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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has hit out at the United Nations for failing to prevent Israel from firing at its peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.
Erdogan said on Monday the UN was also to blame for failing to sanction Israel over its wars with Hezbollah and with Hamas in Gaza.
AFP reports:
“The image of the UN which cannot protect its own personnel is shameful and worrying,” Erdogan, a fierce critic of Israel, said in a televised address.
“Frankly, we ask ourselves what the (UN) security council is waiting for to stop Israel.
“Can you believe it? The Israeli tanks penetrate into the Unifil zone, attack peacekeeping soldiers, even wounding some of them, but the UN security council decides to just watch all this criminality from its stands -- that’s what we call powerlessness.”
The UN condemned the attacks with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres saying they “may constitute a war crime”.
There are reports in Israeli media that rocket sirens are sounding in the northern town of Shtula near the western Galilee.
The alert comes minutes after a rocket alarm sounded in Margaliyot near Kiryat Shmona in the eastern Galilee Panhandle.
There were no immediate reports of impacts or injuries.
UN security council voices 'strong concerns' over peacekeepers coming under fire
The United Nations security council voiced “strong concerns” Monday after incidents in which UN peacekeepers in Lebanon have been injured, AFP reports, as Israel presses its campaign against Hezbollah militants in its northern neighbour.
“Against the backdrop of ongoing hostilities along the Blue Line, the members of the Security Council expressed their strong concerns after several Unifil positions came under fire in the past days. Several peacekeepers have been wounded,” said the council’s rotating presidency, currently Switzerland’s UN ambassador Pascale Baeriswyl.
In the statement, which did not single out Israel, the 15 council members “urged all parties to respect the safety and security of Unifil personnel and premises. They recalled that UN peacekeepers and UN premises must never be the target of an attack.”
The council’s intervention followed two closed meetings on the deteriorating situation in Lebanon.
Summary of the day so far
It’s 1am in Gaza, Beirut and Tel Aviv. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
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.
The Israeli strike on Aitou was one of several over the past two weeks targeting areas thought to be “safe”, including the bombing of a displacement centre in the southern town of Wardaniyeh last week. Israel is facing international criticism for at least three violations that have injured five members of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.
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 four people were killed after an Israeli airstrike hit near the grounds of al-Aqsa hospital in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah early on Monday. The bombing triggered a large fire, leaving 25 people with severe burns. Footage showed people desperately trying to extinguish the flames as explosions could be heard within the camp.
An Israeli airstrike killed at least 20 people, including children, at the Al-Mufti school in central Gaza on Sunday night, medics said. The school in Nuseirat was sheltering some of the many Palestinians displaced by the war when it was struck by a volley of artillery, killing entire families and wounding dozens more.
An Israeli airstrike killed at least eight Palestinians and wounded many others in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, medics said on Monday. At least 10 Palestinians were killed and at least 30 injured in Israeli airstrikes on a food distribution center in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, Palestinian medics said. Five children in al-Shati camp in Gaza City were also killed on Sunday in a drone strike, Gaza’s civil defence agency said.
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.
Lebanese officials said an Israeli airstrike hit near an aid convoy in Lebanon on Monday, wounding a driver and lightly damaging the trucks. The humanitarian aid, which reached Beirut on Monday, was marked with the flags of Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as well as the Red Cross insignia.
Hezbollah appeared to respond to the strike on Aitou by firing a salvo of at least three rockets at Israel’s commercial and diplomatic centre, Tel Aviv, on Monday. Air raid sirens were triggered across vast swathes of central and northern Israel, but the attack was intercepted by Israel’s air defence systems.
Hezbollah inflicted the deadliest attack so far on Israel during the two-week-old war on Sunday, in a drone strike on a military base near Binyamina that killed four soldiers and severely wounded another seven. Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, vowed “a forceful response” to the attack during a phone call with his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, on Monday. Netanyahu vowed to strike Hezbollah without mercy. “We will continue to mercilessly strike Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon – including Beirut,” the Israeli prime minister said on Monday.
Israel’s military said that three projectiles had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory, and that all of them had been intercepted, following reports that sirens were sounding across the country. The Israeli military said it also intercepted two drones approaching from Syria, a day after a drone attack by Hezbollah on a base killed four soldiers.
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.
The UN’s human rights office said it was appalled by more than a week of heavy Israeli strikes on northern Gaza, where it said tens of thousands of civilians are trapped without food or supplies. It said the Israeli army “appears to be cutting off north Gaza completely from the rest of the Gaza Strip and conducting hostilities with absolute disregard for the lives and security of Palestinian civilians”.
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 men was 17 years old. Four others were injured by Israeli fire during the raid, it said.
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.”
Netanyahu said accusations Israeli troops had deliberately harmed peacekeepers were “completely false”, as he repeated a call for them to withdraw from combat zones close to the border. The Israeli leader said Hezbollah used Unifil positions as cover for attacks that have killed Israelis. Israel’s infrastructure minister, Eli Cohen, accused Unifil of being a “shield for Hezbollah” and called on Guterres to remove the force.
The UN’s peacekeeping chief, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, said peacekeepers would stay in all positions in Lebanon despite Israel’s calls for them to move. Unifil earlier said Israeli tanks forcibly entered the gates of one position early Sunday and destroyed the main gate. They later fired smoke rounds near peacekeepers, causing skin irritation. The UN peacekeeping mission called the incident a “further flagrant violation of international law”.
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”.
Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, and economics minister Robert Habeck, are said to have blocked German arms exports to Israel over concerns as to what the weapons would be used for, according to German media reports. No military exports to Israel have been approved since March according to the reports.
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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Australia urges citizens to leave Israel
Australia has warned its citizens not to travel to Israel and urged Australians there to leave the country while commercial flights remained available.
In a post on Twitter/X on Monday reported by Reuters, the Australian foreign minister Penny Wong wrote:
The Australian government has serious concerns the security situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories could deteriorate rapidly.
There continues to be a high threat of military and terrorist attacks against Israel and Israeli interests across the region, according to the Australian government’s travel advisory.
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Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has told the Biden administration he is willing to strike military rather than oil or nuclear facilities in Iran, according to a report.
Citing sources, the Washington Post writes that this suggests that Netanyahu is considering a more limited counterstrike in retaliation for Iran’s missile barrage launched on 1 October.
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UN peacekeepers in Lebanon to 'stay in all positions’ despite Israeli calls
UN peacekeepers will stay in all positions in Lebanon, the UN’s peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix said on Monday, despite Israeli calls for them to withdraw from areas of southern Lebanon.
Israel is facing international criticism for at least three violations in the past week that have injured five members of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, Unifil.
On Sunday, two Israeli tanks destroyed a gate and forcibly entered a Unifil base. As we reported earlier, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated a call for peacekeepers to withdraw from combat zones close to the border. Lacroix said:
The decision was made that Unifil would currently stay in all its positions in spite of the calls that were made by the Israel Defense Forces to vacate the positions that are in the vicinity of the Blue Line.
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Here are some of the latest images sent from the newswires from the city of Deir al Balah in central Gaza:
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Netanyahu rejects accusation that peacekeepers were targeted
Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected accusations that Israeli forces deliberately targeted UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.
