 people were killed and 124 were injured by Israeli strikes in Lebanon on Monday, meaning a total of 2,350 people have been killed in Lebanon since the fighting began between Hezbollah and Israel last October and the number of wounded has risen to 10,906. A US state department spokesperson said Washington has “made clear to Israel that we oppose the bombing campaign that they have been launching in recent weeks in Beirut.”
The UN rights office said an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in northern Lebanon that killed at least 22 people needs to be independently investigated. It said it had received reports that most of the victims of the Israeli airstrike on the northern Lebanon village of Aitou were women and children. “We have real concerns with respect to … the laws of war,” a UNHCR spokesperson said. The apartment building hit in the airstrike was in the small village of Aito, in the country’s Christian heartland and far from Hezbollah’s main areas of influence in Lebanon’s south and east.
More than a quarter of Lebanon is now affected by Israeli evacuation orders, according to the UN’s refugee agency. “People are heeding these calls to evacuate, and they’re fleeing with almost nothing,” Middle East director Rema Jamous Imseis told journalists on Tuesday. More than 1.2 million people in Lebanon have been displaced over the past year. More than 400,000 children in Lebanon have been displaced in the past three weeks, a top official with the UN children’s agency said Monday, warning of a “lost generation” in the small country grappling with multiple crises and now in the middle of war.
Israeli troops cleared landmines and established new barriers on the frontier between the occupied Golan Heights and a demilitarised strip bordering Syria, according to a report, in a sign Israel may expand its ground operations against Hezbollah while bolstering its own defences. The move suggests Israel may seek to strike Hezbollah for the first time from further east along Lebanon’s border, at the same time creating a secure area from which it can freely reconnoitre the armed group and prevent infiltration, security sources told Reuters.
An assailant shot dead an Israeli policeman and wounded five other people near the southern city of Ashdod on Tuesday in what police called a “terrorist” attack. The gunman was killed during the attack at the Yavne interchange along the highway connecting Ashdod to Tel Aviv, authorities said.
Netanyahu told Emmanuel Macron, the French president, in a phone call on Tuesday that he was opposed to agreeing to a “unilateral ceasefire” in Lebanon, his office said. The call came as Macron increased pressure on Israel to abide by UN decisions, telling his cabinet that the Israeli leader “must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN”, according to a report.
Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said she will visit Lebanon on Friday as she demanded security guarantees from Israel for her country’s troops there just days after UN peacekeeper bases came under attack. Italy’s government has been a strong supporter of Israel in the year since Hamas’s 7 October attacks but has sharply criticised attacks on Unifil and Israeli calls for the peacekeepers to withdraw.
The UK Foreign Office announced sanctions against seven organisations that support illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank, but held back from penalising two extremist members of the Israeli government, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and the national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Ireland’s prime minister, Simon Harris, said the country is not going to “wait” for the rest of the EU to take action against extremist Israeli settlers amid growing frustration in Dublin and Madrid over Brussels’ perceived inaction. It comes as Ireland looks afresh at drafting legislation which could block imports of products made in the occupied territories.
The Israeli military said it captured three members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces in south Lebanon. On Sunday, the Israeli military said it had captured a Hezbollah fighter from an underground tunnel shaft in south Lebanon.
Netanyahu tells Macron he is 'opposed to a unilateral ceasefire in Lebanon'
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, told the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in a phone call on Tuesday that he was opposed to agreeing to a “unilateral ceasefire” in Lebanon, his office said.
According to the Israeli prime minister’s office:
The prime minister said in the conversation that he is opposed to a unilateral ceasefire, which does not change the security situation in Lebanon, and which will only return it to the way it was.
Israel has repeatedly insisted that there must be a buffer zone along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon where there is no presence of Hezbollah fighters.
Netanyahu informed Macron that Israel “would not agree to any arrangement that does not provide this and which does not stop Hezbollah from rearming and regrouping,” the statement from his office said, AFP reported.
The call came as Macron increased pressure on Israel to abide by UN decisions, telling his cabinet that the Israeli leader “must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN”, a participant in the meeting told the news agency.
Here are some of the latest images sent from the newswires from Lebanon.
US says it has 'real concerns' over Israeli bombing campaign in Beirut
The US has voiced concern to Israel over bombings of Beirut in its campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah, US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. He told reporters:
We have made clear to Israel that we oppose the bombing campaign that they have been launching in recent weeks in Beirut.
Miller said Israel has a right to go after “legitimate terrorist targets” but that Washington has had “real concerns over the nature of the campaign rollout across Beirut in the last few weeks”. He added:
We have seen strikes diminish in recent days and will continue to watch it very carefully.
On the letter sent by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, Miller denied any link to the upcoming US general election.
