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Israeli air strikes on the Lebanese coastal city of Tyre have now killed seven people.
Reuters reported that Lebanon’s health ministry said the death toll has risen from three to seven after the attack on Friday.
Continue reading...Gulf state’s government is stopping mediation efforts until warring parties show a ‘sincere willingness’ to reach a deal
The Qatari government has informed the US and Israel it will stop mediation efforts to halt the conflict in Gaza because it no longer thinks the parties are negotiating in good faith.
The Gulf state has concluded that talks have become a political football, and its efforts to facilitate them were generating criticism towards it, according to a diplomatic source briefed on the situation.
Continue reading...‘Looming catastrophe’ will ‘dwarf anything we have seen so far’ in Gaza since 7 October 2023, famine review committee says
There is a “strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas” of the northern Gaza Strip, a committee of global food security experts warned on Friday, as Israel claims to be pursuing a military offensive against Palestinian militant group Hamas in the area.
“Immediate action, within days not weeks, is required from all actors who are directly taking part in the conflict, or have influence on its conduct, to avert and alleviate this catastrophic situation,” the independent Famine Review Committee (FRC) said in a rare alert.
Continue reading...Philippe Lazzarini, head of Unrwa, says aid agency will collapse ‘without intervention by member states’
Lebanon’s army has issued a warning to residents in the Ghobeiry area of the southern suburbs of Beirut that today between 10.30am and 1.30pm it will “detonate unexploded ordnance” in the area.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered his congratulations to Donald Trump, who appears on course for re-election in the US.
Dear Donald and Melania Trump, congratulations on history’s greatest comeback! Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America. This is a huge victory! In true friendship, yours, Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu.
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Al Jazeera reports that the death toll from an Israeli strike on tents housing displaced people in central Gaza has risen to six, and includes a six-year-old and a four-year-old child.
Lebanon’s Nation News Agency has reported that the Israeli army, which has been staging incursions inside the south of the country, “is booby-trapping and destroying entire neighbourhoods in cities and towns, such that more than 37 towns have been wiped out and their homes destroyed, and more than 40,000 housing units have been completely destroyed.”
Continue reading...Doctored intelligence files allegedly leaked by Israeli PM’s office ‘harmed the achievement of Israel’s war aims’
An alleged intelligence leak from Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has ballooned into a major scandal for the Israeli prime minister after a court partly lifted a gag order on the case, saying that the affair may have undermined efforts to reach a hostage deal in the Gaza war.
Four people have been arrested in connection with the joint investigation by the police, internal security services and the army, a court in the city of Rishon LeZion said on Sunday night.
Continue reading...Breakdown in peace negotiations may have been caused by leaked and falsified documents involving close aide to Israeli PM
Israeli media reports that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet today with opposition leader Yair Lapid for a security briefing.
The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry has issued a statement condemning the reported burning of cars by Israeli settlers in Al-Bireh in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The ministry affirms that the Jewish terrorist elements who stormed Al-Bireh would not have committed this heinous crime had they not felt protected, supported and immune from the political level in the occupying state, especially the ministers of the extreme Israeli right who openly incite against Palestinian citizens, their land and their property in full view.
Continue reading...News of Reza Valizadeh’s imprisonment comes as Iran marks 45th anniversary of US embassy hostage crisis
An Iranian-American journalist who once worked for a US government-funded broadcaster is believed to have been detained by Iran for months, authorities have said, further raising the stakes as Tehran threatens to retaliate over an Israeli attack on the country.
The imprisonment of Reza Valizadeh, which was acknowledged to the Associated Press by the US Department of State, came as Iran marked the 45th anniversary on Sunday of the US embassy takeover and hostage crisis. It also followed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatening both Israel and the US the day before with “a crushing response” as long-range B-52 bombers reached the Middle East in an attempt to deter Tehran.
Continue reading...Increasingly violent siege of north raises suspicions about Netanyahu’s war aims
Israel has tightened its siege of northern Gaza in the face of warnings from the UN and other aid agencies that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives at are risk, raising questions over whether the Netanyahu government’s ultimate war aims include territorial expansion.
The IDF says it is hunting Hamas militants but suspicions are growing that Israel is putting into practice a blueprint it had officially distanced itself from, known as the “generals’ plan”.
Continue reading...Navy confirms it landed in Batroun, 30km north of Beirut, and took him to Israel to be ‘investigated’
Troops were also operating in central Gaza and Rafah in the territory’s far south, the Israeli military said, while witnesses told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Israeli drones and boats opened fire on al-Mawasi in south Gaza.
Medics and Gaza’s civil defence rescuers on Saturday reported three people killed in a strike on Nuseirat, in central Gaza, a day after AFP images showed the blood-stained shrouds of several people killed there in an Israeli strike.
The entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.”
