We will be ending this blog shortly and moving to a new one to continue our coverage. Here is a summary of the most recent major developments.
Israel strikes hit south Beirut and its outskirts on Saturday night, official Lebanese media reported. “Israeli enemy warplanes carried out four very violent strikes on [Beirut’s] southern suburbs, and one strike on the Chweifat” area, with ambulances rushing to the site, Lebanon’s National News Agency said. Correspondents in Beirut reported hearing explosions, and Agence France-Presse footage showed plumes of smoke rising from the targeted areas.
Israel’s defence force confirmed it intended to strike a mosque in Gaza which it said was being used by Hamas as a command and control complex. Eyewitnesses told Reuters it was being used to house displaced people. At least five people have been reported killed in the strike.
Earlier on Saturday an Israel military spokesman said the country will retaliate against Iran for the Iranian missile attack at “the timing which we decide”. “The way in which we respond to this disgraceful attack will be in the manner, at the location and the timing which we decide, according to the political leadership’s instructions,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a broadcast statement, according to a Reuters report.
Iran said that any attack by Israel will be met with an “even stronger” retaliation, as tensions continue to rise between the two countries. “Our reaction to any attack by the Zionist regime is completely clear,” Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, told reporters in Damascus, Syria. “For every action, there will be a proportional and similar reaction from Iran, and even stronger.”
Benjamin Netanyahu said Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, was a “disgrace” for calling for a halt on arms deliveries to Israel. “The axis of terror stands together. But countries who supposedly oppose this [axis] call for an arms embargo on Israel. What a disgrace,” the Israeli prime minister said. “Well let me tell you this Israel will win with or without their support but their shame will continue long after the war is won.”
The president of Ireland sharply criticised Israel’s demand that UN peacekeepers leave their positions in southern Lebanon. “It is outrageous that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have threatened this peacekeeping force and sought to have them evacuate the villages they are defending,” Michael Higgins said. The IDF had requested that peacekeepers operating on the “blue line” between Israel and the Golan Heights “relocate”.
France’s president Macron has responded to Netanyahu’s criticism of his calls for a halt on arms deliveries to Israel.
Macron told French broadcaster France Inter that calls for a ceasefire were not being heard. “I think that today, the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza,” he said.
Netanyahu called the comments a “disgrace”, to which Macron’s office responded with a statement of its own later Saturday, describing Netanyahu’s reaction as “excessive and detached from the friendship between France and Israel”.
