Israel orders evacuations in southern Lebanon, including refugee camp
The Israeli army’s evacuation call for several areas of south Lebanon on Thursday, includes a Palestinian refugee camp, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
It warned it was poised to hit Hezbollah targets in those areas.
“Hezbollah’s terrorist activities force the IDF (army) to act forcefully against it in these areas, and we do not intend to harm you,” the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a post on X.
Among the areas listed was Rashidieh camp, which houses thousands of Palestinian refugees.
A Lebanese security source said one person was killed on Thursday by an Israeli strike on a road where a Hezbollah van carrying munitions was hit the previous day, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The drone strike hit the Araya-Kahhale road which links the capital Beirut to Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa valley, the source told AFP, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
It targeted a Mercedes vehicle, killing the driver, the source said, without identifying the victim.
The official National News Agency (NNA) said a “hostile drone” targeted the car on the key road that passes through the town of Araya.
On Wednesday, an Israeli strike hit a Hezbollah van carrying munitions on the same highway, according to the security source, who said the attack killed the driver.
The same day, municipal authorities in Araya and Kahhale called on the Lebanese army to “intervene immediately” to stop the road being used to transport weapons or fighters, reports AFP.
Also on Thursday, an Israeli drone strike hit a motorbike near the coastal town of Naqura, NNA said. Another motorbike was hit in the eastern Bekaa valley, it added.
Israeli police said on Thursday they had arrested an Israeli couple on suspicion of spying for Iran, barely a week after two groups allegedly working for Tehran were detained, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“The thwarting of Iran’s efforts to recruit Israelis continues,” said a statement from the police and Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet.
The two Israelis, a couple from the central city of Lod, had been involved in gathering intelligence on “national infrastructures, security sites and tracking a female academic,” the statement alleged:
Rafael and Lala Goliev … residents of Lod, were arrested after they carried out tasks on behalf of an Iranian cell that recruits Israelis from the Caucasus countries in Israel.”
According to AFP, Israeli police charged that the couple were recruited by Elshan (Elhan) Agayev, an Azerbaijani national acting on behalf of Iranian officials. It was unclear if Agayev is based in Israel.
They alleged that the Golievs carried out surveillance of sensitive Israeli sites, including the headquarters of Israel’s the Mossad spy agency, and collected intelligence on an academic working at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
As AFP reports, Thursday’s announcement comes little more than a week after Israeli security services said they had uncovered two other suspected spy rings.
Israel orders evacuations in southern Lebanon, including refugee camp
The Israeli army’s evacuation call for several areas of south Lebanon on Thursday, includes a Palestinian refugee camp, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
It warned it was poised to hit Hezbollah targets in those areas.
“Hezbollah’s terrorist activities force the IDF (army) to act forcefully against it in these areas, and we do not intend to harm you,” the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a post on X.
Among the areas listed was Rashidieh camp, which houses thousands of Palestinian refugees.
Al-Haush, Borgholiyeh and Ansar are among the areas in southern Lebanon ordered to evacuate, reports Al Jazeera.
It cites the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee, as ordering residents of 10 towns and villages, mostly near Tyre and Nabatieh, to evacuate. He said the army would soon “forcefully act” against these areas.
“You are prohibited from heading south. Any movement south could be dangerous to your life,” he wrote in a post on X.
A Lebanese family planning for a daughter’s wedding were killed in an Israeli strike on their home, reports the Associated Press (AP).
According to a report by the AP, the Gharibs’ apartment in the al-Housh district of the Tyre neighbourhood was directly hit by an Israeli airstrike on 23 September.
Reda Gharib, who lives in Senegal told the AP that his family in Tyre received a call from the Israeli military to evacuate or risk their lives. His aunts decided to leave for Beirut but his father, mother and three sisters remained. Gharib’s father, Ahmed, a retired Lebanese army officer, his mother, Hanan, and his three sisters were all killed in the strike.
“The whole apartment was gone. It is back to bare bones. As if there was nothing there,” said Gharib, speaking to the AP from the Senegalese capital, Dakar, where he has been living since 2020.
The Israeli military said it struck a Hezbollah site hiding rocket launchers and missiles.
Gharib told the AP his family had no connection to Hezbollah. The direct hit gutted their apartment, while those above and below suffered only damage, suggesting a specific part of the building was targeted. Gharib said it was his family’s home.