“The charge that Israel deliberately attacked Unifil personnel is completely false,” the Israeli prime minister said in a video posted on Monday.
It’s exactly the opposite. Israel repeatedly asked Unifil to get out of harm’s way. It repeatedly asked them to temporarily leave the combat zone, which is right next to Israel’s border with Lebanon.
He said the military did its utmost to avoid harming Unifil personnel, while striking Hezbollah fighters.
“Israel has every right to defend itself against Hezbollah and will continue to do so,” he said, adding:
But the best way to assure the safety of Unifil personnel is for Unifil to heed Israel’s request and to temporarily get out of harm’s way.
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As Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah and Iran has escalated, it has begun to show a degree of vulnerability.
A Hezbollah drone evaded Israel’s much vaunted air defences on Sunday and struck a military canteen when it was busy with soldiers eating dinner. Four were killed and 58 wounded, seven seriously, at a location 40 miles south of the Lebanese border.
The drone that hit the canteen of the Golani base near Binyamina appears to have been part of a synchronised attack that allowed it to elude the country’s well organised air defences. Hezbollah has been refining its attack strategy, and timing the drone attack with rockets helped complicate the picture for the defenders.
It is not the first time in recent days that a drone has got through. A retirement home in Herzliya was struck by a drone on Friday during the Yom Kippur holiday – one of two that crossed the border from Lebanon. The other was shot down successfully by a fighter jet, but the second struck the building a few miles north of Tel Aviv.
Read the full story here: US intervention points to growing concerns over Israel’s air defences
Red Cross calls for protection of medical workers in Lebanon
The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) has called for Lebanon’s heathcare system to be protected after reports that Israeli strikes hit medical staff during fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
“I really ... appeal for the protection of healthcare workers, for ambulances, for hospitals, for primary health centres,” Nicolas Von Arx, the ICRC’s regional director for the Near and Middle East, said on Monday, AFP reported.
“Attacks on health facilities are deeply worrying,” he added. Such strikes mean “a hospital that doesn’t function any more.
That means thousands, tens of thousands of people who cannot get healthcare, who cannot deliver in a safe place, who cannot get their wounds treated.
Of the 207 primary health care centres in Lebanon’s conflict areas, 100 are now closed due to the escalating violence, according to the World Health Organization (Who). Von Arx said:
We are very, very concerned about the displacements, about the functioning of health care systems, about the continuous suffering now in Lebanon.
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Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said one of its workers was killed by shrapnel injuries suffered to the legs and chest in Jabalia in northern Gaza, which has come under “relentless attacks” by Israeli forces.
Nasser Hamdi Abdelatif Al Shalfouh, 31, died of his injuries on 10 October in Kamal Adwan hospital, the medical charity said. It said he was “unable to receive the necessary level of care due to the hospital’s lack of capacity and an overwhelming number of patients in the facility”.
In a statement on Monday, MSF said it was “horrified” by the killing and called again for the “respect and protection of civilians”. It added:
Nasser is the seventh MSF colleague killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war. This bloodshed needs to end.
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As we reported earlier, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a volley of artillery at a school used to shelter displaced Palestinians in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza on Sunday.
At least 22 people were killed, including 15 children, as well as dozens others injured by the Israeli attack, according to the Palestinian territory’s civil defence authority.
The school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat had been intended for use as a polio vaccination site on Monday, but a spokesperson for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) told the BBC that Sunday’s attack left the site unusable for vaccines today. Unrwa spokesperson Louise Wateridge told the UN:
Throughout the night, I spoke to a colleague sheltering in the compound who told me, ‘We miraculously survived, the fire caught everywhere even the tent where we were sleeping burnt. The scene is terrifying.’
The German government has sharply criticised the shelling of UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.
A spokesperson for Germany’s foreign office, Sebastian Fischer, told reporters on Monday:
All parties to the conflict, including the Israeli army, are obliged to direct their combat operations exclusively against military targets of the other party to the conflict
He added that a comprehensive investigation is expected and that discussions on the matter were being held with the Israeli side.
The situation in southern Lebanon is causing growing concern, Fischer added, saying:
The shelling of UN peacekeepers and the intrusion into their bases is in no way acceptable.
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Summary of the day so far
It’s just past 9pm in Beirut, Tel Aviv and Gaza. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
The death toll from an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in northern Lebanon on Monday has risen to at least 21 people. The strike targeted the Christian-majority village of Aitou, far from the Hezbollah group’s main areas of influence in the south and east of Lebanon. The Lebanese health ministry said DNA tests were being conducted to identify body parts. So far the main focus of Israel’s military operations in Lebanon has been in the south, the eastern Bekaa valley and the suburbs of Beirut.
An Israeli airstrike killed at least 20 people including children at the Al-Mufti school in central Gaza on Sunday night, medics said. The school in Nuseirat was sheltering some of the many Palestinians displaced by the war when it was struck by a volley of artillery, killing entire families and wounding dozens more.
An Israeli airstrike killed at least eight Palestinians and wounded many others in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, medics said on Monday.
At least 10 Palestinians were killed and at least 30 injured in Israeli airstrikes on a food distribution center in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, Palestinian medics said.
At least four people were killed after an Israeli airstrike hit near the grounds of al-Aqsa hospital in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, causing a fire that engulfed several tents housing displaced Palestinians. Footage showed people desperately trying to extinguish the flames as explosions could be heard within the camp.
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.
Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed to strike Hezbollah without mercy following the drone strike on a military base in Israel on Sunday that killed four people. “We will continue to mercilessly strike Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon – including Beirut,” the Israeli prime minister 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.
Lebanese officials said an Israeli airstrike hit near an aid convoy in Lebanon on Monday, wounding a driver and lightly damaging the trucks. The humanitarian aid, which reached Beirut on Monday, was marked with the flags of Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as well as the Red Cross insignia.
Hezbollah said it launched a barrage of rockets at the north Israeli town of Safed on Monday. Hezbollah said it battled Israeli troops in south Lebanon, and claimed several new attacks on Israel after a drone strike on an Israeli base near Binyamina, south of Haifa, killed four soldiers on Sunday night. Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant vowed “a forceful response” to the Hezbollah drone attack during a conversation with his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin.
Israel’s military said that three projectiles had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory, and that all of them had been intercepted, following reports that sirens were sounding across the country. The Israeli military said it also intercepted two drones approaching from Syria, a day after a drone attack by Hezbollah on a base killed four soldiers.
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 Stephane Dujarric said.
The UN’s human rights office said it was appalled by more than a week of heavy Israeli strikes on northern Gaza, where it said tens of thousands of civilians are trapped without food or supplies. It said the Israeli army “appears to be cutting off North Gaza completely from the rest of the Gaza Strip and conducting hostilities with absolute disregard for the lives and security of Palestinian civilians”.
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 men was 17 years old. Four others were injured by Israeli fire during the raid, it said.
Israeli attacks on the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (Unifil) are contrary to international humanitarian law and must stop at once, according to a joint statement by Italy, Britain, France and Germany on Monday. The four nations reaffirmed “the essential stabilising role” played by Unifil in southern Lebanon, adding that Israel and other parties had to ensure the safety of the peacekeepers at all times. 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.”
