As it happened: Israel carries out airstrikes in southern Beirut cutting off key border crossing into Syria

U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Friday that three schools operated by the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees have been hit in the past two days.

The agency, UNRWA, says the schools “cannot be used for any military purposes by anyone.”

Dujarric says the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, and its humanitarian partners reported this week that at least 87% of school buildings in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged since Israel launched its offensive in the Palestinian territory.

He says one third of the buildings were UNRWA schools.

The Dutch government says the aircraft landed Friday night at an airbase in the southern city of Eindhoven.

More than 100 of those on board the Airbus A330 plane were Dutch citizens and the remainder were repatriated at the request of Belgium, Finland and Ireland.

“It’s great that these people are safely back in the Netherlands. These have been tense times for them,” Christiaan Rebergen, secretary-general of the foreign ministry, says in a statement.

A second Dutch military flight is scheduled for Saturday.

The United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon has released an additional $2 million from the Lebanon Humanitarian Fund to help address the deteriorating situation. That’s according to Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

This comes in addition to $10 million already released from the Lebanon fund, and $10 million from the U.N.’s main Central Emergency Response Fund.

Dujarric says a flight carrying medical supplies from the U.N.'s World Health Organization to treat tens of thousands of injured people arrived in Beirut on Friday. Additional flights are expected later Friday and in the coming days.

Biden also was asked Friday about the possibility of a diplomatic agreement coming together to halt conflict in the Middle East before the U.S. presidential election in November.

“No administration has helped Israel more than I have done,” Biden said. “None, none, none. And I think Bibi should remember that. And whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know but I’m not counting on that.”

Appearing at the daily briefing Friday, Biden was asked to clarify his comments Thursday about whether Israel should consider strikes on Iranian oil facilities.

“Look, the Israelis have not concluded what they’re going to do in terms of a strike. That’s under discussion,” he said. “I think if I were in their shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields.”

A U.S. official tells The Associated Press that the strike Friday hit weapons systems, bases and other equipment belonging to the Iranian-backed rebels.

U.S. aircraft and ships struck Houthi strongholds, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet publicly released. The exact number of targets was not yet available as the mission was just ending.

According to the Houthi media, seven strikes hit the airport in Hodeida, a major port city, and the Katheib area, which has a Houthi-controlled military base. Four more strikes hit the Seiyana area in Sanaa, the capital, and two strikes hit the Dhamar province.

The foreign and defense ministries say Friday’s flight is being carried out by an Airbus A330 belonging to the Multinational Multirole Tanker Transport Unit, an international air transport fleet.

It brings to 460 the number of German citizens evacuated from Lebanon on German military flights. Two previous flights left Beirut on Monday and Wednesday.

The Foreign Ministry posted on the social platform X that the plane also delivered “several” tons of aid for civilians in Lebanon.

The umbrella group calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said in a statement that it launched drones to attack “three targets in three separate operations in the Golan and Tiberias,” a city in Israel.

The group regularly says it has launched drone strikes at Israel, but the strikes have rarely landed.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency says two hospitals also ceased operations Friday due to the intensity of the Israeli attacks.

The head of the Marjayoun government hospital, Mounes Kalakesh, tells The Associated Press that five paramedics were killed and seven were wounded in the drone strike near the hospital.

NNA reports that the staff of the hospital in Marjayoun were evacuated leaving the medical center out of service.

The agency says a state-run hospital in the border village of Mais al-Jabal has also said it is ceasing activities, after staff were evacuated and because of a lack of fuel, medicine and electricity.

The military says at least two other soldiers were “severely injured” in the drone attack Friday.

It says the drone entered Israel from the east, without giving more details.

Later Friday, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq announced it had launched drone strikes on “three targets in three separate operations in the Golan and Tiberias,” a city in Israel. The group regularly claims drone strikes targeting Israel, but the strikes have rarely landed.

Israel’s military has said nine soldiers have also died during Israel’s ground incursion into southern Lebanon, which began late Monday.

A Japanese Self Defense Force transport aircraft flew the 16 to Jordan on Friday, according to Japan’s Foreign Ministry.

The ministry says the flight was carrying 11 Japanese nationals, a non-Japanese relative of one of them, and four French nationals. It has provided no other details.

The ministry says two other Japanese citizens were evacuated from Lebanon to Cyprus on a ship chartered by the Japanese government.

