Live: Lebanon condemns 'deliberate' Israeli strike on Nabatieh which killed mayor

According to Reuters, an Israeli air strike targeted Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, killing at least eight Palestinians and wounding many others.

The Guardian reported that officials from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) participate in daily meetings at an Israeli military base that also houses a notorious prison for Palestinians snachted from Gaza, where reports of torture, rape and murder are rampant.

At least 4,000 Palestinians have been detained from Gaza in Israel since October 2023. 

Torture, rape and murder have all been reported as rife at the facility, one of several facilities where Palestinians have been mistreated for decades.

“I can’t sleep at night knowing that it’s going on,” one US official told The Guardian. “It’s another form of psychological torture to make someone work there.”

Israel's Channel 12 reported that Air France has postponed the return of its flights to and from Israel for an additional week.

The number of journalists killed by the Israeli army in Gaza has risen to 177 following the death of photojournalist Ayman Muhammad Ruwaished.

“The Government Media Office condemns in the strongest terms the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation,” the statement said.

Israel's army has faced multiple accusations of targeting media workers during its ongoing war on Gaza since October 2023.

Last week, Palestinian journalist Hassan Hamad was killed in an Israeli air strike on his home in Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza, days after an Israeli officer threatened him to stop filming in the area.

Ziyad Mashhour al-Ghafari stood in the yard of his home in the Palestinian village of Sinjil, in the occupied West Bank, looking on at the olive grove his father planted decades ago and that was now destroyed. 

Eight months ago, Ghafari was informed that Israeli authorities were planning to build a section of the wall that would separate his village, Sinjil, north of Ramallah, from the main road. He was not given any details regarding the design of the wall, its path, or its proximity to his house, which is closest to the road.

At the end of September, Ghafari, like other villagers, was surprised by a large number of Israeli forces, accompanied by military bulldozers, at the village’s main entrance. They then proceeded to uproot olive trees and bulldoze the area around his home. Every time he tried to approach them to ask what was happening, he was threatened at gunpoint and ordered to return to his house.

"Suddenly, our lives turned into a nightmare. The house is no longer safe; there’s no privacy, no freedom of movement, and we don’t know when or how this nightmare will end," Ghafari told Middle East Eye.

Read more: Israel's new tactic to seizing West Bank lands: Settlement 'buffer zones'

Seven BBC Arabic employees suspended their work on Monday in protest over the news agency's report from South Lebanon, where its reporters were embedded with the Israeli army invading the area.

The employees, Sanaa al-Khoury, Mohammad Hamdar, Marie-Josee Azzi and Joy Slim, along with three others from the BBC Extra team, stated that they would not return to their jobs unless the agency issued an apology or held the team that accompanied the Israeli army accountable.

Earlier today, Hezbollah released a statement condemning the BBC's report and called on Lebanon's Ministry of Information and other relevant authorities to take the necessary legal measures against the BBC and its team in Lebanon.

The UK has imposed sanctions against Iranian individuals and organisations afterIran's attack on Israel on Oct. 1, the country's Foreign Office said on Monday.

The sanctions target senior figures in Iran's army, air force and organisations linked to Iran's ballistic and cruise missile development.

"Despite repeated warnings, the dangerous actions of Iran and its proxies are driving further escalation in the Middle East," British Foreign Minister David Lammy said in a statement.

"Following its ballistic missile attack on Israel, we are holding Iran to account and exposing those who facilitated these acts."

Reporting by Reuters

Uzy Raby, a history professor, has been one of the most sought-after Middle East experts in Israeli media.

The senior lecturer at the department of Middle Eastern and African history at Tel Aviv University has unapologetically advocated the starvation of civilians in northern Gaza who do not follow the Israeli army’s order to evacuate south. 

"Anyone who stays there will be judged by law as a terrorist and will go through either a process of starvation or a process of extermination," he said during a TV interview last month.

Then, addressing a possible attack on Beirut, he reiterated the same reasoning. 

