Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 369

More than 1,000 Americans and their dependents have fled Lebanon on board US-chartered flights in the past week, arriving in Turkey for a temporary stay, the top US diplomat in Istanbul says, Al Jazeera reports.

“It’s the fastest, safest way to get Americans out of harm’s way,” Consul General Julie Eadeh said in an interview in Istanbul.

“The security situation is dynamic, so we have been planning for months for all contingencies. Given the airport in Beirut remains operational and open, our focus is on facilitating departures by air.”

Ten of 12 US-chartered flights from Beirut have arrived in Istanbul, carrying 1,025 citizens and immediate family members since October 2, according to another US official.

Those interviewed at the airport said they were shaken by bombings and feared for their lives.

“It’s not safe for her there,” Nadine El Shab said of the baby daughter she held in her arms, adding she would next travel to Michigan.

Humanitarian pauses have been agreed to allow a second round of polio vaccinations targeting 590,000 children under the age of 10 to start in the Gaza Strip on October 14, the head of the UN children’s agency UNICEF said, Reuters reports.

“Area-specific humanitarian pauses have been agreed. It is critical that these pauses are respected by all parties. Without them, it is impossible to vaccinate the children,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the “genocide” in Gaza is the “shame of humanity” as he called for renewed efforts to secure a permanent ceasefire, AFP reports.

Erdogan, a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, renewed his attacks on Israel as he arrived in Tirana, the first stop of a Balkan tour that will also take him to Serbia.

“The international community, we must do our best to urgently guarantee a permanent ceasefire and exert the necessary pressure on Israel,” he told a joint press conference with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.

“The genocide that has been going on in Gaza for the past year is the common shame of all humanity,” he added.

Italy’s defence minister has summoned the Israeli ambassador, a government source told AFP, after the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon said it had been hit by Israeli tank fire.

The Unifil force, which has some 10,000 peacekeepers in south Lebanon, said that Israeli tank fire on its headquarters wounded two members, as Israeli troops battle Hezbollah on the border.

Hamas termed the bombing of a school shelter and other attacks in Gaza by Israel as “Zionist war crimes with American cover as part of the war of genocide against our Palestinian people”, Al Jazeera reports.

The violence is a continuation of a year of “heinous operations of deliberately targeting defenceless civilians — in residential neighbourhoods, homes, shelters and displacement centres — with the support of the American administration, a partner in this genocide”.

Hamas called on the international community to intervene, and said inaction “portends the complete collapse of the international system with all its foundations, laws and values”.

Palestinian and Dutch organisations have filed a legal complaint against the state of the Netherlands over its alleged failure to prevent Israel from committing possible genocide in Gaza and other violations of international law, Reuters reports.

The case argues that the Netherlands has a legal obligation to do everything in its power to stop alleged violations of international law and the 1948 Genocide Convention by Israel.

The organisations seek a ban on all Dutch exports to Israel of weapons and goods that could have military use, but also want judges to order the country to halt all business with Israel related to its presence in the occupied Palestinian territories, the NGOs’ lawyer Wout Albers told Reuters.

The case is expected to be heard in November.

The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon has said that two of its members were wounded when its positions came under fire in the country’s south, where Israel and Hezbollah are fighting, AFP reports.

“Three positions were hit by fire and two peacekeepers were injured,” a Unifil spokeswoman said, after Lebanon’s official National News Agency said a watchtower of the peacekeeping force was hit in the Ras Naqura area.

Israeli troops opened fire at three positions held by UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, a UN source told Reuters, without immediately being able to specify the type of fire.

The source said one of the locations that was fired at was UNIFL’s main base at Naqoura.

An Israeli airstrike on a former school in Gaza that was sheltering displaced people targeted fighters who were operating in the compound, the Israeli military said, Reuters reports.

“Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence,” the military said.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said an Israeli air strike on a Gaza school killed at least 28 people, while the Israeli military reported it struck a Hamas command centre, AFP reports.

“Palestine Red Crescent teams responded to 28 fatalities and 54 injuries following the Israeli occupation army’s targeting of Rafida School,” the organisation said, referring to a school in Deir el-Balah.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met his Qatari counterpart in Doha, his spokesman said, after Israel warned it would retaliate against his country for last week’s missile attack, AFP reports.

The conflict in the region was the subject of “important consultations” between Araghchi and his counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who also serves as Qatar’s prime minister, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said on social media platform X.

“It is only responsible for all states to maximise their efforts to shield our region against an imposed catastrophe by stopping genocide in Gaza and aggression on Lebanon,” he said after the talks.

Araghchi was expected to hold meetings with Qatari officials on Gaza, Lebanon and efforts to de-escalate regional tensions, a source with knowledge of the meetings told AFP on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of discussions.

His visit came after Israel on Wednesday threatened retaliation for last week’s massive missile attack by Tehran, stoking fears of a wider war in the region. Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned the response against Iran would be “deadly, precise and surprising”.

More than 42,065 Palestinians have been killed and 97,886 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since October 7, 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement, Reuters reports.

The toll includes 55 deaths in the previous 24 hours, the statement added.

An office of Israeli military technology firm Elbit Systems in Gothenburg was the target of shooting, according to media, with Swedish police saying there were no injuries, AFP reports.

“We received a report in the morning about a shooting against an Israeli object in Kalleback” in Gothenburg, police spokesman Fredrik Svedemyr said in a statement, adding that a young suspect had been arrested.

