Israel’s siege of Gaza Strip, sparked by Hamas’ Oct 7 attack, now in its 12th month
Gaza civilian infrastructure decimated in Israeli strikes, leading to return of polio after decades
Starving Palestinians surviving on less than 3pc of daily water needs
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Tehran; Yahya Sinwar named successor
Fears of wider conflict as over 35 killed, thousands injured in device blasts across Lebanon
US President Joe Biden welcomed the president of the United Arab Emirates to the White House, saying the two leaders would discuss ways to deescalate tensions between Israel and Lebanon, and efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, Reuters reports.
Biden, speaking at the start of his meeting with the UAE leader, said Lebanon and Gaza would feature prominently in their discussions, along with talks on artificial intelligence.
Before their meeting, Biden said he had been briefed on [the] latest developments between Israel and Lebanon, adding, “I continue to be in contact with our counterparts and we’re working to de-escalate in a way that allows people to return home safely.”
Sheikh Mohamed said his country had an “unwavering commitment” to working with the United States and deepening the strategic partnership between the allies.
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The Lufthansa airline group has said in a statement that effective immediately, all connections to and from Tel Aviv and Tehran, Iran’s capital, until October 14, Al Jazeera reports.
Lufthansa Group includes carriers Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Discover Airlines, Eurowings and Swiss International Air Lines.
Flights to Beirut remain suspended until October 26, the group said, adding that it continues to monitor the situation in the Middle East closely and will further assess the situation in the coming days.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry has announced the shutting down of all nurseries across the country, Al Jazeera reports according to the National News Agency.
Earlier, education authorities said that schools would be closed for two days in areas hit by Israeli strikes.
The Lebanese Civil Defence organisation has said its teams have been working to extinguish fires that broke out “in several homes, factories and warehouses in the southern governorates, Nabatieh and Bekaa” as a result of the Israeli attacks, Al Jazeera reports.
“The personnel also continue to treat the wounded, recover the bodies of those killed and transport them to hospitals to receive the necessary medical care,” it added in a statement.
Separately, the organisation said search-and-rescue operations and a comprehensive field survey are ongoing at the site of the building that collapsed“ in an Israeli air raid on the southern suburbs of Beirut on Friday.
It added the search for the missing has so far resulted in the recovery of the bodies of 54 people and 66 wounded. Five citizens remain missing.
The Israeli military has said it struck around 800 Hezbollah targets as part of the deadliest strikes on Lebanon since fighting started last October, AFP reports.
“Since this morning, the IDF (Israeli military) has conducted proactive and extensive aerial strikes against Hezbollah terrorist targets in Lebanon,” a statement said, adding that the strikes hit “approximately 800 Hezbollah terror targets in southern Lebanon and in the area of Bekaa deep inside Lebanese territory”.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant says the Israeli army is “expanding” strikes against Hezbollah positions “all over Lebanon”, Al Jazeera reports.
The Israeli army has already said it took aim at hundreds of targets.
US President Joe Biden has said that he is worried about the rising tensions between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah, Anadolu reports.
“Yes, I am,” Biden told reporters when asked whether he was worried about rising tensions in the Middle East.
“We’re going to do everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out. And we’re still pushing hard,” Biden said in his home state of Delaware.
US Vice President Kamala Harris plans to discuss efforts to secure a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal in her meeting with the United Arab Emirates president, Reuters reports according to a White House official.
Harris and US President Joe Biden are meeting separately with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the first in what is expected to be a series of foreign leader gatherings during the week of the United Nations General Assembly.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) has expressed “grave concern” for the well-being and safety of civilians residing in southern Lebanon, Al Jazeera reports.
“Unifil reiterates its strong call for a diplomatic solution and urges all parties to prioritise civilian lives and ensure they are not put in harm’s way,” it posted on X.
The mission said it was vital to “fully recommit” to implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1701.
Under the resolution, adopted in 2006 to bring an end to fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, UN peacekeepers were deployed to monitor a ceasefire along the 120-kilometre demarcation line, or Blue Line, between Israel and Lebanon.
Top United Nations officials demanded “an end to the appalling human suffering and humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip nearly one year into the conflict between Israel and Hamas, Reuters reports.
“These atrocities must end,” the heads of UN agencies said in a statement as world leaders gathered in New York for the annual UN General Assembly.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has accused Israel of seeking a wider conflict, which he said would not benefit anyone, as he insisted Tehran was not destabilising the region, AFP reports.
“We know more than anyone else that if a larger war were to erupt in the Middle East, it will not benefit anyone throughout the world. It is Israel that seeks to create this wider conflict,” he told a roundtable with journalists as he attended the UN General Assembly in New York.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the country faces “complicated days” as it stepped up strikes against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, Al Jazeera reports.