The letter urges Israel to take steps within 30 days to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza or face potential restrictions on US military aid. That would fall after 5 November election. Miller said:
We didn’t think it was appropriate to send a letter and just say this has to happen overnight.
Matthew Miller, the US state department spokesperson, said a similar letter that Antony Blinken sent to Israeli officials in April led to more humanitarian assistance getting to Gaza.
“In fact, [Gaza aid has] fallen by over 50% from where it was at its peak,” Miller told reporters on Tuesday.
So the secretary, along with Secretary Austin, thought it was appropriate to make clear to the government of Israel that there are changes that they need to make again.
US confirms warning Israel over aid to Gaza
The US state department has confirmed reports that the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and defense secretary Lloyd Austin warned Israel to take urgent steps to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza within the next 30 days or face losing access to US weapons funding.
Blinken and Austin wrote a letter to Israel on Sunday to make “clear to the government of Israel that there are changes that they need to make again to see that the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up from the very, very low levels that it is at today”, US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on Tuesday.
For Israel to continue qualifying for foreign military financing, the level of aid getting into Gaza must increase to at least 350 trucks a day, Austin and Blinken said in their letter. Israel must also institute additional humanitarian pauses and provide increased security for humanitarian sites. Miller said:
We are making clear to the government of Israel that there are these changes that need to be implemented, that we give them an appropriate period of time to implement it.
Updated
The US and Canada have designated a pro-Palestinian group, Samidoun, as a “terrorist entity”.
In a statement, the US treasury department described the group, also known as the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, as a “sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization.”
Also designated today is Khaled Barakat, a member of the PFLP’s leadership, the US department said.
Canada’s public safety minister, Dominic LeBlanc, said in a statement:
The listing of Samidoun as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code sends a strong message that Canada will not tolerate this type of activity, and will do everything in its power to counter the ongoing threat to Canada’s national security and all people in Canada.
The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it captured three members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces in south Lebanon.
According to a statement by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the Hezbollah fighters were moved to Israel for investigation.
An underground shaft was located inside a building used by Hezbollah. The forces surrounded the building, where three terrorists of the Radwan Force were entrenched. They were found alongside many weapons and equipment needed for a long stay.
It did not say when the Hezbollah fighters were captured.
On Sunday, the Israeli military said it had captured a Hezbollah fighter from an underground tunnel shaft in south Lebanon.
About 3,000 French citizens have left Lebanon since fighting broke out between Israel and Hezbollah, according to France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot.
Addressing the French parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Tuesday, he added that no decision had been taken regarding evacuations from Lebanon.
Israel tells US it will not strike Iran's nuclear or oil sites - reports
The Israeli government has provided assurances to the Biden administration that it will avoid striking Iran’s nuclear or oil sites when it responds to Tehran’s missile attack earlier this month, according to reports.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has told Washington that he is willing to strike military facilities in Iran, the Washington Post reported, citing two US officials.
US officials said Israel had agreed to focus its next attack on military targets in Iran instead of sites related to Iran’s oil industry or its uranium enrichment efforts.
According to AP, the Biden administration believes that sending a US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to Israel and about 100 soldiers to operate it has eased some of Israel’s concerns about possible Iranian retaliation and general security issues.
No final decision is believed to have been made, the New York Times reported, adding that an Israeli retaliation could still be large in scale, possibly prompting Iran to continue the cycle of attacks.
The Israeli pledge only relates to its next attack against Tehran, according to the Post, meaning it could still pursue more ambitious targets later on.
Israel tells US it won't strike Iran's nuclear or oil facilities, reports say
Israel has offered assurances to the US that it will not strike Iranian nuclear or oil sites, two US officials told the AP news agency on the condition of anonymity.
The US has said it would not support Israel targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities while there has been concern that such a could trigger a global recession.
Updated
Here is more from Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni who plans to visit Lebanon on Friday.
“We believe that the attitude of the Israeli forces is completely unjustified,” Meloni told the upper house of parliament, describing it as a “blatant violation” of a U.N. resolution that mandated the Lebanese mission.
In a later speech to the lower house, she said: “I believe that a withdrawal on the basis of a unilateral request by Israel would be a big mistake. It would undermine the credibility of the mission itself, the credibility of the United Nations.”
41 people killed in Israeli strikes on Monday, says Lebanese health ministry
The Lebanese health ministry said 41 people were killed and 124 were injured by Israeli strikes in Lebanon on Monday.
It added 2,350 people have been killed in Lebanon since the fighting began between Hezbollah and Israel last October and the number of wounded has risen to 10,906.
Updated
Over the past year, Israel has launched attacks on multiple countries and occupied territories: the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran.
Yet countries and territories aside, Israel has also targeted one specific organization with a series of unprecedented rhetorical and violent attacks.
Yes, the United Nations. We have all witnessed Israel, effectively, declare war on the UN.