Unifil said Israeli tanks forcibly entered the gates of one position early Sunday and destroyed the main gate. They later fired smoke rounds near peacekeepers, causing skin irritation. The UN peacekeeping mission called the incident a “further flagrant violation of international law”.
Israel’s infrastructure minister, Eli Cohen, accused Unifil of being a “shield for Hezbollah” and called on Guterres to remove the force. In a post on Twitter/X on Monday, Cohen said the UN force has “contributed nothing to maintaining stability and security in the region” but denied Israel was deliberately targeting peacekeepers.
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”.
Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, and economics minister Robert Habeck, are said to have blocked German arms exports to Israel over concerns as to what the weapons would be used for, according to German media reports. No military exports to Israel have been approved since March according to the reports.
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.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images sent from the newswires from Lebanon, where at least 1,700 people have been killed and 1.2 million people displaced in the past month.
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Israeli attacks on UN forces in Lebanon must stop – Britain, Italy, France and Germany say
Israeli attacks on the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, are contrary to international humanitarian law and must stop at once, Italy, Britain, France and Germany said, Reuters reports.
In a joint statement, the four nations reaffirmed “the essential stabilising role” played by UNIFIL in southern Lebanon, adding that Israel and other parties had to ensure the safety of the peacekeepers at all times.
The UNIFIL mission, which includes hundreds of European soldiers, has said it has repeatedly come under attack from the Israeli military in recent days. Israel has called on the UN to move troops out of the area as it targets Hezbollah forces.
Updated
CCTV caught the moment a Hezbollah rocket hit a northern Israeli town.
Israeli ambulances and firefighters rushed to the northern Israeli town of Karmiel on 14 October after Hezbollah launched a rocket barrage into Israel.
Firefighters struggled to extinguish a car that caught fire in the middle of the street, while medics treated one lightly wounded woman, Israel’s ambulances service MDA said.
United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres condemned the “large number of civilian casualties in the intensifying Israeli campaign in northern Gaza,” his spokesperson said.
“He 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,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters.
At least 10 people were reportedly killed by Israeli fire at a food distribution centre at Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, where Israeli tanks and troops are continuing a ground offensive.
Some more on the two Palestinians reportedly shot and killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank earlier today.
The governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu al-Rub, said Israeli soldiers surrounded a house in the Jenin refugee camp adjacent to the city.
“The occupation (Israeli) soldiers climbed on the roofs of the houses and started shooting at anything that moved, resulting in the martyrdom of a minor and a young man in his 20s,” he told AFP.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa said one of the dead was a 17-year-old boy.
The Israeli military said it was “looking into the reports”.
Netanyahu says Israel will 'mercilessly strike' Hezbollah after drone attack
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to strike Hezbollah without mercy following the drone strike on a military base in Israel on Sunday that killed four. He said retaliation would extend to targets in Beirut, AFP reports.
“We will continue to mercilessly strike Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon – including Beirut. All this according to operational considerations. We have proven it recently and we will continue to prove it in the days to come,” he said while visiting the military base.
Israeli airstrike kills eight in Gaza City
An Israeli airstrike has killed at least eight Palestinians and wounded many others in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, medics told Reuters on Monday.
We will provide more details as we get them.
Hezbollah said it launched a barrage of rockets at the north Israeli town of Safed, AFP reports.
Hezbollah fighters fired a “big rocket salvo” at Safed, the group said in a statement, adding it was “in defence of Lebanon” and in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanese “cities, villages and civilians”.
Some analysis from AP on the drone strike that killed four Israeli soldiers last night:
One of the worst mass casualty strikes on Israel in a year of war came not from dozens of Iranian ballistic missiles nor the repeated barrages of rocket fire launched by Hamas and Hezbollah. Instead, it was a single drone.
The unmanned aerial vehicle, laden with explosives, evaded Israel’s multilayered air-defence system and slammed into a mess hall at a military training camp deep inside Israel, killing four soldiers and wounding over 60.
It shined a light on Israel’s struggle over the past year of war to knock down unmanned aircraft incoming from as far away as Yemen, Iraq and Iran.
Over the years, Israel has built up its aerial defence array to provide broad protection against short-range rocket fire and medium- and long-range missiles, although experts caution it is not airtight. While the system has taken down drones repeatedly, many have penetrated Israel’s airspace and sidestepped its defences, in some cases with deadly results.
An Israeli security official said Israel was still investigating how the drone made it through Israel’s air defences. A pair of drones initially entered Israeli airspace, but while one was shot down, the other one continued to its target.
Air raid sirens had blared in northern Israel as the aircraft flew overhead. But no sirens sounded at the base, giving the soldiers no advance warning and indicating that the drone may have fallen off Israel’s radar.
Hezbollah said the drone was “able to penetrate the Israeli air defence radars without being detected” and reach its target. It claimed it had outsmarted Israel’s air defences by simultaneously launching dozens of missiles and “squadrons” of drones.
It was the second deadly drone strike in just two weeks. Earlier this month, a drone launched from Iraq killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded roughly two dozen, according to Israeli media. On Friday, during a major Jewish holiday, a Hezbollah drone slammed into a nursing home in central Israel, causing damage.
Israel said it allowed 30 trucks of aid to reach northern Gaza, breaking a 2-week-long stretch during which the UN said aid levels fell precipitously in the area, AP reports.
The Israeli body managing aid crossings into the territory, COGAT, said 30 trucks carrying flour and food from the UN’s main food agency traveled through the northern crossing after inspection. The UN has not yet confirmed Israel’s claims.
For the last two weeks, nearly no food, water, fuel or supplies have reached the north, the UN said, with both major crossings closed since 1 October.
The cutoff, combined with a renewed Israeli offensive in the area, has raised fears that Israel is pursuing an extreme plan proposed to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would besiege the northern third of the strip in an effort to prompt a Hamas surrender.
News agency AFP has spoken to volunteer rescuers in Lebanon.
When rescue worker Aya Wehbeh was called to respond to a rare Israeli strike in central Beirut last week, she was terrified it had hit her family home. “This period is really tough,” the 25-year-old said days after the twin strikes on the Nweiri and Basta districts of the capital left at least 22 dead. “I could have ended up pulling my mother, father, aunt or neighbour from the rubble,” she said.
Across the country, rescue workers are struggling to respond to Israeli air strikes, with their resources already depleted by five years of economic crisis and fearing that they could be killed like dozens of colleagues over the past year.
Wissam al-Qubeissi, 29, said he was determined to continue trying to save people despite the challenges. “We’re many and highly motivated,” said the volunteer, wearing a grey uniform he paid for himself. “But what’s the point if we lack bulldozers, equipment and protective gear?” he asked.
In the storage room, he showed AFP rusty helmets, worn-out fire hoses and extinguishers about to reach their expiry dates.
In the south of the country, the job is even more tiring. Israeli air strikes have pounded the area, while Israeli troops have clashed with Hezbollah on the frontier in recent days.
Anis Abla, civil defence chief in the southern border town of Marjayoun, said he suffered severe burns to his face and hands two months ago while extinguishing a fire caused by Israeli shelling. “Our rescue missions are becoming more and more difficult, because the strikes are never-ending and target us,” he said. “We’re exhausted.”
