Category Archives: Lebanon

Médecins Sans Frontières says strike on Gaza shelter killed staffer’s daughter, 5 – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. See all our coverage of the Middle East crisis here

Here is a photograph issued of the meeting between Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, and the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in Tel Aviv.

During the public portion of the meeting Herzog said a lawsuit filed in the international court of justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in its Gaza offensive was “atrocious and preposterous”.

Actually our enemies, Hamas, in their charter, call for the destruction of our nation, the state of Israel – the only nation state of the Jewish people.

We will be there at the international court of justice and will present proudly our case of using self-defence under our most inherent right under international humanitarian law.

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Israel and Hezbollah edge closer to war as drone hits key Israeli command base

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IDF says no damage or casualties caused after Lebanese militant group launches explosives at Safed base

Israel and Hezbollah edged closer towards full scale war on Tuesday, as the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group launched explosive drones at a key Israeli command base, declaring the attack part of its response to recent high-level Israeli assassinations in Lebanon.

Hezbollah announced it had launched “a number of explosive attack drones” at the Israeli northern military command base in Safed, the first time it has targeted the site.

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Antony Blinken arrives in Israel amid fresh US push to stop war spreading

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US secretary of state poised for meetings with leaders who have so far proved resistant to pressure from Washington

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has landed in Israel for potentially difficult meetings with Israeli leaders and officials who have repeatedly proved resistant to pressure from Washington over their conduct of the war against Hamas.

Blinken flew late on Monday night from the Saudi oasis town of AlUla where he held talks with the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, on a Middle East tour aimed at reaching a consensus on Gaza’s future.

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Blinken returns to Middle East and warns of risk war could spread

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US secretary of state begins visit to region as fears grow Israel could expand Gaza conflict to Lebanon

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has returned to the Middle East for the fourth time in three months as he warned Israel’s war against Hamas risked spreading throughout the region.

Recent intensifying violence between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, increasing attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, and strikes by Tehran-linked groups on US bases in Iraq, have created an increasingly febrile atmosphere across the Middle East.

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Creation of Palestinian state is only way to peace, EU foreign policy chief says – as it happened

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Josep Borrell wants European-Arab initiative to revive a peace process, with the ultimate aim being a two-state solution

The World Health Organization and the United Nations have made a new delivery of medical supplies to southern Gaza, the WHO director-general has said.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the shipment included eight refrigerators, eight solar panels, and clean delivery kits to supports 66 births as well as medicines and supplies to enable surgeries. He added that it would support 142,000 people requiring care.

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US and EU launch twin diplomatic mission to calm tensions in Middle East

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Escalation of violence comes as US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and Europe’s Josep Borrell begin tours of the region

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The most senior diplomats from the US and the EU launched a dual diplomatic offensive in the Middle East on Saturday aimed at calming tensions that threaten chaos and wider conflict across the region.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, began a five-day tour of the region with meetings in Turkey and the EU’s most senior diplomat Josep Borrell, visited the Lebanese capital Beirut.

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Hezbollah chief says response to killing of senior Hamas official is ‘inevitable’

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Hassan Nasrallah says assassination in Beirut has changed nature of his group’s conflict with Israel, raising fears of escalation

The assassination of one of Hamas’s most senior officials in Beirut has changed the nature of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, Hezbollah’s head, Hassan Nasrallah, has said, adding that a response is “inevitable”.

In a second nationally televised address within three days, Nasrallah said that all of Lebanon would be “exposed” if there was no response from his group to the killing of Saleh al-Arouri, further heightening fears of a dangerous escalation in the conflict, even as Israel said its military was ready for any eventuality.

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Unauthorised Jewish settlements surge in occupied West Bank, says watchdog – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. Our full report on the latest developments in the Middle East is here and all our Israel-Gaza war coverage here

The German government is monitoring the situation on the border between Israel and Lebanon, a German foreign ministry spokesperson said on Friday, as the country’s top diplomat prepares to travel to the Middle East for talks.

The spokesperson said:

The risk of escalation is unfortunately very real.

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Mossad chief says Israel is committed to finding and killing all Hamas leaders

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Comments by David Barnea follow assassination of Hamas deputy political chief Saleh al-Arouri in Lebanon

The head of Israel’s foreign intelligence service has vowed to track down and kill all Hamas leaders responsible for attacking Israel, less than a day after a drone strike in Lebanon killed the militant organisation’s second most senior official.

David Barnea said on Wednesday the Mossad was “committed to settling the score with the murderers who descended upon the Gaza envelope” on 7 October and with those who planned the attacks.

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Senior Hamas figure Saleh al-Arouri killed in Lebanon

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Death of Arouri in Israeli drone strike on Beirut suburb threatens significant escalation of war in region

One of Hamas’s most senior officials, Saleh al-Arouri, has been killed in an Israeli drone strike in Beirut that threatens a significant and dangerous escalation of Israel’s war against Hamas and its related conflict with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The Lebanese prime minister, Najib Mikati, echoing fears of further regional violence, described the assassination as a “new Israeli crime intended to spur a new phase of conflict, following daily attacks in the south [of Lebanon]”.

