Live: 15 killed in Israeli bombing of camp in central Gaza
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Iran's oil minister, Mohsen Paknejad, said on Saturday that he was "not worried" about reports that Israel would strike Iran, the ministry's Shana news site said.
Paknejad's comments were made during a visit to Assaluyeh, the energy capital of Iran.
Reporting by Reuters
Israeli strikes across Lebanon today have killed several people, including a female volunteer with the Red Cross, who died from a head wound sustained in an Israeli strike in eastern Lebanon's Baalbek, according to the National News Agency.
The agency also reported that three people were killed in an Israeli drone strike targeting a house in the eastern town of Zawtar al-Sharqiyeh.
It added that two more people were killed in a strike on Nabatieh in southern Lebanon and another in a raid in Majdel Selm in Tyre.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reiterated his call for ceasefires in both Gaza and Lebanon on Saturday as he held talks with his country's Syrian ally.
"The most important issue today is the ceasefire, especially in Lebanon and in Gaza," he told reporters.
"There are initiatives in this regard; there have been consultations that we hope will be successful."
Araghchi's meetings in the Syrian capital follow a visit to Beirut on Friday, during which he voiced support for a truce in Lebanon acceptable to Hezbollah "simultaneously with a ceasefire in Gaza".
Reporting by AFP
Israeli air strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs since Friday have kept rescue workers from searching the site of an Israeli strike suspected to have killed Hezbollah’s anticipated next leader, three Lebanese security sources told Reuters on Saturday.
One of the sources said Hashem Safieddine, widely expected to succeed slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, has been unreachable since the strike on Friday.
Reporting by Reuters
The Palestinian health ministry reported that Israeli forces have killed over 23 Palestinians in "three massacres" across the enclave.
“Israeli forces killed 23 people and injured 66 others in three massacres’ during the last 24 hours,” the ministry said.
“Many people are still trapped under the rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them,” it added.
The latest casualties have pushed the death toll of Palestinians killed in Gaza to 41,825, with another 96,910 injured.
By rights, this should be a moment of sweet joy for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The work of 40 years is finally coming to fruition: the goal of “destroying” all the Middle East “terror states” is close at hand.
Netanyahu has followed a single strategy for around 40 years, outlined in a book he wrote in 1986 called Terrorism: How the West Can Win (currently £143 or $187 on Amazon UK).
In it, Netanyahu defined terrorism as the "deliberate and systematic murder, maiming, and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends” - a pretty accurate description of what Israel has done in Gaza for the last year and is now doing to Lebanon.
Netanyahu’s theory of “fighting terror” relies, first and foremost, on the use of force. As he explained in a Congressional hearing in 2002 in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq: “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.”
Less than entirely convinced of Netanyahu’s faith that regime change would bring a flowering of peace and stability across the region, Representative John Tierney, a more critical voice than you are likely to hear in the sycophantic Congress of today, responded: “Is that speculation on your part or do you have some evidence?”
Netanyahu was unfazed: “I was asked the same question in 1986. I had written a book in which I said the way to deal with terrorist regimes, with terror, was to apply military force against them.”
“The way we did in Afghanistan?” responded Tierney.
“What we saw was something else,” the then-Israeli foreign minister replied. “First of all, we saw everybody streaming out of Afghanistan; the second thing we saw was many Arab countries, Muslim countries trying to side with America, trying to be OK with America.”
Afghanistan became a 20-year war that ended in failure. However, Netanyahu’s comments about the Arab states were not entirely without merit. The more the Israelis and the Americans tore through the Middle East, from Iraq to Lebanon, Libya and Syria, the more the remaining pro-western Arab states drew closer to the US and Israel.
Read more: Netanyahu’s dream was a US war with Iran. It is now Israel's nightmare: Opinion by Joe Gill
Israeli forces detained over 25 Palestinians, including a child and former detainees, in raids across the West Bank in the last 24 hours, Wafa news agency is reporting, citing local sources.
The number of detentions of Palestinians since 7 October last year has topped 11,000, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) and Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs.
In a joint statement, the advocacy groups also highlighted the enforced disappearances of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza, many of whom remain unaccounted for.
They added that these detention campaigns are often accompanied by extrajudicial killings, direct fire prior to arrests, severe physical abuse, destruction of homes and confiscation of property.
The Israeli army announced that its forces will expand their raids into Lebanon in the coming days.
The military claimed to have killed over 400 Hamas fighters so far during its ground invasion in Lebanon.