Israel’s military says it has killed 250 Hezbollah militants in Lebanon since the start of the ground incursion late Monday.

Spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said Friday that most of the nine Israeli soldiers who have been killed died in “close quarters” fighting with Hezbollah militants.

He said that the areas where soldiers are operating are saturated with explosives and weapons.

Shoshani said that an Israeli airstrike around midnight Thursday in Beirut targeted Hezbollah’s central intelligence headquarters. He did not say who might have been the target of that attack.

Asked how long the ground incursion would take and whether it’s possible to truly root out Hezbollah from the Israel-Lebanese border, Shoshani said Israel’s mission “is to make sure they’re not there. Afterwards, we will talk about how we make sure they don’t come back.”

A Dutch military transport plane has landed in Beirut to pick up citizens of the Netherlands fleeing Lebanon amid fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group.

Scores of people are expected to board the A330 plane Friday in what the Dutch Foreign Ministry is calling a repatriation flight.

The defense ministry says that if there are spare seats on the plan, it could also take citizens of other countries out of Beirut.

Separately, the Japanese Foreign Ministry announced that 11 Japanese nationals and one family member who was not a Japanese national were evacuated from Lebanon along with four French nationals. They arrived in Jordan on Friday.

Read More

Iran’s Foreign Minister is warning Israel that if it carries out an attack on Iran, Tehran will retaliate harshly.

“If the Israeli entity takes any step or measure against us, our retaliation will be stronger than the previous one,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said, referring to this week’s attack on Israel with 180 missiles.

Araghchi made the comments Friday after meeting Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut.

The minister said that Iran’s attack on Israel was in “legitimate self defense” after its attacks on Iran and the Iranian consulate in Syria in April.

He said Iran backs any step that leads to a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah but added this will only happen when a cease-fire in Gaza goes into effect.

He said Iran backs any cease-fire on the condition that it “preserves the right of the Lebanese people, that it be accepted by the resistance (Hezbollah) and coincides with a cease-fire in Gaza.”

Israel’s military said Friday that militants in Gaza had fired two rockets into Israeli territory, the first time Israel has seen rocket fire from Gaza in about a month.

The military said one of the rockets was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and the other fell in an open area near a kibbutz across the border from Gaza.

The number of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel has slowed considerably since the start of the war.

Israel’s military said Friday its fighter jets struck an underground tunnel between Lebanon and Syria and areas around a key border crossing used by many in recent days fleeing Israel’s offensive.

Thursday’s strikes around the Masnaa Border Crossing effectively cut off the main highway linking Lebanon with Syria, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported. Tens of thousands of people fleeing fighting in Lebanon have used crossing into Syria over the past two weeks.

The military said that its fighter jets had struck the 3.5 kilometer-long (2.17 miles) underground tunnel between Lebanon and Syria because Hezbollah has used it to smuggle weapons from Iran and other proxies into the country. It said it struck the sites around the Masnaa border crossing because they were being used as militant infrastructure.

There are half a dozen border crossings between the two countries, most of which are still open.

Hezbollah is believed to have received much of its weapons from Iran via Syria.

Read More

The U.N. refugee agency says Israeli airstrikes overnight near the main border crossing where people have been fleeing from Lebanon into Syria has “put a halt on traffic” and closed the route to vehicles.

UNHCR spokeswoman Rula Amin said the border crossing between Masnaa, Lebanon, and Jdaidit Yabws in Syria has been the main thoroughfare between the two countries, even though three other border crossings remain open.

Amin, a spokeswoman for UNHCR’s Middle East and North Africa operations, also noted government figures that up to 1 million people have fled to places across Lebanon, and more than 185,000 have gone to Syria.

Speaking from Amman, Jordan, to reporters in Geneva on Friday, Amin said most of the nearly 900 government-established collective shelters in Lebanon were full, forcing many people to sleep in the open air -- including along Beirut’s famed seaside Corniche.

She said 60% of people who have crossed from Lebanon to Syria were children or adolescents, some of whom arrived alone.

Read More

The Israeli military said Friday that a strike in Beirut the day before killed Mohammed Rashid Skafi, the head of Hezbollah’s communications division.

The military said in a statement that Skafi was “a senior Hezbollah terrorist who was responsible for the communications unit since 2000" and was “closely affiliated” with high-up Hezbollah officials.

The U.S. State Department says some 350 American citizens, green card holders and family members have now left Lebanon on US-organized contract flights this week.