The strike was one of more than 1,600 Israel said it carried out on 23 September, the first day of an intensified bombardment of Lebanon it has waged for the past month. More than 500 people were killed that day, a casualty figure not observed in Gaza on a single day until the second week, said Emily Tripp, director of London-based Airwars, a conflict monitoring group.
Gharib told the AP that his sister Maya was engaged and planned to marry on 12 October but as tensions with Israel grew in September, Gharib’s plans to come home for the wedding were uncertain. She told him she would put it off until he could get there.
After the strike, her fiance, also an army officer, found her body and those of the rest of her family in a hospital morgue in Tyre. “She was not destined to have her wedding. We paraded her as a bride to paradise instead,” Gharib said.
US identified 500 cases where its weapons harmed Gaza civilians but hasn’t taken action
US state department officials have identified nearly 500 potential incidents of civilian harm during Israel’s military operations in Gaza involving US-furnished weapons, but have not taken further action on any of them, according to three sources, including a US official familiar with the matter.
The incidents – some of which may have violated international humanitarian law, according to the sources – have been recorded since 7 October 2023, when the Gaza war started. They are being collected by the state department’s Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance (CHIRG), a formal mechanism for tracking and assessing any reported misuse of US-origin weapons.
State department officials gathered the incidents from public and non-public sources, including media reporting, civil society groups and foreign government contacts.
The mechanism, which was established in August 2023 to be applied to all countries that receive US arms, has three stages: incident analysis, policy impact assessment and coordinated department action.
None of the Gaza cases had yet reached the third stage of action, said a former US official familiar with the matter. Options, the former official said, could range from working with Israel’s government to help mitigate harm, to suspending existing arms export licenses or withholding future approvals.
The Washington Post first reported the nearly 500 incidents on Wednesday.
US identified 500 cases where its weapons harmed Gaza civilians but hasn’t taken action
World must act to prevent ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Gaza, António Guterres warns
Patrick Greenfield
The UN secretary general, António Guterres has warned Israel could carry out the “ethnic cleansing” of Gaza if the international community does not make a determined stand to prevent it.
Guterres made his appeal at a time of mounting civilian casualties from the Israeli bombardment of northern Gaza. A strike on Tuesday in Beit Lahiya district killed at least 93 people, in what the UN said was just one of at least seven “mass casualty incidents” across Gaza in the past week.
The UN secretary general, speaking on the sidelines of the COP16 biodiversity conference in Colombia, suggested that the “ethnic cleansing” of Gaza had been prevented until now by its people’s refusal to succumb to the intense pressure to flee their homes and by Arab resolve not to accept mass population transfers.
UN secretary general António Guterres speaks during the COP16 biodiversity conference in Colombia on Wednesday. Photograph: Ernesto Guzmán Jr/EPA
“The intention might be for the Palestinians to leave Gaza, for others to occupy it,” Guterres told the Guardian. “But there has been – and I pay tribute to the courage and the resilience of the Palestinian people and to the determination of the Arab world – [an effort] to avoid the ethnic cleansing becoming a reality.”
“We will do everything possible to help them remain there and to avoid ethnic cleansing that might occur if there is not strong determination from the international community,” he added.
Israeli military kills three Palestinians in West Bank, health ministry says
Israeli strikes on the West Bank’s Nur Shams refugee camp on Thursday killed two Palestinians including a child, Reuters reports, citing the Palestinian health ministry.
One Palestinian was shot and killed by the Israeli army overnight in West Bank’s refugee camp of Tulkarm, the health ministry added.
The Israeli army said on Thursday it was conducting an operation targeting “terrorist infrastructure” in Nur Shams.
Official Palestinian news agency Wafa said a large number of Israeli vehicles and heavy bulldozers stormed the city and headed towards the Nur Shams refugee camp.
According to Reuters, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement, al-Quds Brigades, said in a statement they detonated a highly explosive bomb in a military bulldozer to thwart the Israeli army’s raid.
Lebanon’s prime minister has expressed hope that a ceasefire deal with Israel could be reached within days, after Hezbollah’s new leader Naim Qassem said the militant group could agree to a possible truce under certain parameters.
In his first public comments a day after being named to replace former longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, Qassem said however that Israel had yet to agree to any proposal that could be discussed, and that the Iran-backed group will keep fighting until it is offered terms it deems acceptable.
