Four children among 18 killed after Israeli strike near Beirut hospital, ministry saysAt least 18 people were killed, including four children, and 60 were wounded in an Israeli strike on Monday near Beirut’s main government hospital, the health ministry said on Tuesday.
Israeli jets hit a Hezbollah target close to the Rafik Hariri university hospital in Beirut but did not target the hospital and it was not affected by the strike, the Israeli military said on Tuesday.
However, the director of the hospital said that due to the Israeli attack, nearby debris, probably from heavy ammunition, had caused damage to the medical facility, Reuters reported.
While there were no casualties among the staff, efforts to rescue people in front of the hospital were ongoing, the director, Jihad Saadeh, added.
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France’s government on Tuesday defended its decision to bar Israeli companies supplying the wars in the Middle East from exhibiting at an upcoming trade fair outside Paris.
Organisers of the naval defense exhibition, called Euronaval, posted on the event’s website that Israeli firms can take part in the show and “may have an exhibition stand, provided that their products are not used in military operations in Gaza and Lebanon.”
The organisers attributed the restrictions to French government decisions taken earlier this month. Addressing parliament Tuesday, French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the policy doesn’t amount to a boycott of Israeli firms, AP reported.
But he also said it would be “incoherent” for France to allow the promotion of weapons used in the wars when Paris is also pushing for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon.
“Therefore, we have indicated to the Israeli authorities, with whom we communicate very regularly, that the participation in the form of stands by companies should respect this balance,” Barrot said.
“Also, companies whose equipment is not used in offensive actions in Gaza and Lebanon will naturally be able to have stands at the exhibition,” he said.
At least 63 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon over the last day, bringing the total death toll to 2,530, the Lebanese government said on Tuesday.
It also said that more than 11,800 people had been wounded by Israeli strikes on Lebanon since October 2023.
Patrick Wintour
British prime minister Keir Starmer and his deputy Angela Rayner on Tuesday for the first time met a network of British Palestinians to hear calls for an emergency child evacuation scheme, a Palestinian resettlement scheme and tougher measures to break Israel’s blockade on aid.
Starmer, accused by some Palestinians of being instinctively too close to Israel, was asked to consider setting up a pilot evacuation scheme for Palestinian children initially starting with 15 children unable to access any healthcare in Gaza.
There have been repeated complaints that the Home Office refuses to supply temporary visas to children needed to be admitted to the UK for private medical treatment. Most of the children would be based in Egypt.
The families also urged Starmer to set up a Family Reunification Scheme for Palestinian refugees that includes legal pathways for families separated from loved ones in Gaza. The scheme would be modelled on the scheme operating for Ukraine, and no figure has been proposed for how many that could be allowed to come
On aid restrictions ministers have already acknowledged that Israel is restricting aid in an unacceptable way especially this month, but have not yet said ministers believe Israel is implementing what is in effect a campaign to starve Palestinians out of Northern Gaza as part of a so-called General’s plan that has been endorsed by the extreme right in Israel.
The families called for a British personnel presence at border crossings to ensure agile inspection processes and monitor and ensure that aid flows unrestricted into Gaza. Britain has repeatedly been denied a diplomatic presence on the aid cross points, but has supplied £1m in emergency aid for medical evacuees in Egypt.
Israel insists aid has increased since a US warning more than a week ago that arms supplies would be blocked unless 300 aid trucks entered Gaza a day.
Lebanon will need $250m a month to help more than a million people displaced by Israeli attacks, its minister in charge of responding to the crisis said on Tuesday, ahead of a conference on Thursday in Paris to rally support for Lebanon.
Nasser Yassin told Reuters the government response, helped by local initiatives and international aid, only covered 20% of the needs of 1.3 million people uprooted from their homes and sheltering in public buildings or with relatives.
Those needs are likely to grow, as daily waves of airstrikes push more people out of their homes and leave Lebanon’s government scrambling to find ways to house them, Yassin said.