Hezbollah said that it has repelled Israeli troops and stalled their cross-border incursion, conducting at least 14 attacks on locations in northern Israel between Thursday and Friday.
Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for seven attacks on Israeli forces so far today.
In a statement on Telegram, the Lebanese movement said it fired Fadi-1 rockets at the Ramat David Airbase near the northern city of Haifa, about 45km from the Lebanese border.
Sirens were triggered in multiple towns, including Nazareth.
The group also said its fighters targeted an Israeli Merkava tank with a guided anti-armour missile, achieving a direct hit that resulted in casualties.
Like thousands of Palestinian Americans, Nasser checks his phone the moment he wakes up and immediately reads the latest news updates from Gaza.
After scrolling through messages from friends and family, he turns to social media, trawling through photos and videos to find missing loved ones.
Sometimes, Nasser finds himself dialling his brother's number.
But the call doesn't connect.
And he knows why.
On 22 November, the Israeli military bombed the building in which his brother and more than three dozen other family members were living.
In total, 42 family members - men, women and children - were immediately buried under the rubble.
But because his brother's body, like so many others, was not retrieved from under the heaps of concrete and twisted steel, Nasser is still holding out on the remote possibility that his beloved brother may have survived.
"Sometimes I be calling my brother. He's dead. I know it," Nasser, who asked to be identified by his first name only, told MEE.
"I can't believe this happened. I know they did it, but I cannot believe it. I can't take it," he added.
Israeli strikes continue across Lebanon, with attacks reported in Beirut’s southern suburbs, an area colloquially known as Dahiyeh, and one strike hitting very close to the Rafic Hariri International Airport, Lebanon’s only international airport.
Another attack in southern Lebanon targeted a mosque next to a hospital in the southern town of Bint Jbeil, injuring nine medical and nursing staff.
Another strike on a home in the Beqaa Valley killed the director of al-Abrar School in the town of al-Rafid, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency.
Israeli attacks across Gaza have killed 12 Palestinians since last night. Overnight strikes targeting Nuseirat refugee camp killed six, while one person was killed in an Israeli attack on a tent sheltering displaced people west of Deir el-Balah.
Another five people were killed in an Israeli strike on Beit Hanoon in northern Gaza.
The Israeli military has issued new evacuation orders for Palestinians in areas of southern and central Gaza, including the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps, according to Avichay Adraee, spokesperson for the army's Arab media division, in a post on X.
This comes amid a deadly wave of overnight Israeli strikes across the strip that have killed 12 Palestinians.
Good morning, Middle East Eye readers,
Here are the latest updates:
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Israeli strikes have intensified across Gaza since last night, with 12 Palestinians killed in the attacks, bringing the latest death toll to 41,825.
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A Hamas official, his wife and children were killed in an Israeli drone attack targeting the Beddawi camp for Palestinian refugees in northern Lebanon. According to Unrwa, Israeli attacks in the country are increasingly targeting refugee camps.
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A new wave of Israeli air strikes has been reported in Beirut’s southern suburbs, an area colloquially known as Dahiyeh.
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In Lebanon, 4,250 people are now internally displaced amid the Israeli onslaught, an 82 percent increase from the 2,332 registered at the end of September, according to Unrwa.
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Hezbollah has reported clashes with Israeli forces in the town of Odaisseh, a key entry point for the Israeli military in southern Lebanon. It said its fighters had ambushed troops and managed to push them back.
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The US State Department has confirmed that an American citizen was killed in an Israeli air strike in Lebanon this week.
Hello Middle East Eye readers.
Israel has continued to pound Beirut with airstrikes, while some 180 rockets have been fired from Lebanon into northern Israel, according to Israel’s military. Israeli strikes also continued in Gaza.
To the south, the US military said it carried out 15 strikes against targets linked to the Houthis in Yemen.
Other developments:
- Israel's military requested Ireland remove Irish peacekeepers from an outpost on the border with Lebanon, which Ireland rejected
- US President Joe Biden said that if he were in Israel's shoes, he would consider alternatives to attacks on Iran's oil facilities
- Hamas released a statement on Telegram praising the Islamic Resistance in Iraq for a drone attack on Thursday in the Golan Heights
- The United Nations has slammed as "unlawful" an Israeli air strike on Tulkarm that killed at least 18 people on Thursday
- Hamas’s armed wing said a senior commander and seven fighters were killed in the Tulkarm strike
- At least 2,023 people have been killed by Israeli attacks on Lebanon, the country's health ministry said