The department announced the new number — up by about 100 since Thursday — after another flight from Beirut landed early Friday in Frankfurt, Germany. The flight had the capacity to carry 300 passengers but only 97 people were aboard, it said.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Thursday that the U.S. would continue to organize such flights as long as the security situation in Lebanon is dire and as long as there is demand.

More than 6,000 American citizens have contacted the U.S. embassy in Beirut seeking information about departing the country over the past week since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has escalated. Miller said the department understood that some Americans, many of them dual U.S.-Lebanese nationals and long-time residents of the country, may choose to stay.

Japan is preparing to evacuate its citizens from Lebanon. The government is also urging those in Iran to leave as soon as possible, while commercial flights are still operating.

Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya told reporters Friday that Japan’s embassy in Iran renewed its safety advisory to Japanese nationals this week after Iran fired missiles into Israel.

On Thursday, the Japanese Defense Ministry dispatched two C-2 transport aircraft to Jordan to stand by for an evacuation of about 50 Japanese nationals from Lebanon. Iwaya said the government has not decided whether to also dispatch defense aircraft to Iran, where about 440 Japanese citizens are based, but “we will do our utmost so that we can respond to any contingency in order to protect the safety of Japanese citizens.”

Read More

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was leading Friday prayers and was to deliver a rare public sermon in the Iranian capital, Tehran, that was being watched for signs of what Iran might plan next.

In a 40-minute speech, he praised Tuesday’s missile barrage against Israel as a shining job by Iranian armed forces.

“It will be done in the future again if it becomes necessary,” he said.

There was a commemoration ceremony for the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah beforehand. Most high-ranking Iranian officials, including President Masoud Pezeshkian and the Revolutionary Guard’s top generals, attended the ceremony.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned the Iranian ambassador’s comments praising a recently slain Hezbollah leader, but rejected opposition advice to expel the envoy.

Ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi described Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by an Israeli missile strike in September in Lebanon, as a “remarkable leader” on social media.

“The government condemns any support for terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah. We condemn the ambassador’s comments,” Albanese told reporters in Sydney.

“Australia has maintained a relationship with Iran since 1968 that has been continuous. Not because we agree with the regime, but because it’s in Australia’s national interest,” Albanese added.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton, who could become prime minister at elections due by May, called for Sadeghi to be expelled over his post. Dutton described Sadeghi’s words as “completely and utterly at odds with what is in our country’s best interests.”

Sadeghi did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Iran’s Foreign Minister is meeting with Lebanese officials in Beirut to discuss the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Iran is Hezbollah’s main backer. It has sent weapons and billions of dollars to the group over the years.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency says an Israeli airstrike has cut a main highway linking Lebanon with Syria.

Tens of thousands of people fleeing fighting in Lebanon have used the Masnaa Border Crossing into Syria over the past two weeks. The highway closure has effectively cut off this major border crossing.

There are half a dozen border crossings between the two countries, most of which are still open.

Hezbollah is believed to have received much of its weapons from Iran via Syria.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reports there were more than 10 consecutive airstrikes in the area. It isn’t clear what was targeted or if there are casualties.

The strikes come amid an ongoing escalation in the yearlong conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

In a statement released late Thursday, the 15-member council “underscored that any decision not to engage with the U.N. secretary-general or the United Nations is counterproductive, especially in the context of escalating tensions In the Middle East.”

The U.N.‘s most powerful body also “underscored the need for all member states to have a productive and effective relationship with the secretary-general and to refrain from any actions that undermine his work and that of his office.”

Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz announced Wednesday that Guterres is “persona non grata” – not welcome – in the country, accusing the secretary-general of being biased against Israel.

Israel’s accusations of U.N. bias and antisemitism date back decades but the rift has intensified since Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attacks in the country’s south that killed about 1,200 people, mainly civilians.

It says Mohammed Anisi was killed in a recent airstrike that targeted the militant group’s intelligence branch in Beirut.

Hezbollah has not commented on the Israeli military’s claim. If it is true, it would mark the latest in a string of assassinations of top Hezbollah officials in recent weeks, including its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh says Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown Jr. spoke with Israeli military’s chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, on Wednesday. And Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has held “almost daily” conversations with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant since the attacks, Singh said Thursday.

Iran fired almost 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday, raising concerns about the possibility of all-out war in the region.

“We are discussing with them what a response to Iran should look like,” Singh says. “I certainly think any response, we will be part of those discussions.”