Consider the record of recent weeks and months:
Israel’s prime minister, while standing on stage at the UN general assembly, denounced the body as “contemptible”, a “house of darkness” and a “swamp of antisemitic bile”.
Israel’s outgoing ambassador to the UN shredded a copy of the UN charter with a miniature paper shredder while also standing at the podium of the general assembly, and later said the UN headquarters in New York “should be closed and wiped off the face of the Earth”.
Israel’s foreign minister falsely accused the UN secretary general of not having condemned Iran’s attacks on Israel, declared him “persona non grata in Israel” and announced that he had “banned him from entering the country”.
Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni has announced a visit to Lebanon later this week, and said heeding Israel’s unilateral demand for U.N. peacekeepers to be withdrawn from the country would be a “grave mistake”.
Speaking in the lower house of parliament, she said she expected to be in Lebanon on Friday and said a withdrawal of the UNIFIL mission “would be a grave mistake and undermine the credibility” of the United Nations.
A summary of today's developments
US secretary of state Antony Blinken and defence secretary Lloyd Austin have reportedly told Israel it must take urgent steps to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza to avoid legal action involving US military aid. “We are writing now to underscore the US government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and seek urgent and sustained actions by your government this month to reverse this trajectory,” they wrote in an October 13 letter to their Israeli counterparts, posted by an Axios reporter on X.
The UK foreign minister David Lammy criticised the “inaction of the Israeli government” for allowing “impunity to flourish” among extremist settlers in the West Bank while announcing a fresh wave of sanctions against the groups in response to continued violence. The measures target three outposts and four organisations that have supported and perpetrated “heinous abuses of human rights” against Palestinian communities in the occupied territory, Lammy said.
The United Nations human rights office said the Israeli military appeared to be “cutting off North Gaza completely from the rest of the Gaza Strip.” “Amid intense ongoing hostilities and evacuation orders in northern Gaza families are facing unimaginable fear, loss of loved ones, confusion, and exhaustion. People must be able to flee safely, without facing further danger,” Adrian Zimmerman, ICRC Gaza head of sub-delegation, said in a statement.
The Pentagon said components for an advanced anti-missile system began arriving in Israel on Monday and that it would be fully operational in the near future, according to a statement.
An assailant shot dead an Israeli policeman and wounded five other people near the southern city of Ashdod on Tuesday in what police called a “terrorist” attack. The gunman was killed during the attack at the Yavne interchange along the highway connecting Ashdod to Tel Aviv, the authorities said.
The death toll of people killed in Israeli military strikes has risen to 50, Reuters reports, as Israeli forces tightened their squeeze around Jabalia in the north of the enclave on Tuesday, amid fierce battles with Hamas-led fighters.
Palestinian health officials said at least 17 people were killed by Israeli fire near Al-Falouja in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, while 10 others were killed in Bani Suhaila in eastern Khan Younis in the south when an Israeli missile struck a house.
Following the Israeli airstrike on the northern Lebanon village of Aitou, the UN human rights office said it had received reports that most of the 22 victims of the hit on a building there were women and children.
Israeli military strikes killed at least 40 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces tightened their squeeze around Jabalia in the north of the enclave on Tuesday, amid fierce battles with Hamas-led fighters. Palestinian health officials said at least 11 people were killed by Israeli fire near Al-Falouja in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, while 10 others were killed in Bani Suhaila in eastern Khan Younis in the south when an Israeli missile struck a house.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has said that Israel will decide alone on the form of any retaliation to Iran’s barrage of 180 missiles fired at the country earlier this month, although it would listen to advice from Washington.
The comments came after US media reported that the Israeli prime minister had given an assurance to the US president, Joe Biden, that Israel would not attack sites associated with Iran’s nuclear programme or oilfields before the US presidential election.
On Tuesday, Israel continued to press its offensive in Lebanon and Gaza, with airstrikes in Gaza killing a further 50 Palestinians as Israeli forces fought Hamas and other militants in the north of the territory.
Tens of thousands of civilians have been trapped in the densely populated northern Gaza neighbourhood of Jabaliya by a new Israeli military operation there. Most are suffering appalling conditions and mounting casualties from Israeli shelling, bombs and missiles.
In Lebanon, Israel’s military launched several strikes in eastern areas, a day after Netanyahu vowed to “mercilessly strike Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon – including Beirut”.
Israel’s government has turned to its defence sector to bolster the military’s ability to intercept aerial drones launched by Iran or Hezbollah.
The country’s defence ministry said it had launched a competition among eight large and small companies.
“After analysing the trial results, the Defence Ministry will select several technologies to enter an accelerated development and production process. This aims to deploy new operational capabilities within months,” it said.
In addition to missiles, Iran, Hezbollah and others have used drones in attacks on Israel.