The Lebanese Red Cross says the death toll from the Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in northern Lebanon is now at least 21.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military and it was not clear what the target was.
The strike on Monday hit a small apartment building in the majority-Christian village of Aitou, far from the Hezbollah militant group’s main areas of influence in the south and east of Lebanon.
Hezbollah released a new video showcasing their drone fleet on Monday afternoon, with the message “our capabilities are fine”. The slickly produced slip showed fighters preparing several drones for flight with pictures of late secretary general Hassan Nasrallah and slain military chief of staff Fouad Shukur.
The video was released the day after Hezbollah’s deadliest attack on Israel since the beginning of fighting one year prior, killing four soldiers and injuring over 60 in a drone attack on Haifa. It was one of 64 attacks carried out on Sunday by the group, according to the Israeli Alma Research and Education Center.Hezbollah has insisted that its military capabilities and structure remain intact and ready to fight Israel, despite the massive aerial campaign carried out against it since 23 September and the elimination of almost all of its senior military leadership. In a speech on Friday, head of Hezbollah’s military office Mohammed Afif said that the group’s fighters on the border with Israel were “fine” and ready for “fierce fighting.”
Fighting in Lebanon’s south over the last two weeks has killed over a dozen Israeli soldiers and an unknown amount of Hezbollah fighters – the Lebanese group stopped releasing death notices of its fighters last month.
Israel carried out a strike on an apartment building hosting displaced people in Zgharta, north Lebanon, on Monday, killing at least 18. Israel said that it had targeted the head of Hezbollah’s Radwan force’s anti-tank unit, Mohammed Kamel Naim. Monday’s strike was one of several over the last two weeks targeting residences hosting displaced people in areas of Lebanon thought to be ‘safe’, including a strike on a displacement center in Wardaniyeh, south Lebanon, on Wednesday.
Hezbollah releases a video showcasing their drones, with pics of late-Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and military chief of Staff Fouad Shukur in background.
— Will Christou (@will_christou) October 14, 2024
“Our capabilities are fine” is the message of the video, in a triumphant message after yday’s drone attack in Haifa pic.twitter.com/ffb5MsqyeU
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Israel’s military said that three projectiles had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory, and that all of them had been intercepted, following reports that sirens were sounding across the country.
Israeli fighter jets struck the launcher from which the projectiles were fired, the military added. It said no injuries had been reported.
Israel’s deadly air strike in northern Lebanon earlier today marked a departure from the usual pattern of its attacks, AFP reports. The strike hit far from the main combat area of the country and in a mostly Christian area.
Israel has focused its firepower mostly on Hezbollah strongholds in Shiite Muslim-majority areas in the country and in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
An AFP photographer at the site of the strike in Aitou said it had levelled a residential building at the entrance to the village.
Body parts were scattered in the rubble, with Red Cross volunteers searching for survivors while ambulances evacuated wounded people.
AFP provides a report on the latest clashes between Hezbollah and Israel.
Hezbollah said it battled Israeli troops in south Lebanon, and claimed several new attacks on Israel after a drone strike on an Israeli base near Binyamina, south of Haifa, killed four soldiers on Sunday night.
Israeli forces launched a string of new air strikes on targets in Lebanon today, including one on the north of the country which killed at least 18 people, according to the Lebanese Red Cross.
Israel also faced new criticism over their alleged attacks on United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.
Sirens sound across Israel as projectiles fired from Lebanon
The IDF said millions of Israelis were rushing to shelters as sirens sounded across central Israel, including Tel Aviv, in response to projectiles fired from Lebanon.
🚨Millions of Israelis are running to bomb shelters as sirens sound across Israel🚨 pic.twitter.com/xlddwUbbTk
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 14, 2024
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The Israeli military says it has sent out 1.7 million text messages, 3.4 million voice messages and made 3,700 voice calls notifying civilians in Lebanon to evacuate as it continues its ground invasion there, AP reports.
Some 2,300 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon since last October, more than three-quarters of them in the past month, according to the Lebanese government. At least 1.2 million people have been displaced — the vast majority since Israel ramped up airstrikes across the country last month.
Israel says it is making an effort to communicate with civilians ahead of airstrikes, but people interviewed by the the AP news agency say that they don’t receive the warnings – or that they come in the middle of the night or don’t adequately cover the area that is struck.
Lebanese sources say the orders often come at very short notice, and it’s not clear where people can go or when they will be able to return home. One quarter of Lebanese territory is now under Israeli military displacement orders, according to the UN’s human rights division.
The United Nations human rights office has said it was appalled by more than a week of heavy Israeli strikes on northern Gaza where it said tens of thousands of civilians are trapped without food or supplies, Reuters reports.
“In the shadow of the escalation of hostilities across the Middle East, the Israeli military appears to be cutting off North Gaza completely from the rest of the Gaza Strip and conducting hostilities with absolute disregard for the lives and security of Palestinian civilians,” the rights office said.
It added in a statement that it had received reports that Israeli forces had erected sand mounds at a key juncture, effectively “sealing off north Gaza” and firing on those attempting to flee.
US embassy strongly urges citizens to leave Lebanon
The US embassy in Lebanon said its citizens were strongly encouraged to leave Lebanon “now”, Reuters reports. The embassy added that additional flights it organised for its citizens traveling out of Beirut would not continue indefinitely.
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Two Palestinians shot dead in West Bank
Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, AP reports.
Commenting on the incident, the Israeli army official said its troops exchanged fire with armed militants during what it termed a “counterterrorism operation” in the Jenin area, killing one of the gunmen.
According to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, one of the men was 17 years old. Four others were injured by Israeli fire during the raid, it said.
Wafa reported that Israel had deployed their snipers on the roofs of a number of tall buildings in the city.
Lebanese officials say Israeli airstrike struck near aid convoy
Officials said an Israeli airstrike hit near an aid convoy in Lebanon, wounding a driver and lightly damaging the trucks, AP reports.
The humanitarian aid, which reached Beirut on Monday, was marked with the flags of Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as well as the Red Cross insignia.
Governor of the Baalbek-Hermel region, Bachir Khodr accompanied the convoy. He said the airstrike hit as it was passing through northeastern Lebanon. He shared a picture on X taken from inside a vehicle showing a large cloud of smoke on the road ahead.
It was not clear how badly the driver was wounded. The Guardian could not independently verify the image.
غارة اسرائيلية اثناء مرور قافلة المساعدات على مسافة قريبة جداً منا في بلدة العين.
— Bachir Khodr (@BachirKhodr) October 14, 2024
نقوم بهذه الأثناء بالتأكد بأن جميع الأشخاص والآليات بخير.
#بشير_خضر pic.twitter.com/ufQgEhMs92
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant briefed his US counterpart Lloyd Austin on the deadly Hezbollah drone attack on a military base in Israel yesterday and vowed “a forceful response.”
The attack near the city of Binyamina killed four soldiers and wounded 61. It was the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon two weeks ago.
In his talk with Austin, Gallant “highlighted the severity of the attack and the forceful response that would be taken against Hezbollah,” his office said.