Ambulances continue to bring victims to the hospital in Deir el-Balah after the deadly Israeli strike on a school shelter, Al Jazeera reports.

This is the latest in a series of Israeli raids on school buildings housing displaced people in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes by Israeli offensives and evacuation orders have taken shelter.

The expanding geographical sweep of the conflict in the Middle East to Lebanon is having catastrophic consequences for the region, the Kremlin said, Reuters reports.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the comments when asked about the possibility of Israel preparing for military action in Syria, a close Russian ally.

At least 16 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli airstrike on the Rufaida School in western Deir Al-Balah, which shelters displaced people in the central Gaza Strip, medics told Reuters.

An Israeli man arrested in Lebanon after entering the country with a British passport and exhibiting suspicious behaviour has been freed and deported to the US, according to multiple Israeli media outlets, Al Jazeera reports.

Joshua Tartakovsky, a 42-year-old Israeli citizen born in the United States, is believed to have entered Lebanon in the past few weeks with a group of journalists. He was arrested by Lebanese security forces in Beirut’s southern Dahiyeh district on suspicion he may be engaged in espionage.

Israeli media report Tartakovsky’s release came after pressure from Washington.

The Israeli military says soldiers are pushing on with their ground incursion inside both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip while being supported by dozens of air strikes, Al Jazeera reports.

Fighter jets launched attacks on more than 110 targets in Lebanon and 30 in Gaza. In besieged Jabalia in northern Gaza, it claimed its forces killed Palestinian fighters and found weapons.

In southern Lebanon, it reported “face-to-face encounters” with Hezbollah soldiers and said it destroyed anti-tank missile launchers and rockets aimed at northern Israel.

An Israeli strike hit a road linking Syria and Lebanon as Israel tries to cut off supply routes of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a war monitor said, AFP reports.

“Israeli aircraft carried out a strike targeting the road linking Syria and Lebanon” in the Quseir region on the Syrian side of the border, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the group with a wide network of sources in Syria, said the strike came as part of Israeli attempts “to cut the supply line to Hezbollah”.

There were no casualties and it was not immediately clear if the road had been cut off in the strike, he said.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported “enemy drone strikes on the border between Lebanon and Syria”.

The United States urged its ally Israel to avoid Gaza-like military action in Lebanon, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it could face “destruction” like the Palestinian territory, AFP reports.

The comments came after a phone call between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden, their first in seven weeks. The White House said Biden told Netanyahu to “minimise harm” to civilians in Lebanon, particularly in “densely populated areas of Beirut”.

“There should be no kind of military action in Lebanon that looks anything like Gaza and leaves a result anything like Gaza,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

Netanyahu said in a video address to the people of Lebanon on Tuesday: “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”

He added: “Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.”

Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon defended his country’s record on allowing aid in to Gaza after a torrent of criticism. The UN has long complained of obstacles to getting aid into Gaza and distributing it during the conflict, Al Jazeera reports.

“Israel imposes no restrictions on humanitarian aid. In fact, 82 percent of all requests for humanitarian coordination have been approved and implemented.” He accused Hamas of diverting aid from those in Gaza who need it.

Britain’s UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward told the UN Security Council that Israel “must do much more” to avoid civilian casualties and ensure the UN and aid groups can operate safely and effectively in Gaza.

“Delivery of humanitarian assistance is being hindered, and humanitarian workers are constantly under threat,” French UN Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere noted.

The US’s envoy to the UN said she was “deeply concerned” by draft Israeli legislation that would declare UNRWA — the agency that provides education, health and aid to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria — a “terrorist” organisation and bar it from operating in Israel.

“We know that UN personnel, including from UNRWA, are vital to the humanitarian response in Gaza and face tremendous danger while performing their work,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

Only a “small percentage” of UNRWA’s staffers are members of Hamas, she said, urging Israel to provide more information regarding its allegations against the agency.

Several Western countries — including the US — cut funding to UNRWA earlier this year after Israel claimed that 19 out of the agency’s 30,000 workers had been involved in Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

Most donors have resumed payments amid criticism that the action was disproportionate.

The Lebanese military said it arrested the two Syrian nationals on suspicion of “photographing different places […] and documenting the results of enemy air strikes” for Israeli authorities, Al Jazeera reports.

The arrests were “a result of surveillance and follow-up of Israeli spy networks and enemy agents” it said, adding that the accused were allegedly “recruited through social media”.

“The investigation with the two detainees has begun under the supervision of the competent judiciary,” the military added.

Hamas accused Israel of killing a cameraman for a television station it operates in the Gaza Strip, while Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera also blamed Israeli forces for wounding one of its journalists in the territory’s north.

Muhammad al-Tanani, a cameraman for Al-Aqsa TV, was buried yesterday afternoon by colleagues at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in northern Gaza City, according to AFP journalists.

In a statement, Hamas’s press office called his killing a “despicable crime” and said the Israeli army was “fully responsible”, without offering details of the circumstances of his death.

Al Jazeera, meanwhile, said that one of its cameramen, Fadi al-Wahidi, was “injured by Israeli gunfire in northern Gaza, becoming the second Al Jazeera cameraman to be injured in an Israeli attack this week”.

According to an AFP journalist who was present, Wahidi was wounded in the neck in Jabalia, north of Gaza City, while covering Israeli operations in an area the army had previously told civilians to evacuate.

Al Jazeera said on X that his condition was critical.

The Israeli army did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment on the two incidents.