The United States has imposed sanctions on what it said was a key international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which Washington has designated a terrorist organization.
The U.S. Treasury Department, in action taken with Canada, said in a statement it imposed sanctions on the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, accusing it of being “a sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser” for the PFLP.
The PFLP, which has also taken part in the fight against Israel in Gaza, was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S. in 1997 and in 2001.
The Treasury said PFLP uses Samidoun to fundraise in Europe and North America. The group’s activities were banned by Germany last year, Reuters reports.
“Organizations like Samidoun masquerade as charitable actors that claim to provide humanitarian support to those in need, yet in reality divert funds for much-needed assistance to support terrorist groups,” Treasury’s acting under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Bradley Smith, said in the statement.
More now on the political backdrop to the UK’s decision to impose sanctions on settlers in the West Bank for the third time.
The Foreign Office said the move had been in preparation for weeks and was not a kneejerk response to former UK foreign minister David Cameron’s disclosure that he would have sanctioned two members of the Israeli government.
Our diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour has more, below
The map below shows the areas of Gaza affected by the ongoing conflict. Israeli forces are thought to be tightening their grip around Jabalia in the north of the strip
The reports come as Israeli forces expand operations into northern Gaza amid ongoing concerns about access to humanitarian aid throughout the enclave and civilians’ access to food, water and medicine, as mentioned in our post at 1.16BST.
The United States last week also told the UN Security Council Israel needs to address urgently “catastrophic conditions” among Palestinian civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip and stop “intensifying suffering” by limiting aid deliveries.
The secretaries’ letter cited Section 620i of the Foreign Assistance Act, which restricts (prohibits) military aid to countries that impede delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.
US officials earlier this year said Israel may have violated international humanitarian law using U.S.-supplied weapons during its military operation in Gaza.
US says Israel must take steps to improve humanitarian situation in Gaza or face legal action - report
Back to events in Gaza now, and as we reported in our post at 1.32pm BST, the UN believe the area is facing the worst restrictions on aid since the current conflict began on October 7
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and defence secretary Lloyd Austin have reportedly told Israel it must take urgent steps to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza to avoid legal action involving US military aid.
“We are writing now to underscore the US government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and seek urgent and sustained actions by your government this month to reverse this trajectory,” they wrote in an October 13 letter to their Israeli counterparts, posted by an Axios reporter on X.
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Foreign Office outlines West Bank outposts and organisations subject to UK sanctions
More now on those new sanctions announced by the UK government as targeting three settler outposts and four organisations in the West Bank.
The UK Foreign Office has released a statement expanding on the reasoning behind the move, made – it says – in response to a rise in violence against Palestinian communities. This is expected to peak during this month – the start of the olive harvest.
The illegal settler outposts sanctioned - Tirzah Valley Farm Outpost, Meitarim Outpost, and Shuvi Eretz Outpost - have been “involved in facilitating, inciting, promoting or providing support for activity that amounts to a serious abuse of the right of Palestinians not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” the Foreign Office said.
They’ve also provided details on the four organisations now subject to sanctions.
Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva is a religious school embedded in the Yitzhar settlement, while Hashomer Yosh is a non-governmental organisation that provides volunteers for illegal outposts, including Meitarim Outpost, also sanctioned today). Meitarim was founded by the extremist settler Yinon Levy, who the UK sanctioned in February.
Torat Lechima is a registered Israeli charity that has been documented as providing financial support to illegal settler outposts linked with acts of violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
Amana has overseen the establishment of illegal outposts and provides funding and other economic resources for Israeli settlers involved in threatening and perpetrating acts of aggression and violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the three hospitals in northern Gaza, said they were facing serious shortages of food, medication, and fuel, that could soon impact patients in their facilities.
“There is a stark shortage of consumables and supplies began to run out. Milk is running out, and everything available is depleting and we could face a humanitarian disaster that would impact those in the maternity and the neonatal units,” said Abu Safiya in a video appeal to international relief and human rights groups.
The northern part of Gaza is home to well over half the territory’s 2.3 million people. Around 400,000 people remain, according to United Nations estimates.
UK announces sanctions against extremist settler groups in West Bank
The UK foreign minister David Lammy criticised the “inaction of the Israeli government” for allowing “impunity to flourish” among extremist settlers in the West Bank while announcing a fresh wave of sanctions against the groups in response to continued violence.
The measures target three outposts and four organisations that have supported and perpetrated “heinous abuses of human rights” against Palestinian communities in the occupied territory, the Foreign Secretary said.
Settler outposts sanctioned on Tuesday include Tirzah Valley Farm Outpost, Meitarim Outpost and Shuvi Eretz Outpost.
The four organisations targeted are Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva, Hashomer Yosh, Torat Lechima and Amana.