"You have to inflict it [the war] on the population," Raby said.

READ MORE: Israeli academics lead way in advocating 'process of extermination' of Palestinians

The Lebanese Red Cross said that Israel's attack on a building in Aitou in north Lebanon's Zgharta district killed at least 18 people.

It is the first town the Christian-majority town is hit during Hezbollah's current clashes with Israel.

Hezbollah has little to no presence in the area.

An Israeli strike hit the north Lebanon region of Aitou on Monday, residents and Lebanese broadcasters said, the first time the Christian-majority area has been attacked by Israel in a year of hostilities.

Reporting by Reuters

Survivors of the deadly fire caused by an Israeli strike on a Gaza hospital early on Monday are still in shock.

Speaking to Middle East Eye at the scene, some of them recalled harrowing scenes of their neighbours burning alive in the fire with no means of helping them. 

"As soon as we laid down [to sleep], the strike hit the hospital's courtyard and around seven minutes later there was a fire. We ran in a hurry," said Maha al-Sarsak, a survivor of the attack. 

"There were two people next to us from the al-Dalou family who couldn't leave in time and died in the fire. They came out charred skeletons," she added.

'I saw death with my own eyes'

- Maha al-Sarsak, displaced Palestinian

Sarsak said the fire grew bigger by the minute because it kept burning the tents alongside the mattresses and clothes inside them. 

"I don't know what to say. I saw death with my own eyes. It was frightening."

Sarsak, who is originally from Gaza City, has been seeking shelter at the hospital in Deir al-Balah, which has been struck by Israeli forces six times before in the past year. 

And even though she has seen a lot, nothing compared to the scene this morning. 

"I have never seen anything like this. I saw something burning inside the fire and thought it was a mattress but I then realised it was a woman," she told MEE as she broke into tears.

"I saw the woman and her children inside the fire and I couldn't help them. I then went inside the hospital and tried to tell people what I saw but I was losing my voice. No one could reach them.

"May God burn you in hell, Netanyahu."

Israel has attacked a prominent survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing over a comparison he made between the blast and the current assault on Gaza.

Toshiyuki Mimaki, a leader of the Nihon Hidankyo organisation that represents survivors of the US attack, compared the two after the group was announced as the recepient of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

“I thought for sure it would be the people working so hard in Gaza, as we’ve seen," he told reporters in Tokyo after the announcement.

“In Gaza, bleeding children are being held by their parents. It’s like in Japan 80 years ago.”

In response, Israel's ambassador to Japan attacked the comparison as "outrageous and baseless", and said such comparisons "distort history and dishonor the victims".

Rad more: Nobel winning Hiroshima survivor's Gaza comparison angers Israel 

Bilal Ezzat Khudari, who is originally from Gaza City but is now displaced in Deir al-Balah, was sleeping 300 metres away from the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital when an Israeli strike hit its courtyards at around 2am local time.  

"I rushed to the hospital to see what happened and saw the bombing had caused a fire, which then set off gas canisters used by people and led to a bigger inferno," Khadari told Middle East Eye correspondent Mohammed al-Hajjar.

"The fire was 10 to 15 metres tall. It was so big people couldn't help. It kept spreading, and every now and then something would blow up inside, pushing the rescuers back."

Khudari said he saw people inside the blaze being burned alive.

"I saw at least three charred bodies. One of them was a janitor. He had nothing to do with anything.

"There was a falafel vendor who worked and slept here. His wife and son both died in the fire. His son was a good guy, an engineer."

Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian teenager during a raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. 

The boy was identified by local media as 17-year-old Rayyan Ibrahim Sayyed. 

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday urged other members of the European Union to respond to Madrid and Ireland's request to suspend the bloc's free trade agreement with Israel over its was in Gaza and Lebanon.

For months, both Spain and Ireland have been in talks with other EU countries who want a review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement on the basis that Israel may be breaching the agreement's human rights clause.

Reporting by Reuters