“If the Israelis decide to stop the aggression, we say that we accept, but according to the conditions that we see as suitable,” Qassem said, speaking from an undisclosed location in a pre-recorded televised address. “We will not beg for a ceasefire.”
It came as Israel’s security cabinet met to discuss a possible truce, but also as Israel expanded their bombardment of the group’s bastions, attacking the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek, and said it had killed another senior Hezbollah commander.
Lebanese caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati said he had previously not believed a deal would be possible until after Tuesday’s US presidential election. But he said he became cautiously optimistic after speaking on Wednesday with the Biden administration’s Middle East envoy Amos Hochstein, who was due to travel to Israel on Thursday.
“Hochstein, during his call with me, suggested to me that we could reach an agreement before the end of the month and before November 5th,” Mikati told Lebanon’s Al Jadeed television.
Israel’s public broadcaster Kan published what it said was a draft agreement providing for an initial 60-day truce. The document, which the broadcaster said was a leaked proposal written by Washington, said Israel would withdraw its forces from Lebanon within the first week of the 60-day ceasefire. It largely aligned with details reported earlier by Reuters.
Hezbollah’s new leader Naim Qassem in a video address on 30 October 2024. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
Although negotiations for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah have made significant progress in the last 24 hours, the Biden administration has not reached a final agreement with either Israel or Lebanon, Axios reported citing two US officials with direct knowledge of the matter.
The draft published by Kan was dated Saturday. When asked to comment, White House national security spokesperson Sean Savett said:
There are many reports and drafts circulating. They do not reflect the current state of negotiations.”
In other developments:
The Israeli army launched heavy airstrikes on the eastern city of Baalbek, famed for its Roman temples, and nearby villages. Tens of thousands of Lebanese, including many who sought shelter in Baalbek from other areas, fled after an Israeli evacuation warning. Lebanon’s health ministry said 19 people were killed in Israeli strikes on two towns in the Baalbek area on Wednesday. After the airstrikes, the Israeli military said it had targeted Hezbollah fuel reservoirs in the Bekaa valley region.
In his first remarks as leader, Nassim Qassem said the series of blows dealt to the group in recent weeks had “hurt” Hezbollah, but asserted that the group had been able to reorganise its ranks swiftly after Nasrallah’s death. “Hezbollah’s capabilities are still available and compatible with a long war,” he said.
Qassemsaid he would stick to the war strategy laid out by his predecessor,Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by Israellast month after full-scale fighting broke out. “My work programme is a continuation of the work programme of our leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah,” Qassem said, pledging to press on with “the war plan that he [Nasrallah] developed with the leadership” of the Iran-backed group.
Donald Trumppromised that he will bring “peace” to the Middle East, with the US Republican nominee for president making the pronouncement in a letter just six days before the US election for the White House on 5 November. “During my administration, we had peace in the Middle East, and we will have peace again very soon!” he said in his letter to Lebanese Americans.
At least 30 peoplewere killed as Israel pummeled Gaza with new bombardments, Palestinian medics said. Eight of today’s victims were killed in northern Gaza. The area Israel hit is near to where medics said at least 93 people had been killed or reported missing on Tuesday in an Israeli strike Washington called “horrifying”.
The UN security council“strongly warned against any attempts to dismantle or diminish” the operations and mandate of the UN Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa, after Israel passed a law banning its operations. In a statement adopted by consensus, the 15-member body expressed grave concern over the legislation adopted by the Israeli parliament on Monday.
The Israeli armysaid it had killed the deputy head of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force,Mustafa Ahmad Shahadi, in a strike in the Nabatieh area of south Lebanon. “In an intelligence-directed strike, the Israeli air force struck and eliminated Mustafa Ahmad Shahadi, deputy commander of Hezbollah’s Radwan forces, in the area of Nabatieh,” the army said in a statement.
At least 43,163Palestinianshave been killed and 101,510 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said. The ministry said on Wednesday that 102 Palestinians had been killed and 287 injured in the past 24 hours. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah group said it had launched drones at an Israeli base in the port city of Haifa. Hezbollah fighters “launched an air attack at 7.45am (0545 GMT) … with a squadron of attack drones” on a “base in southern Haifa”, the group said in a statement.