“We need $250m a month” to cover basic food, water, sanitation and education services for the displaced, he said.
Four children among 18 killed after Israeli strike near Beirut hospital, ministry saysAt least 18 people were killed, including four children, and 60 were wounded in an Israeli strike on Monday near Beirut’s main government hospital, the health ministry said on Tuesday.
Israeli jets hit a Hezbollah target close to the Rafik Hariri university hospital in Beirut but did not target the hospital and it was not affected by the strike, the Israeli military said on Tuesday.
However, the director of the hospital said that due to the Israeli attack, nearby debris, probably from heavy ammunition, had caused damage to the medical facility, Reuters reported.
While there were no casualties among the staff, efforts to rescue people in front of the hospital were ongoing, the director, Jihad Saadeh, added.
Israel is unlikely to make a “significant move” against Tehran but could instead mount a symbolic limited attack, Revolutionary Guards cultural and social commander Mohammad Ali Jafari said on Tuesday, according to the Iranian Student News Network.
Israel is widely thought to be planning retaliation for a missile barrage launched by Iran on 1 October.
“Israel is too small to be able to attack Iran, although it may carry out a desperate, limited, and small attack to say it has retaliated, but it will definitely not carry out an offensive [strike] similar to ours,” said Jafari, the former commander in chief of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.
He added that Iran’s response would depend on the intensity of Israel’s retaliation, and that if Israel ended up carrying out a significant attack, Iran would respond with a higher-intensity offensive against Israel.
Israeli police said they had arrested seven Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem who planned to assassinate an Israeli scientist and a city mayor on orders from Iran, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
In a statement, the police said:
The Shin Bet and the Central Investigations Unit of the Jerusalem district police arrested seven residents from the Beit Safafa neighbourhood in Jerusalem.
These individuals, under Iranian direction, planned to assassinate a senior Israeli scientist and a mayor of a major Israeli city.
FBI investigating leak of documents alleging Israel’s plans to attack IranThe FBI is investigating the leak of a pair of highly classified intelligence documents describing Israel’s preparations for a retaliatory strike on Iran, the Washington Post reports.
“The FBI is investigating the alleged leak of classified documents and working closely with our partners in the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community,” the FBI said in a statement. “As this is an ongoing investigation, we have no further comment.”
My colleagues Richard Luscombe and Dan Sabbagh have the below detail on the leaked documents (included in this story):
The documents are attributed to the US Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. They are written in a style similar to documents previously leaked from the Pentagon, using classifications familiar to the national security community.
The first document has the title “Israel: air force continues preparations for strike on Iran and conducts a second large-force employment exercise” and the second “Israel: defense forces continue key munitions preparations and covert UAV activity almost certainly for a strike on Iran”. Both are dated 16 October and were first leaked a day later.
No UK arms exports that could ‘violate humanitarian law’ are now going to the IDF – minister
Patrick Wintour
Patrick Wintour is diplomatic editor for the Guardian
Anneliese Dodds, the British Foreign Office minister, said no UK arms exports are now going to the Israel Defense Forces as she sought to clarify the significance of the UK government decision in September to suspend only 30 of the 300 arms exports licences to Israel.
Speaking in the Commons, she also described the amount of aid reaching Gaza in October as unacceptable, and likely to be the lowest amount for a single month since the conflict began. But she did not set out any specific measures apart from diplomatic pressure to ensure a change.
In what the minister saw as a clarification, she told MPs:
Following the 2 September decision there are currently no extant UK export licences for items to Israel that we assess might be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of UK humanitarian law.
She said the only one exception is UK supplied components for F35s joint strike fighter program.
Anneliese Dodds said the amount of aid reaching Gaza in October is at unacceptably low levels. Photograph: Ben Whitley/PAShe added that “most licences for exports to Israel are absolutely not for the Israel Defense Forces and I am pleased to put that on the record”.
She added later there had been misconceptions about the arms exports that have not been suspended.