Continue reading...Israel targets north-eastern Lebanon and Beirut, while bombardment of Gaza raises fears of worsening humanitarian conditions for civilians
Israeli airstrikes on Friday killed at least 52 people and wounded scores more, the Lebanese health ministry said, while rockets fired from Lebanon fell on Israel on Saturday.
Israeli police said 19 people were injured before dawn on Saturday in the central town of Tira. Three projectiles crossed into Israel from Lebanon, Israel’s military said, and some were intercepted.
Continue reading...US secretary of state and defence secretary express hope of ceasefire in near future as Hamas rules out short-term truce for Gaza
Reuters reports that the Israeli military said on Thursday it had shot down a drone smuggling weapons from Egyptian territory to Israel on Wednesday.
No other information was provided. We will update the blog as more details come in.
Rafael and Lala Goliev … residents of Lod, were arrested after they carried out tasks on behalf of an Iranian cell that recruits Israelis from the Caucasus countries in Israel.”
Continue reading...Secretary general makes appeal as civilian casualties mount amid intensive Israeli strikes on north
The UN secretary general, António Guterres has warned Israel could carry out the “ethnic cleansing” of Gaza if the international community does not make a determined stand to prevent it.
Guterres made his appeal at a time of mounting civilian casualties from the Israeli bombardment of northern Gaza. A strike on Tuesday in Beit Lahiya district killed at least 93 people, in what the UN said was just one of at least seven “mass casualty incidents” across Gaza in the past week.
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Under the laws – which will not be implemented for several months – Unrwa could not “operate any institution, provide any service, or conduct any activity, whether directly or indirectly”.
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Al Jazeera has spoken with the director-general of the Gaza government’s media office, Ismail al-Thawabta, who has said at least 93 people were killed in the Israeli airstrike on northern Gaza’s town of Beit Lahiya. Gaza’s health ministry said earlier today that 60 people were killed in the strike this morning, which hit a residential building housing displaced civilians. Al-Thawabta said that the building Israel attacked housed 200 people. Dozens of people are reported missing and 150 others estimated to be injured. Medics said 20 children were among the dead.
Many of those injured have been rushed to nearby Kamal Adwan hospital inside the Jabalia refugee camp. But the hospital is struggling to treat them as it reportedly has run out of medical supplies and only has two paediatric doctors, with no surgeons. Israeli forces detained dozens of medical staff at the hospital days ago. Dr Hossam Abu Safiya, director of the hospital, told Al Jazeera on Friday that most of the surgeons had been arrested by Israeli troops, meaning urgent surgeries could not be performed.
The UAV (drone) force of the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out a specific military operation targeting the industrial zone of the Israeli enemy in the Ashkelon region.
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The Israeli army told residents in parts of Lebanon’s southern city of Tyre to leave immediately, warning that it would attack Hezbollah targets there.
“Hezbollah’s activities force the (Israeli army) to act against it forcefully,” military spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote in a post on X that included a map of targeted areas in the coastal city.
Hezbollah’s activities force the IDF to act against it forcefully, as we do not intend to harm you.
You must immediately move out of the area marked in red and head north of the Awali River.
Continue reading...Prominent Palestinian detainee, a former high-ranking member of Fatah party, attacked in his cell, say rights groups
Palestinian prisoner rights organisations have accused Israeli prison authorities of “brutally assaulting” Marwan Barghouti, the most prominent Palestinian detainee in Israeli custody.
Prison staff assaulted Barghouti in his solitary confinement cell at Megiddo prison in northern Israel on 9 September, the Palestinian Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club and a support group for Barghouti said in statements.
Continue reading...Political elite under pressure from variety of sources, with US urging Iran to step back from the brink
The Iranian government has belittled the scale and effectiveness of the Israeli attack on its military sites, but hardliners in the parliament insisted the strikes breached Iranian red lines and required a swift response, preferably at a time when Israel is already enmeshed in Lebanon and Gaza.
The internal Iranian debate on how to respond to the long-awaited Israeli attack turns on whether to treat Israel’s breach of Iranian national sovereignty as too grave to be ignored, or instead to heed the advice coming from the region and from the US to acknowledge the relatively limited nature of the attack and to step back from the brink by not launching reprisals.
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We’ve launched video footage of the blasts and light flashes in Tehran early today and Iran’s air defences appearing to be at work. See here:
Meanwhile in Gaza, many believe Israel’s new offensive in the north – along with a tightening of its siege – is following a blueprint for removing the remaining population.
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Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, has told reporters that over 163 rescuers and health workers had been killed and 272 injured in Israeli airstrikes during more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
Hezbollah, the Iranian backed Lebanese militant group, began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Palestinians on 7 October 2023, the day after its ally Hamas’s attack on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed.
We have been very clear that this cannot lead - should not lead - to a protracted campaign and that Israel must take the necessary steps to avoid civilian casualties and not endanger UN peacekeepers or the Lebanese armed forces.
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