He also “reiterated the measures” taken by the military to coordinate with UNIFIL peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and to avoid harming them, after mounting criticism of Israel for repeatedly firing on UN soldiers.
Gallant’s office said he expressed his appreciation to Austin and the US administration for deciding to send a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery – used to shoot down ballistic missiles – to Israel “in the coming days.”
Ireland’s prime minister Simon Harris has spoken to the Israeli president Isaac Herzog to speak about the security of Irish and other peacekeeping troops in southern Lebanon.
He relayed the government’s “serious concern about the deteriorating situation” in southern Lebanon as well as emphasising the expectation that Unifil’s mandate was respected.
The Irish government statement said:
The Taoiseach was clear that the deliberate firing at UNIFIL posts is an outrageous and totally unacceptable breach of international law, and a cause of the deepest concern to the Irish people, especially the families of the Irish Defence Forces personnel serving in Lebanon.
He also told Herzog Irish people taken “enormous pride” in their role and their safety was a matter of “the highest priority” for the government.
He also spoke about Gaza, expressing solidarity with the families of hostages, but warning the “scale of a humanitarian catastrophe is unimaginable and that children and civilians are starving and dying”.
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The Israeli military said it has intercepted two drones approaching from Syria, a day after a drone attack by Lebanon’s Hezbollah on a base killed four soldiers.
The military said in a statement:
A short while ago, two UAVs that approached Israeli territory from Syria were successfully intercepted by the IAF (air force). The UAVs were intercepted before crossing into Israeli territory.
Israel is fighting a war on two fronts, one on its northern border with Lebanon, the other with Hamas in Gaza, while it also faces attacks from Iran-backed militants in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Earlier on Monday, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq - a loose alliance of armed groups backed by Iran - said it had fired drones at Israel in two separate attacks.
The group said in a statement before later announcing a second salvo:
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq attacked at dawn... a vital target in the Jordan Valley in our occupied lands, using drones.
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At least 18 killed in Aitou in northern Lebanon, say Red Cross
Israel has expanded its targets in its war with the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon on Monday, killing at least 18 people in its first strike on the Christian-majority town of Aitou in the north, the Lebanese Red Cross said.
Reuters reports:
So far the main focus of Israel’s military operations in Lebanon has been in the south, the eastern Bekaa Valley and the suburbs of Beirut.
The strike in the northern region hit a house that had been rented to displaced families, Aitou Mayor Joseph Trad told Reuters. In addition to the deaths, four people were injured, the Red Cross said.
Israel on Monday ordered residents of 25 villages to evacuate to areas north of the Awali River, which flows through southern Lebanon, as it intensifies its attacks in the region.
An Israeli strike killed Muhammad Kamel Naim, the commander of the anti-tank missile unit of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, in the Nabatieh area of south Lebanon, the military said.
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Britain has imposed sanctions against Iranian individuals and organisations following Iran’s attack on Israel on 1 October, Britain’s Foreign Office said on Monday.
The sanctions target senior figures in Iran’s army, air force and organisations linked to Iran’s ballistic and cruise missile development.
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Hezbollah said its fighters were battling Israeli troops inside a Lebanese border village on Monday, and that they had launched a guided missile at an Israeli troop carrier in the same area.
Hezbollah fighters “are engaged in violent clashes with the Israeli enemy forces... in the village of Aita al-Shaab with... machine guns, rockets and artillery shells,” the group said, later adding it targeted an “Israeli troop carrier with a guided missile” in the village.
Separately, at least nine people were killed and one person was injured on Monday in an initial toll following an Israeli air strike on the Christian-majority region of Aitou in north Lebanon, the Lebanese health ministry said. The Lebanese Red Cross has put the death toll at 18.
Meanwhile, Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant told his US counterpart Lloyd Austin that Israel would deliver a strong response to Hezbollah after the Lebanese armed group struck an Israeli army base killing four soldiers.
Gallant spoke to Austin overnight and “highlighted the severity of the attack and the forceful response that would be taken against Hezbollah”, the minister’s office said in a statement.
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Israeli minister accuses UNIFIL of being a 'shield for Hezbollah' in Lebanon
Israel’s infrastructure minister has responded to the UN in a post on X.
Eli Cohen accused the UN forces of contributing “nothing to maintaining stability and security in the region” but denied Israel was deliberately targeting peacekeepers.
He wrote:
UN Secretary-General Guterres, it’s time for you to respond to the request sent to you, remove UNIFIL from the conflict areas, and stop playing into Iran’s hands.
The State of Israel is not interested in harming UNIFIL forces.
— אלי כהן | Eli Cohen (@elicoh1) October 14, 2024
However, these forces have contributed nothing to maintaining stability and security in the region, have not ensured the enforcement of UN resolutions, and serve as a shield for Hezbollah, a terrorist organization…
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What is UNIFIL, the UN force stationed in Lebanon?
AP provides some background …
The UN Interim Force in Lebanon was created in 1978 to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops after Israel invaded and occupied southern Lebanon. Israel invaded again in 1982, and it wasn’t until 2000 that it withdrew.
In the absence of an agreed-upon border, the U.N. drew up a boundary between Lebanon and Israel known as the Blue Line, which UNIFIL monitors and patrols.
The United Nations expanded UNIFIL’s mission following the monthlong 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, allowing peacekeepers to deploy along the Israeli border to monitor the cessation of hostilities and patrol a buffer zone along the border.
The force currently has around 10,000 peacekeepers in southern Lebanon drawn from around 50 countries, including 16 European Union countries. The largest contributors of troops are Indonesia, with 1,231 peacekeepers, and Italy with 1,068.
They are lightly armed, and while they have the right to self-defense under certain circumstances, their role is mainly observational. This includes patrols, monitoring and reporting violations of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 fighting. The force also provides support to local communities.
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France has joined the chorus of EU voices rejecting demands made by Israel’s prime minister for UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon to pull back from its position in the country.
“The protection of peacekeepers is an obligation incumbent on all parties”, the foreign ministry in Paris said.
Iran has stopped indirect talks with the United States in Oman as tensions remain high over a possible Israeli retaliatory strike on Tehran, AP reports.
Oman has long has been an interlocutor between Iran and the US, particularly in the secret talks that birthed Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
“For the time being, the Muscat process is stopped because of special situation in the region,” Foreign minister Abbas Araghchi told Iranian state media while still in Muscat, Oman. “We do not see any ground for the talks until we can pass the current crisis.”
The health ministry in the Gaza Strip said it launched the second round of a polio vaccination campaign in the war-ravaged territory.
It said that a second does of the vaccine will be administered to children under 10 in the central part of the territory over the next three days before the campaign is expanded to the north and south.
The campaign began last month after the territory registered its first polio case in 25 years — a 10-month-old boy, now paralysed in one leg.
Health workers succeeded in administering the first dose of the vaccine to around 560,000 children despite challenges, including ongoing fighting, the breakdown of law and order and widespread damage to roads and infrastructure.
The World Health Organization said humanitarian pauses to facilitate the campaign last month were largely observed.
EU condemns Israeli attacks on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon
The European Union condemned attacks on UN peacekeepers by Israel in Lebanon and rejected allegations that UN secretary general António Guterres is responsible for obstructing the Israeli army, AP reports.
