Gaza live: Palestinians appeal to 'save what can be saved' in north
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Hezbollah's deputy leader has said a "ceasefire" is the only solution to the ongoing fighting in the region.
Speaking on TV, Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem said Hezbollah would not be defeated in its conflict with Israel and said if they wanted their citizens to return to their homes in the north then Israel would need to stop its assault on Gaza.
"I tell the home front that the solution is to cease fire and after the ceasefire according to the indirect agreement the settlers will return to the north," he said.
"As the war continues, the number of uninhabited settlements will increase and hundreds of thousands, even more than two million, will be in danger."
"The resistance will not be defeated because it owns the land and because its fighters are martyrs who accept nothing but a life of honor and your army is now defeated and will be defeated more."
Hezbollah said it launched "a big rocket salvo" towards the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Tuesday
The group said in a statement that the attack was launched "in defence of Lebanon and its people" in response to Israeli attacks on its northern neighbour.
The Pentagon said components for an advanced anti-missile system began arriving in Israel on Monday and that it would be fully operational in the near future, according to a statement on Tuesday.
"Over the coming days, additional US military personnel and THAAD battery components will continue to arrive in Israel," Pentagon spokesperson Major General Pat Ryder said.
"The battery will be fully operational capable in the near future, but for operations security reasons we will not discuss timelines."
Reporting by Reuters
Israel is using booby-trapped "robots" to inflict damage on Palestinians in Gaza, a rights group has said.
Citing testimony from eyewitnesses in the enclave, Euro-Med Monitor said Israel used the remotely detonated devices in a manner that caused extensive damage to homes and buildings and significant civilian casualties.
One Gaza resident recalled hearing an enormous explosion in the Al-Qassabi neighbourhood on 9 October.
"In fact, the sound of the explosion was actually louder than the sound of air strikes, to the point that white dust covered the entire area," they said.
"It was subsequently discovered that this explosion was caused by a robot equipped with tons of explosives, destroying roughly six or seven houses at once."
Euro-Med Monitor's field team said two additional robots were detonated by the Israeli army in the Tawam and Zahraa neighbourhoods, west of Jabalia refugee camp.
They said another was detonated at the Abu Ali Mustafa intersection in Bir al-Naja, also west of Jabalia camp.
Read more: Israel using booby-trapped robots in northern Gaza, says rights group
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati told AFP in an interview Tuesday that security had been tightened in the country's only airport in Beirut, to remove any pretexts for an Israeli attack.
"The government is doing everything in its power to remove any pretexts from the Israelis' hands," he said, adding that "tightened security has been in place for a week at the airport", located near Hezbollah's south Beirut stronghold that has seen intense Israeli bombardment.
Reporting by AFP
David Cameron, the former British prime minister and foreign secretary under the previous Conservative government, said he planned to impose sanctions on two senior members of the Israeli government - but stopped short of doing so because of the general election in July.
In an interview with the BBC on Tuesday morning, Cameron said he wanted to impose an asset freeze and travel ban on Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.
He told Radio 4's Today programme: "Smotrich and Gvir had said things like encouraging people to stop aid convoys getting into Gaza and encouraging extreme settlers in the West Bank with the appalling things they have been carrying out."
He said it was necessary to tell Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that "when ministers in your government who are extremists and behave in this way, we are prepared to use our sanctions regime to say this is simply not good enough and simply has to stop".
Read more: Former UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron says he planned to sanction Ben Gvir and Smotrich
Israel’s brutal escalation in Lebanon over the past month has drawn the attention of international onlookers, including legal experts.
From the attacks on communications devices on 17 and 18 September that killed dozens and wounded thousands, to air strikes in densely populated areas and recent attacks on United Nations peacekeepers, Israeli forces have been accused of committing war crimes.
The attack on pagers and walkie talkies likely fell foul of international humanitarian law, as Israel would have been required to assess whether civilians could be harmed in every single one of the thousands of detonations, experts told Middle East Eye last month.
It may also have violated conventions that Israel is party to around the specific use of booby traps during conflicts.
Since then, Israel has bombed several civilian infrastructures, including medical facilities. Intentional attacks against healthcare and relief workers are considered war crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and a breach of the Geneva Convention.
Similar accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity have been brought in relation to Israeli actions in Gaza over the past year, too.
Since the state of Palestine is a signatory of the Rome Statute and a member of the 124 member International Criminal Court, the Hague-based body has the power to issue arrest warrants over crimes committed in the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem or Gaza.
