Israel’s siege of Gaza Strip, sparked by Hamas’ Oct 7 attack, nears a year
Gaza civilian infrastructure decimated in Israeli strikes
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Tehran; Yahya Sinwar named successor
After killing Hezbollah’s Nasrallah and over 1,000 people in Lebanon, Israel launches ground invasion
Iran joins the conflict by launching missiles on Tel Aviv as EU, others call for immediate ceasefire
Israel has said it had targeted the intelligence headquarters of Hezbollah in Beirut and was assessing the damage on Friday after a series of strikes on senior figures in the group that Iran’s Supreme Leader dismissed as counterproductive, Reuters reports.
The air attack on Beirut, part of a wider assault that has driven more than 1.2 million Lebanese from their homes, was reported to have targeted the potential successor to the Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, killed by Israel a week ago.
Hashem Safieddine’s fate was unclear and neither Israel nor Hezbollah have offered any comment.
A blast was heard and smoke was seen over Beirut’s southern suburbs early on Saturday, Reuters witnesses said, as the Israeli military issued three alerts for residents of the area to immediately evacuate.
The first alert warned residents in a building in the Burj al-Barajneh neighbourhood and the second in a building in Choueifat district. The third alert mentioned buildings in Haret Hreik as well as Burj al-Barajneh.
The Israeli military said its forces struck Hezbollah fighters inside a south Lebanon mosque overnight, the first such strike since clashes erupted between Israel and the fighters last year, AFP reports.
“Overnight, with the direction of IDF (army) intelligence, the IAF (air force) struck Hezbollah terrorists who were operating within a command centre that was located inside a mosque adjacent to the Salah Ghandour Hospital in southern Lebanon,” the military said in a statement.
The United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon said it would not leave positions in the south despite what it said was an Israeli request to “relocate”, AFP reports.
“On September 30, the IDF (Israeli military) notified UNIFIL of their intention to undertake limited ground incursions into Lebanon. They also requested we relocate from some of our positions,” the UN Interim Force in Lebanon said.
“Peacekeepers remain in all positions and the UN flag continues to fly.”
“We are regularly adjusting our posture and activities, and we have contingency plans ready to activate if absolutely necessary,” it added.
The health ministry in Gaza said that at least 41,825 people have been killed in almost a year of conflict between Israel and Hamas, AFP reports.
The toll includes 23 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 96,910 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the conflict began on October 7.
A South Korean military transport aircraft returned 97 citizens and family members from Lebanon as Middle East tensions rise, the foreign ministry said according to Reuters.
A KC-330 aircraft left Beirut yesterday afternoon with the evacuees, who include Lebanese family members, and arrived at a military airfield south of Seoul, the ministry said.
Saeed Atallah, a leader of Hamas’ armed wing, al-Qassam brigades, was killed with three family members in an Israeli strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, Reuters said citing the media reports.
Israel did not immediately comment on the strike.
The US Republican Party presidential candidate, Donald Trump, said Israel should strike Iran’s nuclear facilities in response to Tehran’s recent missile barrage, Al Jazeera reports.
The former president, speaking at a campaign event in North Carolina yesterday, referred to a question posed to US President Joe Biden this week about the possibility of Israel targeting Iran’s nuclear programme.
“When they asked him that question, the answer should have been, hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later,” Trump said.
More than 200 Chinese citizens have been safely evacuated from Lebanon, China’s foreign ministry said.
“These people, who have been evacuated in two batches, include three Hong Kong residents and one Taiwan compatriot,” the ministry said in a statement in response to a Reuters query on the situation.
“The Chinese Embassy in Lebanon remains firm in Lebanon and continues to assist Chinese citizens remaining there in taking security measures,” it added.
Hamas has rejected what it called “a false narrative and fabricated story” about a Yazidi woman Israel said was freed in Gaza in a secret operation involving Israel, the United States and Iraq, Reuters reports.
The woman, whom Israeli officials have said was taken captive when she was 11 years old and sold to a Hamas member, had never been abducted or sold, and was able to leave Gaza with the knowledge of the Hamas authorities, the Gaza government media office said on Friday.
