Closing summary
Twenty-one civil defence rescuers have been killed in two Israeli strikes on Lebanon, marking one of the deadliest days for rescue workers since the fighting began between Israel and Hezbollah 13 months ago. Thursday night’s airstrikes brought the total number of emergency workers killed by Israel in Lebanon to more than 200, most of them during the last two months.
Fifty-nine people were killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon on Thursday, bringing the total killed since October last year to at least 3,445, with 14,599 wounded, the Lebanese health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has asked Iran to help secure a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah and appeared to urge it to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border. The prime minister made the comments in talks with Ali Larijani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, AP reported.
Larijani said Iran will back any decision taken by Lebanon in talks to secure a ceasefire with Israel. He has been speaking with Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri and Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, in Beiurt.
An Israeli airstrike flattened a building near one of Beirut’s busiest traffic junctions, Tayouneh. The targeted building was located in an area where the southern suburbs meet other parts of the city, a more central target than most that Israel has hit in its deadly bombing campaign. It came after the Israeli military issued a warning identifying buildings in the southern suburbs of the capital and telling residents to evacuate, saying they were near Hezbollah facilities.
The Hamas-allied militant group, Islamic Jihad, released a new clip of Israeli hostage Sasha Trupanov, after issuing a first video earlier this week. Trupanov, 29, is a dual Russian-Israeli citizen who was abducted with his girlfriend, Sapir Cohen, from the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border.
At least 43,764 Palestinian people have been killed and 103,490 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said. Of those, 28 Palestinians were killed in the latest 24-hour reporting period. Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported that two Palestinian people were killed in an Israeli artillery attack in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza today. Three other Palestinians were reportedly killed in a separate Israeli airstrike near the general security junction in western Gaza City.
A senior Hamas official said the Palestinian militant group is “ready for a ceasefire” in Gaza and urged US president-elect Donald Trump to “pressure” Israel to “end the aggression”. It came as the UN warned that aid access in Gaza is at a low point with deliveries to parts of the north of the territory all but impossible.
That’s all from me, Tom Ambrose, and the Middle East crisis live blog for today. Thanks for following along.
Fifty-nine people were killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon on Thursday, bringing the total killed since October last year to at least 3,445, with 14,599 wounded, the Lebanese health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