Sixteen EU countries are contributing to the UNIFIL peacekeeping force. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that “their work is very important. It’s completely unacceptable attacking United Nations troops.”
Five peacekeepers have been wounded in recent attacks, with most blamed on Israeli forces.
Speaking in Luxembourg before chairing talks between EU foreign ministers, Borrell underlined that the UN security council decides whether UNIFIL peacekeepers should be moved, “so stop blaming Secretary Guterres.”
Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called for UNIFIL to heed Israel’s warnings to evacuate, accusing them of “providing a human shield” to Hezbollah. In a video addressed to Guterres, who has been banned from entering Israel, Netanyahu told the UN chief “to get (UNIFIL) out of the danger zone.”
Austrian foreign minister Alexander Schallenberg, whose country is one of Europe’s strongest backers of Israel, said the attacks are “simply unacceptable” and that UNFIL will not be leaving. “No, they will not withdraw. Yes, they will continue to fulfil the mandate. And yes, we demand on each and every party to respect this mandate and respect the security and safety of our blue helmets,” he told reporters.
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Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency said police had charged two Israelis on accusations that they planned to carry out an assassination at the behest of Iran, AP reports.
The agency said Vladislav Victorson, 30, was approached online by a person called Mari Hossi and was instructed to carry out missions that ranged from petty vandalism to torching cars, and paid more than $5,000.
The Shin Bet said Victorson was asked to damage communications infrastructure and ATMs, although a statement did not say whether he carried out these acts. It also did not name the Israeli figure he allegedly agreed to assassinate.
The Shin Bet said he also sought to acquire weapons, including a sniper rifle, guns and grenades. According to the agency, Victorson enlisted two other people, including his girlfriend, Anna Bernstein, 18, to assist in his missions.
The Shin Bet said Iranian agents are known to use social media and promises of cash in efforts to recruit Israelis to carry out such attacks.
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, AP reports.
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.”
“We cannot have an undermining and a chipping away of the status or the credibility or structures of the United Nations and particularly its peacekeeping forces,” Martin said in Luxembourg, where EU foreign ministers are meeting.
“We see what’s happening in northern Gaza, for example, in terms of the necessity of eyes and ears on the ground. The world has really no full picture of what’s happening in Gaza,” he told reporters.
Five peacekeepers have been wounded in attacks that struck their positions in Lebanon since Israel began a ground campaign against the Hezbollah militant group in the country.
The Associated Press provides some more detail on the Israeli strike on a Gaza hospital earlier today:
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded from an earlier strike on a school-turned-shelter that killed at least 20 people when the early morning airstrike hit and fire engulfed many of the tents.
Several secondary explosions could be heard after the initial strike, but it was not immediately clear if they were caused by weapons or fuel tanks.
Associated Press footage showed children among the wounded. A man sobbed as he carried a toddler with a bandaged head in his arms. Another small child with a bandaged leg was given a blood transfusion on the floor of the packed hospital.
Hospital records showed that four people were killed and 40 wounded. Twenty-five people were transferred to the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
The Israeli military said it targeted militants hiding out among civilians, without providing evidence. In recent months it has repeatedly struck crowded shelters and tent camps, alleging that Hamas fighters were using them as staging grounds for attacks.
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The UN has stressed the urgent need for ceasefires in both Lebanon and Gaza to avert a broader regional conflict with ramifications for the whole world, AFP reports.
“A ceasefire that is sustained by a meaningful peace process ... is the only way to break the cycle of violence, of hatred, of misery,” said UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi.
Speaking at the start of the UNHCR refugee agency’s annual executive committee meeting in Geneva, he insisted that only a ceasefire could “stem the tide to a major regional war with global implications”.
“You will have seen the images and heard the numbers; hundreds of thousands of displaced inside Lebanon, seeking reprieve from Israeli airstrikes,” Grandi said. “Once again, the distinction made between civilians and combatants has almost become meaningless.”
Grandi paid tribute to two UNHCR workers killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon last month, and also highlighted the 226 staff working for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, killed in Gaza in the past year. “We cannot accept that lives of humanitarians are dismissed as mere collateral damage, or worse, maligned as somehow culpable or complicit,” he said.
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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday said there would be “no withdrawal” of the UN peacekeeping force from southern Lebanon after Israeli attacks and calls to leave.
Spain condemns Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call on Sunday for the force to pull back “because there will be no withdrawal of UNIFIL”, Sanchez told a forum in Barcelona.
A former senior officer at the UN peace keeping forces in southern Lebanon has said that Unifil troops should not leave their posting.
John Durnin, who works in Lebanon and in Iraq, told RTE he believed Israel wanted them to move out of the way as part of an escalatory mission designed to be disproportionate.
Of course, Benjamin Netanyahu is going to say that the UN are in the way or human shields – in fact, they’re an obstacle or a constraint for the Israeli troops who are moving into the area.
Commentators from various [media] have noted that these attacks that have been taking place in Gaza seem to fulfil that use of overwhelming force by the Israelis to get the civilians to turn their backs on the militants - I think that that’s what Israel wants to do in southern Lebanon, and at the moment, the UN are in their way.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is examining a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza in an attempt to starve out Hamas militants, according to the Associated Press news agency.
If implemented, this could trap hundreds of thousands of Palestinians unwilling or unable to leave their homes.
The plan proposed to Netanyahu and the Israeli parliament by a group of retired generals would escalate the pressure, giving 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 by its chief architect, who says the plan is the only way to break Hamas in the north and pressure it to release the remaining hostages.
The plan calls for Israel to maintain control over the north for an indefinite period to attempt to create a new administration without Hamas, splitting the Gaza Strip in two.
There has been no decision by the government to fully carry out the so-called “Generals’ Plan,” and it is unclear how strongly it’s being considered.
When asked if the evacuation orders in northern Gaza marked the first stages of the “Generals’ Plan,” Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said:
We have not received a plan like that.
But one official with knowledge of the matter said parts of the plan are already being implemented, without specifying which parts. A second official, who is Israeli, said Netanyahu “had read and studied” the plan, “like many plans that have reached him throughout the war,” but didn’t say whether any of it had been adopted. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because the plan isn’t supposed to be discussed publicly.
Human rights groups say the plan would likely starve civilians and that it flies in the face of international law, which prohibits using food as a weapon and forcible transfers. Accusations that Israel is intentionally limiting food to Gaza are central to the genocide case brought against it at the International Court of Justice, charges Israel denies.
A coalition of Israeli NGOs on Monday urged the international community to act, noting that “there are alarming signs that the Israeli military is beginning to quietly implement” the plan.
They wrote:
States have an obligation to prevent the crimes of starvation and forcible transfer.
Continuing a ‘wait and see’ approach will enable Israel to liquidate northern Gaza.
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An AFP alert says the Israeli army has intercepted two drones approaching Israel from Syria.
The Israeli military said it intercepted two drones approaching from Syria on Monday, a day after a drone attack by the Lebanese group Hezbollah on an Israeli military base killed four soldiers.
A statement read:
A short while ago, two UAVs that approached Israeli territory from Syria were successfully intercepted by the IAF (air force). The UAVs were intercepted before crossing into Israeli territory.