Read More

The Israeli army says it carried out a strike in Tulkarem, a militant stronghold.

It says the operation Thursday was carried out in coordination with the Shin Bet internal security service.

The army provided no further details on the target.

Violence has flared across the Israeli-occupied territory since the Israel-Hamas war erupted last October. Tulkarem and other northern cities have seen some of the worst violence.

The U.S. State Department says that roughly 250 Americans and their immediate families have left Lebanon in the past two days on government-organized contract flights.

Spokesman Matthew Miller said 134 American citizens and family members left Beirut for Istanbul, Turkey, on Thursday. That’s in addition to more than 100 who left on a similar flight Wednesday.

Miller said the U.S. would continue to organize such flights as long the security situation in Lebanon is dire and as long as there is demand.

More than 6,000 American citizens have contacted the U.S. Embassy in Beirut seeking information about leaving the country over the past week since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has escalated.

Miller said the U.S. Embassy in Beirut is prepared to offer loans to those Americans who choose to remain in Lebanon but want to relocate to a potentially safer area of the country.

The embassy is also prepared to provide loans to Americans who wish to leave on U.S.-contracted flights.

Some have complained that fares for air tickets to even relatively close destinations like Cyprus have skyrocketed to unaffordable amounts in recent weeks.

Read More

A report issued by Lebanon’s crisis response unit says nearly 1.2 million people are believed to be displaced from their homes in Lebanon as a result of the escalating war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The Lebanese General Security recorded more than 250,000 Syrian citizens and 82,000 Lebanese citizens who have crossed into Syrian territory between Sept. 23 and Sept. 30, the report said.

Nearly 164,000 are living in group shelters in Lebanon.

Among them are Fatima Abdul Nabi and her newborn daughter. Her daughter turned 10 days old on Sept. 23, when Israel began a widescale bombardment of southern Lebanon, which it said was aimed at driving the militant group Hezbollah back from the border.

“They began hitting our village and said we had to leave the village so we fled,” Abdul Nabi said. It took them 11 hours to get to the coastal city of Sidon, about 40 km (25 miles) away.

Now she and the newborn girl are staying with five other families in one room in a shelter.

“When she cries, I feel that she’s bothering everyone — five families and a baby in one room is too much,” Abdul Nabi said.

The Israeli army says another of its soldiers has been killed in battle in southern Lebanon.

The 21-year-old officer was killed Wednesday, the military said. It did not say how the soldier died.

The latest death brings to nine the number of Israeli soldiers that have been killed battling Hezbollah militants in South Lebanon since it announced a ground incursion there early Tuesday.

Hezbollah claimed to have killed 17 Israeli soldiers on Thursday but did not provide proof.

The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah escalated earlier this month after Israel expanded airstrikes across the country, including southern Lebanon, south Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley.

In September, the Israeli government made returning tens of thousands of its evacuated northern residents to their homes one of its country’s war goals.

Read More

Lebanon’s health minister says nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in almost a year of conflict.

Health Minister Firas Abiad said Thursday that more than 9,000 have also been wounded in Israeli attacks since Oct. 8, 2023.

He says of the 1,974 killed, 261 were women, 127 were children, and 102 paramedics and health care workers also died. Most of them were killed in the last month.

“This is a war crime, there is no doubt about that,” Abiad told journalists Thursday. “International laws are clear to protect these people, I mean, paramedics. Who gave Israel the right to be the judge and the executioner at the same time?”

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister is calling for a national dialogue that leads to an agreement among the country’s sharply divided political groups on a new president.

Najib Mikati’s call for dialogue on Thursday comes as the war between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group has intensified in recent days.

Mikati said the priority is to reach a cease-fire along Lebanon’s southern border, to elect a president and to implement a U.N. Security Council resolution that ended a 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

The resolution calls for ending Hezbollah’s presence along the border and the deployment of addition Lebanese troops in the area.

The post of president has been vacant since October 2022 when the six-year term of president Michel Aoun ended.

Read More

Turkey has called on the U.N. Security Council and others to take “swift” action against Israel, which Ankara says it aiming to widen the current war beyond the Palestinian territories.

Turkey says it will stand by the people and government of Lebanon against “Israel’s inhumane attacks.”

The statement also condemned Israel’s decision to ban U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres from entering the country as the latest example of “Israel’s lawlessness.”