At the time of the September statement, the Foreign Office said:
There are a number of export licences which we have assessed are not for military use in the current conflict in Gaza and therefore do not require suspension.
These include items that are not being used by the IDF in the current conflict (such as trainer aircraft or other naval equipment), and other, non-military items. Export licences cover a range of products including things such as food-testing chemicals, telecoms and data equipment.
The Foreign Office has so far refused to publish a list of the suspended and non suspended arms export licences, or their customers.
At least 45 people killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since this morning – reportMedical sources have told Al Jazeera that at least 45 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since the morning, of which 37 were killed in the northern part of the Strip, where there is a renewed three-week-old Israeli offensive.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of Unrwa, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, said the humanitarian situation had reached a dire point and called for an “immediate truce” to allow civilians to flee elsewhere.
“In northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die. They feel deserted, hopeless and alone,” he said in a statement on X. “I am calling for an immediate truce, even if for a few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area & reach safer places.”
The Lebanese Red Cross said three paramedics have been injured in an airstrike on south Lebanon while on a rescue mission coordinated with UN peacekeepers.
Four ambulance teams were dispatched to the southern city of Nabatieh in coordination with Unifil after a strike there, the Lebanese Red Cross said, adding that “the site was bombed again and three … volunteers were injured and are being transported to hospital”.
⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️
جرح 3 مسعفين من الصليب الأحمر اللبناني خلال عملية إنقاذ في النبطية.
على اثر الغارة على منطقة النبطية بعد ظهر اليوم وبعد اجراء الاتصالات اللازمة مع اليونيفل، تحركت طواقم الصليب الأحمر اللبناني وقوامها 4 سيارات مع فرقها وبدأت عملية المسح من أجل البحث عن… pic.twitter.com/I1SJGLr6Me
— Lebanese Red Cross (@RedCrossLebanon) October 22, 2024 Israel’s army on Tuesday called on residents of a southern Beirut suburb to evacuate ahead of operations targeting what it claims to be Hezbollah’s facilities in the area.
“For your safety and the safety of your family, you must evacuate these buildings and the surrounding ones immediately and move at least 500 meters (yards) away,” the army’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on X alongside a map showing two specific buildings to be targeted.
Benjamin Netanyahu holds talks with Antony Blinken in JerusalemIsrael’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu held talks with Antony Blinken in Jerusalem on Tuesday, after the US secretary of state arrived in the country to push for an end to the war in Gaza.
“Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently meeting in his office in Jerusalem with US secretary of state Antony Blinken”, the Israeli leader’s office said in a statement.
Antony Blinken (L) and Benjamin Netanyahu (R) meeting in Jerusalem. Photograph: Haim Zach (GPO) HANDOUT HANDOUT/EPAA Hezbollah spokesperson has acknowledged that some of the militant group’s fighters were captured by the Israeli army without giving numbers, adding that Israel “bears responsibility” for their lives.
“On the issue of captives currently held by the enemy, I say: I know that the enemy is not committed to the ethics of war and international conventions but it bears the responsibility of preserving the lives of the captives,” spokesperson Mohammed Afif told reporters, calling on the International Committee of the Red Cross to ascertain their safety.
Israeli jets hit a Hezbollah target close to the Rafik Hariri university hospital in Beirut late on Monday but did not target the hospital and it was not affected by the strike, the Israeli military said on Tuesday.
During a press conference on Tuesday, the director of the hospital, Jihad Saadeh, said Beirut’s main government medical facility had sustained damage due to an Israeli attack nearby.
“We were subject to an attack yesterday. Whether it was targeted or not, we don’t know, but Israel has no red lines,” Saadeh said.
He said debris, likely from heavy ammunition, damaged the hospital’s solar panels and front facade and shattered its windows. While there were no casualties among the staff, efforts to rescue people in front of the hospital were ongoing.
“We won’t evacuate the hospital following the targeting of hospitals in Dahiyeh – we are the only one left,” Saadeh said.
At least 13 people killed in Israeli airstrikes near Beirut hospital – video