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Here are the latest images coming out of Gaza:
Here’s a round up of the key events from overnight:
On Sunday night, an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza killed at least 20 people including children at the Al-Mufti school, according to two local hospitals. The school in Nuseirat was sheltering some of the many Palestinians displaced by the war.
Explosions hit early Monday outside Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, killing three people and injuring about 50 others, the hospital said. Tents caught fire, and residents of the Central Gaza community carried the injured into the hospital.
Palestinian medics have said that at least 10 people were killed and at least 30 injured in Israeli airstrikes on a food distribution center in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, with casualties including women and children.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday urged other members of the European Union to respond to Madrid and Ireland’s request to suspend the bloc’s free trade agreement with Israel over its actions in Gaza and Lebanon.
For months, both Spain and Ireland have been in talks with other EU countries who want a review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement on the basis that Israel may be breaching the agreement’s human rights clause.
The Guardian’s middle east correspondent Bethan McKernan has interviewed Gazans and aid workers in the strip, who say “no one is talking about” the bloodshed there and ceasefire hopes are receding as focus shifts to Lebanon.
Mai al-Afifa, 24, was teaching a workshop about how to identify unexploded ordnance in a school turned shelter in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah on Thursday when an Israeli missile hit the next building in the compound. Twenty-eight people were killed and 54 injured, according to medics at the scene.
Through the smoke and rubble dust Afifa saw the body parts of two women and a male aid worker as she stumbled to safety. The Israeli military said it had used a precise strike to target Hamas fighters using the school as a command centre.
She said:
We are very sad about what is happening now in Lebanon … We have experienced this pain and loss.
But we also fear that Gaza will be forgotten: the massacres have increased here and no one is talking about it. All the TV channels are talking about the regional war, Iran, Israel and what is happening in Lebanon.
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Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, and economics minister Robert Habeck, both of the Greens party, are said to have blocked German arms exports to Israel over concerns as to what the weapons would be used for, according to reports in German media.
No military exports to Israel have been approved since March according to the reports, which initially emerged in the tabloid Bild, citing government sources, and are now being reported more widely in German media.
According to these, the leading Greens are said to have insisted transports of weapons and spare parts could only go ahead once the Israeli government signed a guarantee that it would not use the weapons to commit acts of genocide.
If confirmed, this would effectively put the German government at odds with Washington. Despite its clear criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, the US government has made clear it sees no indication that it has carried out genocide.
By even raising the question, via the Federal Security Council, observers say, Baerbock and Habeck are implicitly expressing a suspicion over Israel’s intentions which has not been voiced by the government of Olaf Scholz.
Germany’s government holds the belief that due to the Nazi-perpetrated crimes of the Holocaust, Israel’s security is Germany’s “reason of state”.
Military experts point out that Germany has no comparable conditions for sending arms to countries such as Turkey or Saudi Arabia, despite misgivings about the intended use of hundreds of millions of Euros worth of weapons that have recently been exported to them.
Some close to the weapons export process have reportedly described the position adopted by Baerbock and Habeck, as “absurd”, suggesting that it was questionable the extent to which any written guarantee would be either practical or legally-binding.
As recently as September the German economics ministry denied that there was an arms export boycott to Israel. Instead, a spokesman said that every application for weapons was examined on a “case by case basis”.
According to Bild, Israel gave Germany the required written agreement last week. Between 2019 and 2023, almost a third of weapons imports Israel has received have come from Germany, which after the USA is its most important supplier of arms.
In particular Israel has stressed the importance of submarines and warships built in Germany which it says it needs to defend itself from constant threats, especially from Iran.
The second round of a polio vaccination campaign has been launched in the Gaza strip.
The Health Ministry has said that a second does of the vaccine will be administered to children under 10 in the central part of the territory over the next three days before the campaign is expanded to the north and south.
The campaign began last month after the territory registered its first polio case in Gaza in 25 years — a 10-month-old boy, now paralysed in one leg.
Health workers succeeded in administering the first dose of the vaccine to around 560,000 children despite myriad challenges, including ongoing fighting, the breakdown of law and order and widespread damage to roads and infrastructure.
The World Health Organization said humanitarian pauses to facilitate the campaign last month were largely observed.
Death toll hits 42,289 - Palestinian health ministry
Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 42,289 Palestinians and wounded 98,684 since 7 October 2023 the, Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said on Monday.
Video shows aftermath of Israeli airstrike on hospital tent camp
Here is video footage of the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike hit near the grounds of al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza, which caused a fire that engulfed several tents housing displaced Palestinians.
Footage from Deir al-Balah showed people desperately trying to extinguish the flames as explosions could be heard within the camp. According to reports, the strike hit while emergency services were receiving scores of injured people from an earlier bombardment in nearby Nuseirat
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A Reuters snap says that sirens sounded in central Israel due to a number of projectiles fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory, the Israeli military said
Meanwhile AFP is reporting that Hezbollah says it has targeted Israeli troops in a south Lebanon village.
AFP is also reporting that the Israeli army says it has intercepted projectiles from Lebanon over central Israel. One of its journalists has heard blasts over the Israel army base hit by a Hezbollah drone.
More to follow.
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Hezbollah said it targeted an Israeli naval base near north Israel’s Haifa on Monday, a day after claiming a drone attack near the city that the Israeli military said killed four soldiers.
Hezbollah fighters launched “a rocket salvo” at the “Stella Maris” naval base near Haifa, the Lebanese group said in a statement, adding the attack was at the “service” of Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s longtime leader who was killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs last month.
Israeli attacks on UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon 'unacceptable'
Attacks by Israel on the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, are “unacceptable” and contrary to UN rules, Spain’s Foreign minister Jose Manuel Albares said on Monday.
He told reporters ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers held in Luxembourg:
It is contrary to what we expect from any member state of the United Nations, which is ultimately an organisation that protects world peace.
EU countries, led by Italy, France and Spain, have thousands of troops in the 10,000-strong peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, which has said it has repeatedly come under attack from Israeli forces in recent days.
Israel has called on the UN to move the troops out of the combat zone. Albares said only the UN can order the withdrawal of UNIFIL.
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More now on the Hezbollah strike on an IDF training base we reported on earlier (see post 7.33BST)
The drone attack on an army base in central Israel killed four soldiers and severely wounded seven others on Sunday, the Israeli military said, in the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.
Hezbollah called the attack near Binyamina city retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut on Thursday that killed 22 people. It later said it targeted Israel’s elite Golani brigade, launching dozens of missiles to occupy Israeli air defence systems during the assault by “squadrons” of drones.
Israel’s national rescue service said the attack wounded 61. With Israel’s advanced air-defence systems, it is rare for so many people to be hurt by drones or missiles. Hezbollah and Israel have traded fire almost daily in the year since the war in Gaza began, and fighting has escalated.
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Here are the latest images coming out of Gaza:
An Israeli attack on a school used to shelter displaced Palestinians has killed at least 20 people in central Gaza, officials say.
Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence Agency said the site in Nuseirat camp was struck by a volley of artillery on Sunday, killing entire families and wounding dozens more, the BBC reported.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it was looking into these reports.
Earlier, five children were reportedly killed by a drone strike while playing on a street corner in northern Gaza.