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Ireland is not going to “wait” for the rest of the EU to take action against extremist Israeli settlers, the country’s prime minister has said, amid growing frustration in Dublin and Madrid over Brussels’ perceived inaction.
On his way into a cabinet meeting in Dublin, Simon Harris said he Ireland is “not going to wait for consensus” in the EU to take action.
It comes as Ireland looks afresh at drating legislation which could block imports of products made in the occupied territories.
Such laws were considered in 2020 but it is thought a stronger legal case exists in the wake of July’s International Court of Justice advisory opinion that there were multiple breaches of international law in the occupation of Palestinian territories.
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez called on the European Commission to “once and for all” respond to the “formal request” made by Dublin and Madrid in February “to suspend” the trade association agreement.
After his meeting with Joe Biden in Washington last week Harris said he would be asking the EU to revisit the trade agreement complaining the world was not doing enough to stop the human catastrophe in the Middle East.
“When people look back at this time in history, it will be a moment of shame of the world that more is not done to stop the war,” he said.
In a sign Israel may expand its ground operations against Hezbollah while bolstering its own defences, its troops have cleared landmines and established new barriers on the frontier between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and a demilitarised strip bordering Syria, security sources and analysts told Reuters.
The move suggests Israel may seek to strike Hezbollah for the first time from further east along Lebanon’s border, at the same time creating a secure area from which it can freely reconnoitre the armed group and prevent infiltration, the sources said.
Israel’s mine removal and engineering works have accelerated in recent weeks, according to a Syrian intelligence officer, a Syrian soldier positioned in southern Syria, and three senior Lebanese security sources who spoke to Reuters for this story.
Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general Sheikh Naim Qassem said on Tuesday the militant group has adopted a new calculation so that Israel feels ‘pain’, even though he called for a ceasefire.
Conflict-ravaged Gaza appears to be facing the worst restrictions on aid since the Israel-Hamas war began over a year ago, the UN said Tuesday, lamenting the especially devastating impact on children.
“Day after day, the situation for children becomes worse than the day before,” said James Elder, spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF.
Despite a desperate need to increase the amount of aid going in to Gaza, Elder lamented that aid access was worsening. “August was the lowest amount of humanitarian aid that came into the Gaza Strip of any full month since the war broke out,” he said.
There had been “several days in the last week (where) no commercial trucks whatsoever were allowed to come in,” Elder added.
Israeli military "cutting off North Gaza completely", UN human rights office says
The United Nations human rights office said on Tuesday the Israeli military appeared to be “cutting off North Gaza completely from the rest of the Gaza Strip.”
“Amid intense ongoing hostilities and evacuation orders in northern Gaza families are facing unimaginable fear, loss of loved ones, confusion, and exhaustion. People must be able to flee safely, without facing further danger,” Adrian Zimmerman, ICRC Gaza head of sub-delegation, said in a statement.
“Many, including the sick and disabled, cannot leave, and they remain protected under international humanitarian law all possible precautions must be taken to ensure they remain unharmed. Every person displaced has the right to return home in safety,” he added.
The Israeli military’s humanitarian unit, Cogat, which overseas aid and commercial shipments to Gaza, said in a statement on Tuesday that the operations in Jabalia were targeting terrorist infrastructure and operatives embedded inside civilian areas. It said it was facilitating humanitarian and in particular medical aid to residents.
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Advanced anti-missile system sent by US begins to arrive in Israel, Pentagon says
The Pentagon said components for an advanced anti-missile system began arriving in Israel on Monday and that it would be fully operational in the near future, according to a statement on Tuesday.
“Over the coming days, additional U.S. military personnel and THAAD battery components will continue to arrive in Israel,” Pentagon spokesperson Major General Pat Ryder said.
“The battery will be fully operational capable in the near future, but for operations security reasons we will not discuss timelines.”
Israeli policeman shot dead in Ashdod by gunman, who was also killed
An assailant shot dead an Israeli policeman and wounded five other people near the southern city of Ashdod on Tuesday in what police called a “terrorist” attack.
The gunman was killed during the attack at the Yavne interchange along the highway connecting Ashdod to Tel Aviv, the authorities said.
“A terrorist wounded five people, including a policeman who was critically injured and then died later,” a police spokesman said.
The attacker had approached the main road on foot, fatally wounding the policeman before going on a shooting rampage and wounding others.
The World Health Organization said on Tuesday it had been able to start its polio campaign in central Gaza and vaccinate tens of thousands of children despite Israeli strikes in the designated protected zone hours before.
WHO spokesperson Tarik Jaarevi told a Geneva press briefing that over 92,000 children, or around half of the children targeted for polio vaccines in the central area, had been inoculated on Monday.
“What we have received from colleagues is that the vaccination went without a major issue yesterday, and we hope It will continue the same way,” he said.