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As Gaza death toll mounts, Israelis look in vain for any sign of victory

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IDF bombs urban refugee camps, UN agency warns of famine risk and skirmishes on Lebanon border intensify

Israeli planes bombed refugee camps in Gaza on Saturday as its troops expanded ground operations and tens of thousands of Palestinians fled their homes, setting the stage for a new year as bloody and destructive as the last three months of 2023.

The threat of wider escalation also looms large over the region, as skirmishes on the northern boundary with Lebanon intensify, and Israeli officials have hinted that the “diplomatic hourglass” is running out to reach a negotiated solution.

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Israel says time running out to reach diplomatic solution in Lebanon

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Officials’ warning echoes those of two ministers, as fighting with Hezbollah intensifies on boundary

Israeli officials have hinted that the “diplomatic hourglass” is running out to reach a negotiated solution to the escalating fighting on the boundary with Lebanon, even as the war in Gaza continues at a ferocious pace.

Security sources said the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired the most rockets and weaponised drones on Wednesday that it had in any single day since the clashes across the border began.

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Fears of regional escalation as Israel warns of ‘multi-front’ war

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Defence minister tells Knesset that country under attack from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank, Iraq, Yemen and Iran

Israel is engaged in a “multi-front war”, its defence minister has said, hinting at military operations across the Middle East as the war in Gaza showed new signs of a dangerous regional escalation.

Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Yoav Gallant said Israel was “coming under attack from seven theatres: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria [an Israeli term for the West Bank], Iraq, Yemen and Iran”.

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Fears grow of all-out Israel-Hezbollah war as fighting escalates

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Many in Israel see Hezbollah as a greater threat than Hamas and consider a new war in Lebanon to be inevitable

When the news first broke of the Hamas attack early on 7 October, Itai Reuveni and the other reservists in his paratrooper battalion packed their bags and arrived at their muster point well before their call-up came from the army.

The paratroopers did not head south to Gaza but to the northern border, where they believed a far greater threat than Hamas was poised to join the fight: Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia movement backed by Tehran.

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As the ceasefire ends, a question from history lingers: will Israel win the battle but lose the war against Hamas?

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One lesson from the 1982 Lebanon war is that Israel’s enemy only needs to survive against superior firepower to gain an advantage

The scene is one familiar from many conflicts. Soldiers line up to get food from an outdoor canteen, weapons slung haphazardly over their shoulders, boots muddy, shirts undone. An armoured personnel carrier clanks by, the roar of its engine temporarily drowning out the boom of artillery. Officers shout orders. Tired men jump down from dusty vehicles and swear.

Even during the recent ceasefire, the rear areas of the massive Israeli military offensive in Gaza were busy. So too was Hamas, which used the seven-day pause in hostilities to reorganise its battered forces and reconstitute some of its degraded capabilities.

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Israeli strikes on Lebanon kill eight including journalists and Hamas official

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Broadcaster accuses Israel of targeting its journalists as death toll in Lebanon from rising hostilities surpasses 80

Two Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon have killed eight people, including two journalists working for a Lebanese TV channel and a senior Hamas official, according to Lebanese state media and official sources.

The deaths bring those killed in Lebanon since the beginning of hostilities along the border to more than 80 people, mostly fighters from the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

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18 Israelis injured in Hezbollah missile strikes as border tensions grow

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One person critically hurt after vehicles hit by anti-tank missiles as Israel denies Hezbollah claim it was targeting soldiers

Eighteen Israelis have been injured, one critically, after the Iranian backed Hezbollah militia fired anti-tank missiles from southern Lebanon in a further sign that the skirmishes along the border are steadily escalating.

Several vehicles near the northern community of Dovev were hit in the missile strike, whose victims included Israel Electric Corporation employees who had arrived to repair power lines damaged by previous fire from Lebanon. Hezbollah sources had claimed they were soldiers, an assertion denied by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). The Magen David Adom emergency service said one of the civilians injured in the attack was in a critical condition.

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Israel kills seven more Hezbollah fighters on border with Lebanon

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Iranian foreign minister says wider regional conflict inevitable as death toll among militant group rises to 78

Israel has killed a further seven Hezbollah fighters on its northern border with Lebanon, taking the total death toll of Hezbollah fighters to 78 since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October.

The rising death toll in Lebanon and the killing of 18 Palestinians by Israeli security forces in the West Bank on Thursday prompted the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, to declare that a wider regional escalation of the conflict was inevitable.

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UK withdraws some embassy staff from Lebanon and tells nationals to leave

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Foreign Office says situation has ‘potential to deteriorate quickly’ after Israeli and Hezbollah forces clash

The Foreign Office has withdrawn some embassy staff from Lebanon and is advising British nationals to leave the country while they still can amid increasing concern about violence and unrest connected to the conflict in Gaza.

“Events in Lebanon are fast moving. The situation has potential to deteriorate quickly and with no warning,” the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said in a statement, which advised Britons in Lebanon to register with the embassy and make plans to leave while possible.

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Israel launches major strikes on Gaza as violence flares up on Lebanon boundary

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Huge explosions reported in Gaza Strip, and communities in northern Israel come under mortar and rocket fire from Hezbollah

Gaza was rocked by a series of huge explosions on Sunday evening and communications with the coastal strip were cut, as violence also escalated on Israel’s northern boundary with Lebanon.

The strikes on Gaza came as the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) indicated that Israeli troops were planning to enter Gaza City in force perhaps within the next 48 hours, according to reports in Israeli media.

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