A civil defence spokesman said the attack on al-Mufti school, where hundreds of displaced people from around Gaza were sheltering, had injured at least 50 people and more than a dozen were killed.
The five children in northern Gaza were reportedly killed in an Israeli air strike while playing on a street corner in al-Shati camp.
Graphic images from the scene in the aftermath show the bloodied bodies of what appeared to be young teenage boys. One of them looked to be clutching several glass marbles in his hand.
According to a report from the scene, told to a BBC correspondent, a drone strike hit a person walking down the street, which killed the children and injured seven other people.
Later images showed the bodies of the five boys wrapped in white shrouds and laid out on the floor side-by-side.
An aunt of one of the boys, named Rami, wrote a moving tribute to him on social media. She said the family had moved to al-Shati after being forced to leave their homes in Jabalia to a “safer area” because of the war.
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Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has met with Mohammed Abdelsalam, a senior official from Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi movement, in Muscat, according to his office.
The foreign ministry released pictures of the pair holding talks during Araghchi’s visit to the Omani capital, the latest in a series of diplomatic trips in the region following Israel’s vow to retaliate against an Iranian missile attack.
At least 10 killed in Jabalia refugee camp, say Palestinian medics
Palestinian medics have said that at least 10 people were killed and at least 30 injured in Israeli airstrikes on a food distribution center in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, with casualties including women and children.
The European Union’s member states have taken too long to condemn Israel’s attacks on UNIFIL soldiers in Lebanon, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday, describing the attacks as “completely unacceptable”.
Speaking at an EU ministerial meeting in Luxembourg, he said:
We should be against Israeli attacks against UNIFIL. Our soldiers are there, many soldiers are there.
EU countries, led by Italy, France and Spain, have thousands of troops in the 10,000-strong peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, which has said it has repeatedly come under attack from Israeli forces in recent days. Israel has called on the United Nations to move the troops out of the combat zone.
The European Union has condemned all attacks against United Nations missions, the union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a response to targeting of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, by the Israel Defence Forces.
Borrell said in a statement on behalf of the EU published on Sunday night:
Such attacks against UN peacekeepers constitute a grave violation of international law and are totally unacceptable.
The EU condemns all attacks against UN missions.
It expresses particularly grave concern regarding the attacks by the Israeli Defence Forces against UNIFIL, which left several peacekeepers wounded.We urgently await explanations and a thorough investigation from the Israeli authorities about the attacks against UNIFIL, which plays a fundamental role in the stability of South Lebanon.
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Israel’s army chief has described a Hezbollah drone strike on a military training base that killed at least four soldiers at the weekend as “difficult and painful”.
Lieutenant Geneal Herzi Halevi told soldiers during a visit to the Golani Brigade training base that was hit Sunday night in the area of Binyamina, south of the city of Haifa:
We are at war, and an attack on a training base on the home front is difficult and the results are painful.
Airstrike on Gaza hospital kills at least four
An Israeli airstrike on a hospital courtyard in the Gaza Strip early Monday killed at least four people and sent flames sweeping through a packed tent camp for people displaced by the war, leaving more than two dozen with severe burns, according to Palestinian medics.
Associated Press reports:
The Israeli military said it targeted militants hiding out among civilians, without providing evidence. In recent months it has repeatedly struck crowded shelters and tent camps, alleging that Hamas fighters were using them as staging grounds for attacks.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded people from an earlier strike on a school-turned-shelter nearby that killed at least 20 people when the early morning airstrike hit and fire engulfed many of the tents.
Associated Press footage showed children among the wounded. A man sobbed as he carried a toddler with a bandaged head in his arms. Another small child with a bandaged leg was given a blood transfusion on the floor of the packed hospital.
Hospital records showed that four people were killed and 40 wounded. Twenty-five people were transferred to the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
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Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.
On Sunday night, an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza killed at least 20 people including children at a school, according to two local hospitals. The school in Nuseirat was sheltering some of the many Palestinians displaced by the war.
Meanwhile, explosions hit early Monday outside Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, killing three people and injuring about 50 others, the hospital said. Tents caught fire, and residents of the Central Gaza community carried the injured into the hospital.
The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon known as UNIFIL said Israeli tanks forcibly entered the gates of one position early Sunday and destroyed the main gate. They later fired smoke rounds near peacekeepers, causing skin irritation. UNIFIL called the incident a “further flagrant violation of international law.”
US vice-president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has said Israel must “urgently do more to facilitate the flow of aid to those in need” in northern Gaza.
Civilians must be protected and must have access to food, water, and medicine. International humanitarian law must be respected.”
In recent days Israeli forces have widened their raid into northern Gaza forcing many families to leave their homes. The territory’s ministry of health appealed on Friday for medical teams to be allowed access to the northern half of the strip to evacuate the wounded, and for fuel deliveries to the north’s struggling hospitals, warning that civilians caught up in the intense shelling and airstrikes are running out of food and water.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli shelling late on Sunday had killed at least 15 people at a school serving as a shelter for displaced Palestinians in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp.
The Al-Mufti school was bombarded with a large volley of Israeli artillery, resulting in an initial death toll of 15 martyrs, including children, women and entire families, and 50 wounded,” the officials said. The Israeli military said it was “looking into the reports”.
A Hezbollah drone attack on an army base in central Israel killed four soldiers and severely wounded seven others on Sunday, the Israeli military said, in the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago. Hezbollah called the attack near Binyamina city retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut on Thursday that killed 22 people. It later said it targeted Israel’s elite Golani brigade, launching dozens of missiles to occupy Israeli air defence systems during the assault by “squadrons” of drones.
The US will send an antimissile system to Israel as well as a crew of US military personnel to operate the system. In a statement released on Sunday, Pentagon press secretary Maj Gen Pat Ryder said that the US will also send an “associated crew of US military personnel to Israel to help bolster Israel’s air defenses”.
Sixteen people have been killed during Israel’s raid on Al Ma’asara in Lebanon’s Keserwan district. In a post on Sunday updating the death toll from yesterday’s attacks, the Lebanese health ministry said that in addition to the 16 people killed, 21 people were injured.
United Nations secretary general António Guterres warned on Sunday that any attacks against peacekeepers “may constitute a war crime”, his spokesperson said, after Israeli tanks burst through the gates of a peacekeeping base in southern Lebanon. Reuters reports it was the latest accusation of Israeli violations and attacks against the UN peacekeeping mission, known as Unifil, in recent days.
In a statement released late on Sunday, the Israeli military said a Merkava tank had been trying to evacuate injured soldiers and had backed into the Unifil post accidentally while under fire amid a smokescreen.
In a videoed statement addressed to Guterres on Sunday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, reiterated Israeli calls for Unifil troops to evacuate. “The time has come for you to withdraw Unifil from Hezbollah strongholds and from the combat zones,” he said. “The IDF has requested this repeatedly and has met with repeated refusal, which has the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields.”
French president Emmanuel Macron urged his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian to support a “general de-escalation” in the Middle East during a phone conversation on Sunday, the presidential office said. Reuters reports that in a separate discussion, Macron reiterated to Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati the “absolute necessity” of obtaining a ceasefire in Lebanon without further delay.