But the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said one of its schools in the central Gazan city of Nuseirat, intended as a vaccination site, was hit overnight between Sunday and Monday, killing up to 22 people.
Israeli strikes killed at least 50 Palestinians across Gaza Strip
The death toll of people killed in Israeli military strikes has risen to 50, Reuters reports, as Israeli forces tightened their squeeze around Jabalia in the north of the enclave on Tuesday, amid fierce battles with Hamas-led fighters.
Palestinian health officials said at least 17 people were killed by Israeli fire near Al-Falouja in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, while 10 others were killed in Bani Suhaila in eastern Khan Younis in the south when an Israeli missile struck a house.
Later on Tuesday, the Gaza health ministry said one doctor was killed when he tried to help the people wounded by Israeli strikes in Al-Falouja in Jabalia. It added that several medics were wounded when their ambulance came under Israeli fire in the northern and southern Gaza Strip.
Jabalia has been the focus of an Israeli offensive for more than 10 days, with troops returning to areas of the north that came under heavy bombardment in the early months of the year-long war.
Here are some images from a makeshift tent camp in al-Mawasi, which has been designated as a “humanitarian zone” by Israel. Last month, the camp was hit by an Israeli strike, killing 19 people and wounding 60 others.
More than a quarter of Lebanon under evacuation orders, says UN
The UN Refugee Agency held a press briefing in Geneva today, where they addressed the ongoing battle in Lebanon.
Middle East director Rema Jamous Imseis told journalists new Israeli evacuation orders to 20 villages in southern Lebanon meant that over a quarter of the country was now affected.
“People are heeding these calls to evacuate, and they’re fleeing with almost nothing,” she added.
Israeli strikes have killed at least 2,309 people over the last year, the Lebanese government said, and more than 1.2 million people have been displaced.
The majority have been killed since late September when Israel expanded its military campaign. The toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Around 50 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed, according to Israel.
Most of 22 victims of Israeli strike in Lebanon were women and children, UN
More now on the Israeli airstrike on the northern Lebanon village of Aitou we reported on in our post at 9.28BST.
The UN human rights office said on Tuesday it had received reports that most of the 22 victims of the hit on a building there were women and children.
“What we are hearing is that amongst the 22 people killed were 12 women and two children,” UN human rights office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence told a Geneva press briefing in response to a question about a strike on Aitou on Monday.
“We understand it was a four-storey residential building that was struck. With these factors in mind, we have real concerns with respect to IHL (International Humanitarian Law), so the laws of war, and the principles of distinction proportion and proportionality,” he said, calling for an investigation into the incident.
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In northern Gaza, where Israel has been waging an air and ground campaign in Jabaliya for more than a week, residents said families were still trapped in their homes and shelters Tuesday.
Adel al-Deqes told AP his relatives tried to move to another place in Jabaliya in the morning, but the military shelled them. “We don’t know who died and who is still alive,” he said.
Ahmed Awda, another Jabaliya resident, said they heard “constant bombing and gunfire” overnight and Tuesday morning. He said the military destroyed many buildings in the eastern and northern parts of the camp, which dates back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. “They bombed many buildings; some of them empty buildings,” he said.
The funeral of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general killed alongside Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah drew the largest crowd of top leaders in the paramilitary organization together Tuesday for the first time since Tehran launched a ballistic missile attack on Israel.
The Guard’s leadership hasn’t been as visible in the two weeks since Iran’s Oct. 1 attack on Israel, AP reports. The Guard is the main power behind Iran’s theocracy and oversees its arsenal of ballistic missiles - which would be crucial in any future attack on Israel.
At the funeral in Tehran for Gen. Abbas Nilforushan, the Guard’s chief commander, Gen. Hossein Salami, attended alongside President Masoud Pezeshkian and the head of the country’s judiciary. Other Guard generals also attended, including Gen. Esmail Qaani of the Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force, about whom rumors had circulated for days regarding his status after the strike that killed Nasrallah.
At least two prominent Guard generals were not on hand: Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of Guard’s aerospace division that oversees its missile program, and Gen. Ali Reza Tangsiri, commander of the Guard’s navy, did not attend.
Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 42,344 Palestinians and wounded 99,013 since Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said on Tuesday.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza does not distinguish between civillians and combatants in its statistics.
Israeli strikes killed at least 40 Palestinians across Gaza Strip
Israeli military strikes killed at least 40 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces tightened their squeeze around Jabalia in the north of the enclave on Tuesday, amid fierce battles with Hamas-led fighters.
Palestinian health officials said at least 11 people were killed by Israeli fire near Al-Falouja in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, while 10 others were killed in Bani Suhaila in eastern Khan Younis in the south when an Israeli missile struck a house.
Earlier on Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike destroyed three houses in the Sabra suburb of Gaza City, and the local civil emergency service said they recovered two bodies from the site, while the search continued for 12 other people who were believed to have been in the houses at the time of the strike.
