Summary of the day
Here’s a recap of the main developments:
The situation in the northern Gaza Strip is “apocalyptic” as Israel pursues a military offensive against Hamas militants in the area, top UN officials warned on Friday. “The entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence,” they said, adding that humanitarian efforts could not keep up with the scale of the needs in northern Gaza, due to constraints on access for aid workers.
About 60 people have been killed and dozens injured overnight and into Friday morning in Israeli strikes on the city of Deir al-Balah, the Nuseirat camp and the town of al-Zawayda, all in central Gaza, as well as in the south, according to medics. At least 43,259 people have been killed in the year-long war in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry on Friday, including 55 deaths in the last 24 hours.
The death toll from an Israeli raid in the north of the occupied West Bank has risen to four, according to Palestinian health officials. The Ramallah-based health ministry said two people were killed by gunfire and two by bombing in the two-day military raid, which ended yesterday. The operation in the Nur Shams refugee camp heavily damaged the offices of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa.
The Israeli military said on Friday it killed senior Hamas official Izz al-Din Kassab in an airstrike in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Hamas mourned his death, but said he was not a member of its decision-making political office.
At least 2,897 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Lebanon since last October, according to the latest figures from Lebanon’s health ministry on Friday. The toll includes 30 people killed on Friday. A further 13,150 people have been injured in Lebanon.
Israel’s air force continued to bombard Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh overnight, destroying dozens of buildings in several neighbourhoods, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said on Friday. Israel has recently intensified its airstrikes on the north-eastern city of Baalbek and nearby villages, and parts of southern Lebanon.
The US asked Lebanon to declare a unilateral ceasefire to revive stalled talks to end hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, according to a report later denied by the Lebanese prime minister, Najib Mikati. Reports said the US envoy, Amos Hochstein, had communicated the proposal to Mikati this week. Mikati’s office said his government’s stance was clear on seeking a ceasefire from both sides and implementation of UN security council resolution 1701, which ended the last round of conflict between Israel and Lebanon in 2006.
A Hamas official said it received a proposal for a short-term truce in Gaza and rejected it for not including a lasting ceasefire. “The proposals do not include a permanent cessation of aggression, nor do they entail the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Gaza Strip or the return of displaced persons,” the official, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told AFP.
The World Health Organization said on Friday that a second round of child polio vaccinations in northern Gaza would begin on Saturday, after Israeli bombing in the area halted the drive. Separately, the WHO said it is deeply concerned about rising attacks on health care workers and facilities in Lebanon.
A former Israeli intelligence official told CNN there is a “high possibility” that militia groups in Iraq will be used by Iran to carry out a potential retaliatory strike against Israel. It comes after an Axios report that claimed Israeli intelligence suggested Iran is preparing to attack Israel from Iraqi territory in the coming days, possibly before the US presidential election on 5 November.
Kamal Kharrazi, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, said Tehran is likely to increase the range of its ballistic missile. Kharrazi also indicated that Iran’s nuclear doctrine could change if the nation faced an existential threat. Kharrazi said that Iran has the capability to make a nuclear weapon, but a “fatwa” (ruling) by supreme leader Ali Khamenei currently prohibits it.
The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, has said that the killing of journalists in Gaza, which has taken place at levels that are unprecedented in any conflict, was “unacceptable”.
“The voices of journalists must be protected and press freedom must be safeguarded,” he said on the sidelines of a UN seminar in Geneva, Al Jazeera reported.
In a statement to mark International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists on Saturday, Guterres said:
Recent years have seen an alarming rate of fatalities in conflict zones – in particular in Gaza, which has seen the highest number of killings of journalists and media workers in any war in decades.