It said the 25-year-old woman, identified as Fawzia Sido, was married to a Palestinian who fought alongside the Syrian opposition forces before he was killed. She later moved to live with his mother in Turkiye before travelling to Egypt, where she continued to live with her mother-in-law and later crossed into Gaza legally.
Years after she moved to live in Gaza, she married her husband’s brother before he was killed during the ongoing Israeli military offensive, Hamas said.
“She requested to contact her family because she felt increasingly unsafe in Gaza amid the intense bombing and brutal attacks by the Israeli occupation. She asked for evacuation, especially after her husband was martyred,” the Gaza government media office said.
The US State Department has said that an American was killed in Lebanon this week and Washington was working to understand the circumstances of the incident, Reuters states.
Kamel Ahmad Jawad, from Dearborn, Michigan, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday, according to his daughter, a friend and the US congresswoman representing his district.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the department was “alarmed” by the reports, and added: “It is a moral and strategic imperative that Israel take all feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”
US President Joe Biden has said he would think about alternatives to striking Iranian oil fields if he were in Israel’s shoes, adding that he thinks Israel has not yet concluded how to respond to Iran, Reuters reports.
Biden was asked at a White House press briefing if he thought that by not engaging in diplomacy, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was trying to influence the November 5 US election in which Republican former president Donald Trump faces Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Whether he is trying to influence the election, I don’t know but I am not counting on that,” Biden said in response. “No administration has done more to help Israel than I have.”
The government in Lebanon says more than 2,000 people have been killed there in the past year, most in the past two weeks, Reuters reports.
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric called the toll on civilians “totally unacceptable”.
The Lebanese government has accused Israel of targeting civilians, pointing to dozens of women and children killed. It has not broken down the overall figure between civilians and Hezbollah fighters.
Israel claims it targets military capabilities and that it takes steps to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians. It accuses Hezbollah and Hamas of hiding among civilians, which they deny.
As Israel pounded northern Gaza with air strikes last October and ordered the evacuation of more than a million Palestinians from the area, a senior Pentagon official delivered a blunt warning to the White House, Reuters reports.
The mass evacuation would be a humanitarian disaster and could violate international law, leading to war crime charges against Israel, Dana Stroul, then the deputy assistant secretary of defence for the Middle East, wrote in an October 13 email to senior aides to President Joe Biden.
Stroul was relaying an assessment by the International Committee of the Red Cross that had left her “chilled to the bone,” she wrote.
As the Gaza conflict nears its first anniversary and the Middle East teeters on the brink of a wider conflagration, Stroul’s email and other previously unreported communications show the Biden administration’s struggle to balance internal concerns over rising deaths in Gaza with its public support for Jerusalem following the October 7 attack.
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The United Nations has condemned what it called an “unlawful air strike” by Israel on a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank that the Palestinian health ministry said killed 18 people the previous day, AFP reports.
“The strike is part of a highly concerning pattern of unlawful use of force by ISF (Israeli security forces) during military-like operations in the West Bank that have caused widespread harm to Palestinians and significant damage to buildings and infrastructure,” the UN’s rights office said in a statement.
“This incident is another clear example of ISF’s systematic resort to lethal force in the West Bank that is frequently unnecessary, disproportionate, and therefore unlawful,” the office said, as it called for an independent probe into the incident.
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The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and a group of 100 rights and legal organisations have sent a letter to US House Speaker Mike Johnson and another official to condemn their pressure on the Internal Revenue Service, Al Jazeera reports.
They claim that the authorities have been pushing to illegally revoke the tax-exempt status of 15 US-based Muslim, Arab, Jewish and progressive groups “to punish criticism of the Israeli government”.
“We will continue to fight these politically motivated attacks, and we stand ready to defend any organisation targeted by their McCarthyistic tactics,” the group said.
Humanitarian aid must be allowed into Gaza, where life is becoming “impossible” for the population, the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity urged, AFP reports.
The organisation’s president for France, Isabelle Defourny, told AFP on her return from southern Gaza that aid deliveries needed to be “sufficient to address the emergencies” suffered by the civilian population there.
“We have said again and again that the Gaza Strip has become uninhabitable, but now it’s actually becoming impossible to live there,” she said. More than two million people were living “virtually outdoors”, she said, with only plastic sheets for cover.