Five others were killed when a house was struck in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.
More than 20 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Christian town in northern Lebanon, prompting Hezbollah to fire rockets at Tel Aviv, as Israel’s multifront war continues to escalate.
Footage from Aitou showed a heavily damaged building and destroyed cars. The village is far from Hezbollah’s power centres in Beirut and the south and east of the country.
The village’s mayor, Joseph Trad, told Reuters the building had been rented to families displaced by the war. The strike was one of several over the past two weeks targeting areas thought to be ‘safe’.
More than 400,000 children in Lebanon have been displaced in the past three weeks, a top official with the U.N. children’s agency said Monday, warning of a “lost generation” in the small country grappling with multiple crises and now in the middle of war.
Ted Chaiban, UNICEF’s deputy executive director for humanitarian actions, has visited schools that have been turned into shelters to host displaced families.
“What struck me is that this war is three weeks old and so many children have been affected,” Chaiban told The Associated Press in Beirut.
“As we sit here today, 1.2 million children are deprived of education. Their public schools have either been rendered inaccessible, have been damaged by the war or are being used as shelters. The last thing this country needs, in addition to everything else it has gone through, is the risk of a lost generation.”
Pictures show the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on the village of Aito in northern Lebanon. The Lebanese Red Cross said at least 18 people died in the strike yesterday, with the health ministry and official media reporting an Israeli raid on the Christian-majority area far from Hezbollah strongholds.
Cameron planned sanctions on extremist members of Israeli government
The former foreign secretary David Cameron revealed he had been planning to impose sanctions on two extremist members of the Israeli government over their support for violent settlers and calls to block aid entering Gaza.
In a BBC interview Cameron said he was concerned the measure had not been adopted by the Labour government and had only held back from taking the step in the spring because he received advice it would be too political a step to take during the general election.
His first remarks on the Middle East since leaving the Foreign Office are likely to put pressure on the foreign secretary, David Lammy, to explain if he dropped a worked-up plan and why.
Full story below
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The Irish armed forces have participated in UN peacekeeping missions for over 60 years. Since 1958, Ireland has sent troops to global conflicts on almost every continent. We have had a peacekeeping battalion with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) in south Lebanon on a continuous basis since 1978. The relationship is so deep-rooted that in the Irish area of operations, close to the border with Israel, there are local Lebanese people who speak English with broad Irish accents.
In 1996, Tom Clonan witnessed the horror as the Israeli army fired on UN positions. Now, he argues history is repeating itself:
The Australian government has said it is “appalled by the unacceptable deaths of innocent civilians as a result of Israel’s operations in Gaza”.
A spokesperson for the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, made the comment this afternoon and reiterated that Australia was calling for civilians to be protected.
Wong’s spokesperson added: “We also remain gravely concerned by the humanitarian situation in Gaza and UN reports that northern Gaza is increasingly being cut off from essential supplies due to access restrictions imposed by Israeli authorities. This cannot continue.”
The spokesperson said Israel “must comply” with the international court of justice’s binding orders, including to enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale in Gaza.
Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, said on Tuesday Israel deliberately chose to expand what he called its “aggression” to implement pre-planned schemes in the West Bank and Lebanon.
Israel had done so “because it sees that the scope for that is available,” he said in his annual speech to open the Shura Council.
The Council has legislative authority and approves general state policies and the budget, but has no say in the setting of defence, security, economic and investment policy for the small but wealthy gas producer, which bans political parties.
Earlier this month, at the Asia Cooperation Dialogue summit in Doha, the Sheikh also said the crisis in the Middle East was a “collective genocide” and that his country has always warned of Israel’s “impunity”.
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Netanyahu tells US that Israel will strike Iranian military, not nuclear or oil, targets – report
The Washington Post is reporting that Benjamin Netanyahu has told the Biden administration that Israel is willing to limit strikes on Iran to military targets, rather than oil or nuclear facilities. Citing unnamed officials, the Post writes that this suggests that Netanyahu is considering a more limited counterstrike in retaliation for Iran’s missile barrage launched on 1 October.
The retaliatory action would be calibrated to avoid the perception of “political interference in the U.S. elections,” the official familiar with the matter said, signaling Netanyahu’s understanding that the scope of the Israeli strike has the potential to reshape the presidential race.
An Israeli strike on Iranian oil facilities could send energy prices soaring, analysts say, while an attack on the country’s nuclear research program could erase any remaining red lines governing Israel’s conflict with Tehran, triggering further escalation and risking a more direct U.S. military role. Netanyahu’s stated plan to go after military sites instead, as Israel did after Iran’s attack in April, was met with relief in Washington.