On that basis, in May this year, the ICC announced that it was seeking warrants for the arrest of Israeli and Hamas leaders.
MEE takes a look at whether similar indictments could be issued in relation to actions carried out along the northern front of the war.
Read more: Can the ICC issue arrest warrants over Israeli actions in Lebanon?
Israel has issued military expulsion orders affecting more than a quarter of Lebanon, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday.
The figures underscore the heavy price Lebanese are paying as Israel steps up its war on the country.
The UN refugee agency's Middle East Director Rema Jamous Imseis told a press briefing in Geneva that new Israeli orders to 20 villages in southern Lebanon meant that over a quarter of the country was now affected.
"People are heeding these calls to evacuate, and they're fleeing with almost nothing."
Reporting by Reuters
Israeli forces killed Palestinian doctor Ahmed Talab al-Najjar as he was attempting to rescue people wounded in an earlier strike in the al-Faluja neighbourhood in the besieged Jabalia refugee camp, the Palestinian health ministry said on Tuesday.
Separately, Israeli strikes targeted ambulances in Rafah and north Gaza and wounded several paramedics as they were evacuating wounded civilians, the ministry added.
BREAKING: Dr. Ahmed Najjar, a medical doctor, has been killed by the Israeli army while trying to save the wounded following the horrific Israeli massacre against the al-Sayed family in al-Faluja, northern Gaza. At least 11 civilians, including children, were killed in the… pic.twitter.com/ZDwBKSrw2Q
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) October 15, 2024
The UN human rights office said on Tuesday it had received reports that most of the 22 people killed an in Israeli air strike on a building in northern Lebanon were women and children.
"What we are hearing is that amongst the 22 people killed were 12 women and two children," UN human rights office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence told a Geneva press briefing in response to a question about a strike on Aitou on Monday.
"We understand it was a four-story residential building that was struck. With these factors in mind, we have real concerns with respect to IHL (international humanitarian law), so the laws of war, and the principles of distinction proportion and proportionality," he said, calling for an investigation into the incident.
Reporting by Reuters
A suspected Palestinian man shot and killed an Israeli police officer on a road near the southern Israeli city of Ashdod, according to local media.
At least three other people were wounded in the shooting.
The suspected assailant was subsequently shot dead, Israeli media said. His identity was not immediately known.
Israeli forces have killed at least 55 Palestinians and wounded 329 in the past 24 hours, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
This brings the death toll since 7 October 2023 to 42,344, with more than 99,000 wounded and at least 10,000 still missing, likely dead and buried under rubble.
Health officials report that over 60 percent of the victims are children and women.
Iranian commander Esmail Qaani on Tuesday appeared in public after weeks of absence to attend the funeral ceremony for general Abbas Nilforoushan, who was killed last month in Lebanon.
Nilforoushan, a general in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, was killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut alongside Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
The funeral procession for the slain Iranian general began at the Imam Hossein Square in central Tehran on Tuesday morning, according to a live broadcast on state television.
Qaani - who heads the Quds Force, the Revolutionary Guard's foreign operations arm - had disappeared from public view and was rumoured in some media to have been targeted in an Israeli strike on Lebanon or to have suffered a heart attack.
However, Middle East Eye exclusively reported last week that he was alive and unhurt.
Sources told MEE Qaani was instead placed under guard and questioned as Iran investigates major security breaches.
He appeared Tuesday at the funeral, clad in the Guard's green military uniform.
Video on Iranian television of IRGC Quds Force commander Ismail Qaani at memorial for deceased Abbas Niloforoshan killed by an Israeli strike in Lebanon.
— Murtaza Hussain (@MazMHussain) October 15, 2024
This is amid recent rumors and ostensible reporting that he’d been either killed, arrested, or had a heart attack. pic.twitter.com/qiL5EbfyUy
Reporting by MEE and AFP
Members of the Palestinian civil defence in the Gaza Strip are trapped in the northern district alongside tens of thousands of citizens who have been under Israeli siege and attacks for 11 days, the organisation has said.
"The Israeli occupation army continues to target our crews with drones to hinder our access to the wounded," the civil defence said on Tuesday, according to Al Arabi TV.
"A large number of victims are still under the rubble and we are unable to reach them."
The death toll from Israeli air strikes on various parts of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday morning have killed at least 45 Palestinians, medical source said, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.
The death toll includes those killed as of 10:20 am local time.
Deadly Israeli bombardment was reported in Jabalia refugee camp, Gaza City, Khan Younis and the Nuseirat refugee camp.