“I promised that we would change the security balance, the balance of power in the north — that is exactly what we are doing,” he said in a message issued following a situational assessment at military headquarters in Tel Aviv.
He called on Israelis to stay united as the campaign unfolded.
Hamas condemned Israeli strikes on south Lebanon which saw the deadliest bombardment in nearly a year of cross-border clashes between Hezbollah and Israel, AFP reports.
“We, in the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, affirm that this wide-scale barbaric aggression is a war crime,” Hamas said in a statement, adding that the group reaffirmed “our solidarity… with our brothers in Hezbollah and the brotherly Lebanese people”.
Iran’s foreign ministry warned Israel of “dangerous consequences” following deadly strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, AFP reports.
Foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani called the Israeli strikes “insane”, and warned of “the dangerous consequences of the Zionists’ new adventure”.
At least 182 people were killed and 727 were wounded, including women, children and medics, in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon, the country’s health ministry said in a statement, Reuters reports.
The international NGO Crisis Group has cautioned that escalation in the past two weeks poses “grave dangers”, Al Jazeera reports.
“The point may be approaching at which [Hezbollah] decides that only a massive response can stop Israel from carrying out more attacks that impair it further,” Crisis Group said in a report.
“While the group has been keen to avert an uncontrolled escalation, and to avoid looking like the party that turned the tit-for-tat into all-out war, it may decide that the line between what it suspects Israel is about to do and such a war is no longer meaningful.
“Absent a stronger push for a Gaza ceasefire, Washington has few cards to play beyond leaning further on Israel to take a step back in the north.”
The Israeli military has announced it will launch more air strikes targeting eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and warned residents to move away from Hezbollah sites in the area, AFP reports.
“We are preparing for a large-scale and targeted strike in Bekaa Valley,” military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said at a media briefing, adding that residents should “distance themselves” from Hezbollah sites “for your safety and protection”.
The health ministry in Gaza has said that at least 41,455 people have been killed in Israel’s military offensive in the enclave, now in its 12th month, AFP reports.
The toll includes 24 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 95,878 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since fighting broke out on October 7.
At least 100 people were killed and more than 400 injured in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon, the country’s health ministry said in a statement, Reuters reports.
Lebanon said 50 people were killed and more than 300 wounded in Israeli strikes on the south, the heaviest daily toll in nearly a year of cross-border clashes, AFP reports.
“Continued Israeli enemy raids on southern towns and villages… killed 50 people and wounded more than 300, with children, women and emergency workers among the dead and wounded,” a health ministry statement said, adding that the toll was provisional.
Turkey, among the world’s sharpest critics of the Israeli military operation in Gaza, will use the UN General Assembly this week to highlight what it says is a genocide unfolding there and will urge international pressure on Israel, Reuters reports.
President Tayyip Erdogan and several Turkish ministers will take part in the General Assembly in New York, which comes amid the heaviest cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, alongside the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza.
Erdogan addresses the assembly on Tuesday and plans to underscore what he described as the “ongoing genocide in Gaza” and repeat his call to reform the UN structure to be more inclusive, a Turkish diplomatic source said.
The Turkish delegation, including Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, will press the Gaza issue in all of its meetings and bilateral contacts throughout the week, the source added.
The Israeli military said it had targeted more than 300 Hezbollah sites in Lebanon in a wave of air strikes, AFP reports.
“So far more than 300 Hezbollah sites have been targeted” since Monday morning, the military said in a statement.
It earlier said more than 150 air strikes were carried out within just one hour, between 6:30am (3:30 GMT) and 7:30am.
Lebanon’s PM Mikati denounced Israel’s “destructive plan” amid intense strikes on Lebanon, Al Jazeera reports.
“The continuing Israeli aggression on Lebanon is a war of extermination in every sense of the word and a destructive plan that aims to destroy Lebanese villages and towns,” Mikati told a cabinet meeting.
He urged “the United Nations and the General Assembly and influential countries… to deter the [Israeli] aggression”.
Mikati also stated that he will work “to stop the new Israeli war and avoid as much as possible falling into the unknown”.
Two strikes by Israeli forces killed at least 10 Palestinians, including four children, in the central Gaza Strip, medics said, as heavy rains flooded displaced residents’ tent encampments, Reuters reports.
Palestinian health officials said at least five Palestinians were killed at a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Nuseirat, one of Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps.
Later, an Israeli airstrike on a house in the city of Deir Al-Balah, where a million people have taken shelter, killed a woman and four children, medics said. There was no immediate Israeli army comment on the incident.
China has urged its citizens in Israel to “return home or relocate to safer areas as soon as possible”, Al Jazeera reports.
“Currently, the situation along the Israel-Lebanon border is extremely tense, with frequent military conflicts,” the embassy said in a statement. “The security situation in Israel remains severe, complex, and unpredictable.”