“As cold weather approaches, this is going to go very badly,” she said, adding that current humanitarian aid had been “in no way sufficient”.
UN experts have voiced “sharp condemnation” over Israel’s violations of international law in Lebanon, warning that its escalating attacks there will only exacerbate death and displacement in its neighbour, Anadolu reports.
“The number of internally displaced persons in Lebanon has more than tripled in less than a month due to Israel’s relentless attacks on populated areas coupled with belated or ineffective evacuation orders, in violation of the principles of distinction and proportionality,” the experts said in a statement.
“Israel’s latest breach of international law — a ground invasion in violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and Security Council resolution 1701 — will only add to this mounting toll of death and displacement,” they said.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday accused Israel of “shamelessly” attacking UN chief Antonio Guterres by declaring him “persona non grata” for not quickly condemning Iran’s ballistic missile barrage, AFP reports.
Israel “is shamelessly challenging UN Secretary-General Guterres,” Erdogan told an audience at a defence technology fair in the southern province of Adana. He added that “196 countries in the world will stand by the UN secretary-general” against Israel.
Three hospitals in Lebanon including one on the outskirts of Beirut’s southern suburbs announced the suspension of work amid ongoing Israeli bombardment, AFP reports.
Sainte Therese Hospital on the edge of Beirut’s southern suburbs reported “huge damage” and said “Israeli warplanes’ targeting … the vicinity” of the facility on Thursday “led to the halt of hospital services”, in a statement carried by the official National News Agency (NNA).
South Lebanon’s Mais al-Jabal hospital on the border with Israel announced “the halt to work of all departments”, citing factors including “enemy targeting of the hospital” since last October and problems for supply lines and staff access. The comment also came in a statement on the NNA.
The director of south Lebanon’s Marjayoun governmental hospital, Mouenes Kalakesh, told AFP that “an Israeli air strike targeted ambulances at the main entrance to the hospital,” killing paramedics who were bringing wounded to the facility.
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The Israeli army claims a drone launched “from the east” killed two soldiers, with a public broadcaster reporting the strike originated from Iraq and hit a base in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, AFP reports.
The military said the two soldiers died in northern Israel. When asked by AFP for details it said the soldiers were killed in a drone strike launched from the east, without specifying from where.
Israeli Army Radio said the strike was launched from Iraq overnight Thursday. Two UAVs were launched from Iraq and crossed into Israeli territory in the Golan Heights area, the radio said.
“One UAV was intercepted by the air force, while the second exploded at a military camp north of the Golan Heights,” it said. “As a result of the explosion two soldiers were killed,” it said, adding 24 others were wounded.
Public broadcaster Kan also reported the strike originated from Iraq and hit the Golan Heights.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and a delegation of Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), led by Emir Ameer Hafiz Naeemur Rehman, at the Prime Minister’s House, APP reports.
The political parties decided to express solidarity with Gaza on a national level and agreed to observe a “Day of Solidarity with Palestine” across the country on October 7.
Nationwide gatherings and seminars will be held on Oct 7 to show solidarity with the Palestinian people and to protest against the ongoing Israeli aggression.
The participants of the meeting resolved to raise their voices against the ongoing oppression of innocent people in Gaza and to support Palestinians.
It was also decided to convene an All Parties Conference, hosted by the prime minister, to discuss the issue.
Bilawal extended full support for observing the Day of Solidarity, condemning the ongoing oppression of innocent Muslims in Palestine and Gaza.
The meeting also praised the JI’s stance in solidarity with Palestinians.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said his country backs efforts for a simultaneous ceasefire with Israel in both Gaza and Lebanon, AFP reports.
“We support the efforts for a ceasefire, provided that first, the rights of the Lebanese people are respected and it is accepted by the resistance (Hezbollah) and second, that it comes simultaneously with a ceasefire in Gaza,” he said during a visit to Beirut.
Speaking from Israel’s northern border, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated that the military operation in Lebanon will continue “until the removal of combat means”, Al Jazeera reports.
“We have more surprises in our arsenal,” Gallant said, according to Israeli media reports.