Biden has said he would not support an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites and oil markets have been on edge over the prospect of an Israeli strike against Iranian oil fields. Gulf states have lobbied Washington to stop Israel from attacking Iran’s oil sites because they are concerned their own oil facilities could come under fire from Tehran’s proxies if the conflict escalates.
Oil dropped at the start of trading after the report was published. West Texas Intermediate futures retreated as much as 2.9% to $71.70 a barrel, after already losing 2.3% on Monday, Bloomberg reported.
In a statement responding to the Washington Post article, Netanyahu’s office said “we listen to the opinions of the United States, but we will make our final decisions based on our national interest”.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.
The UN security council has expressed “strong concern” after several UN peacekeepers were wounded when they came under fire in southern Lebanon amid clashes between the Israeli military and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants. The council reiterated its support for the peacekeeping mission’s role in supporting regional security.
The council’s statement on Monday was its first reaction to the escalating attacks across the UN-drawn boundary between Israel and Lebanon, and the firing at frontline positions of the peacekeeping force known as Unifil.
“UN peacekeepers and UN premises must never be the target of an attack,” the 15-member council said in a statement adopted by consensus. It also urged all parties - without naming them – “to respect the safety and security of Unifil personnel and UN premises”.
Despite facing mounting criticism over the attacks, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected accusations that Israeli troops had deliberately harmed Unifil peacekeepers as “completely false” and repeated a call for them to withdraw from combat zones close to the border with Israel. He said Hezbollah used Unifil positions as cover for attacks that have killed Israelis, including on Sunday, when a drone attack on a military base killed four soldiers.
“Israel has every right to defend itself against Hezbollah and will continue to do so,” Netanyahu said, adding that the best way to ensure Unifil personnel’s safety was “to heed Israel’s request and to temporarily get out of harm’s way”. The UN’s peacekeeping chief, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, said peacekeepers would remain in all positions in Lebanon.
Israel is still expected to retaliate against Iran over its missile barrage launched on 1 October, but, according to the Washington Post, Netanyahu has told the Biden administration he is willing to strike military rather than oil or nuclear facilities there.
Citing sources, the Post writes that this suggests that Netanyahu is considering a more limited counterstrike than previously thought.
Italy, Britain, France and Germany released a joint statement on Monday condemning Israel for repeatedly attacking UN peacekeepers. “These attacks must stop immediately,” they said, adding deliberate attacks were against international law. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said there would be “no withdrawal” of the UN peacekeeping force from southern Lebanon after Israeli attacks and calls to leave. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Unifil’s work “is very important. It’s completely unacceptable attacking United Nations troops.”
More than 20 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Christian town in northern Lebanon on Monday, far from Hezbollah’s power centres in Beirut and the south and east of the country. The bombing struck Aitou, a Maronite village near the northern city of Tripoli, hit a small apartment building, killing 21 people according to the Lebanese Red Cross. The village’s mayor told Reuters that the building had been rented to families displaced by the war.
It was also a particularly bloody 24 hours in the Gaza Strip. Four people were killed in an Israeli bombing of a hospital courtyard in central Gaza, another strike on a nearby school used as a shelter killed at least 20 people, and a drone strike killed five children playing on the street in al-Shati camp in Gaza City, according to local health authorities. The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports of civilian casualties in the three incidents on Sunday and Monday.
At least 42,289 Palestinians have been killed and 98,684 wounded in Israeli strikes since 7 October 2023, the Palestinian health ministry said on Monday.
Netanyahu is examining a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza in an attempt to starve out Hamas, according to a report. The plan, proposed by a group of retired generals, would give Palestinians a week to leave the northern third of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, before declaring it a closed military zone. Those who remain would be considered combatants – meaning military regulations would allow troops to kill them – and denied food, water, medicine and fuel, according to a copy of the plan given to the Associated Press.
The UN’s secretary-general, António Guterres, condemned the “large number of civilian casualties in the intensifying Israeli campaign in northern Gaza”, his spokesperson said on Monday. The UN chief “strongly urges all parties to the conflict to comply with international humanitarian law and emphasises that civilians must be respected and protected at all times,” spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said.
Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians in the northern West Bank city of Jenin on Monday, the Palestinian health ministry said. According to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, one of the two males was 17 years old. Four others were injured by Israeli fire during the raid, it said.
Ireland’s foreign minister, Micheál Martin, accused Israel of trying to prevent the world from seeing what its troops are doing in Lebanon and Gaza, and of working to undermine the UN. Asked what Israel’s aim might be in demanding that UN peacekeepers leave their bases in Lebanon after a series of attacks, Martin said: “essentially to drive the eyes and ears out of south Lebanon and to give itself free rein”.
Officials from the US’s main humanitarian agency attend daily meetings on an Israeli military base that also hosts a notorious prison for Palestinian detainees where torture reportedly runs rampant, the Guardian has learned.
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