The Israeli army said Thursday that its forces rescued an Iraqi Yazidi woman held captive in Gaza.

The woman arrived back in Iraq on Wednesday, Iraqi authorities said.

According to Israel’s military, she was freed in an Israeli-led rescue operation earlier this week that was coordinated with the United States and Jordan.

Islamic State militants killed thousands from the Yazidi religious minority and took thousands of Yazidi women as slaves for rape when they seized much of northern Iraq and eastern Syria in 2014.

The Israeli army and Iraqi government statements named the woman, but The Associated Press does not identify victims of sexual violence.

According to the Israeli army, she was abducted by IS when she was 11 and at some point trafficked to a Palestinian and was brought to Gaza, likely via the Rafah Crossing from Egypt.

Read More

The World Health Organization says 28 health workers in Lebanon have been killed in the past day, and it called for a cease-fire.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described a dire situation in treating casualties, with three dozen health facilities closed in southern Lebanon and five hospitals either partly or fully evacuated in Beirut.

Tedros says health workers are not showing up at their jobs because they’ve fled areas that have been bombed.

WHO had to scrap plans to fly in medical and trauma supplies Friday because the Beirut airport is mostly closed.

Tedros says Iran’s “dangerous escalation” had serious consequences for the region.

More than 100 Colombians returned Thursday to their country from Lebanon on a flight arranged by their government for those seeking to be repatriated amid the war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The plane brought a total of 117 Colombians, including more than 50 children and minors, according to the government.

“I live in Lebanon completely happy and I had to flee with my children, leaving my husband in great pain there,” Islam el Hamed Mourad, a Colombian married to a Lebanese man, said after arriving at a military base in Bogota in a Colombian Air Force plane.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani says a charter flight is being organized to repatriate 180 Italians from Lebanon.

Tajani also told Parliament on Thursday that he hoped they would arrive home “this evening.”

He said the ministry has also recommended that an estimated 700 Italians in Iran leave the country on commercial flights that are gradually resuming.

Read More

President Joe Biden says he doesn’t expect Israel to retaliate immediately against Iran and rejects the suggestion the U.S. would grant permission for such an attack.

Biden was speaking to reporters Thursday, two days after Tehran bombarded Israel with almost 200 ballistic missiles. Israel says it intercepted many of them, while Iran says most of its missiles hit their targets.

Iran said the barrage was in response to Israel’s recent assassination of Iran-backed Hezbollah and Hamas leaders.

Iran’s action has raised concerns about the escalating conflict in the Middle East and the role of the U.S. in Israel’s defense.

“First of all, we don’t ‘allow’ Israel, we advise Israel,” Biden said. “And nothing’s going to happen today.”

Israel says one of its airstrikes in Gaza killed a Palestinian who was convicted in the killing of two Israeli soldiers by an angry crowd in the West Bank at the start of the 2000 uprising.

Abdel-Aziz Salha was in a mob that stormed a Palestinian police station in the West Bank city of Ramallah and killed two Israeli reservists. The two had been detained after accidentally entering an area administered by the Palestinian Authority.

Salha waved his blood-stained hands from the window of the police station in what became one of the defining images of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule.

The killing of the reservists marked a major escalation in Israeli-Palestinian tensions as the peace process of the 1990s collapsed.

The military said Thursday that Salha was killed in an overnight strike on the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah. The military identified him as a Hamas militant.

Salha was arrested by Israeli forces shortly after the killing of the two reservists, convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

He was among more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners released in 2011 in exchange for an Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas in Gaza. One of the other released prisoners, Yahya Sinwar, was one of the masterminds of the Oct. 7 attack and is now the top leader of Hamas.

Read More

An Israeli airstrike on a Beirut southern suburb struck Thursday the building housing the media office of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.

The airstrike destroyed the building housing the Media Relations office of Hezbollah in the Mawad neighborhood on the southern edge of Beirut.

Hezbollah official told The Associated Press that employees of the group’s media office are fine and no one was hurt.

In southern Lebanon, Israeli fire at a Lebanese army post in the town of Bint Jbeil killed a Lebanese soldier, raising to two the number of members of the Lebanese military killed on Thursday.

The Lebanese army said in a statement that troops “open fire at the source of” the attack. It did not elaborate.

A Lebanese security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of regulations said that the army post was hit by artillery fire.

Lebanon’s minister of public works and transport says all the country’s border crossings with Syria function under the supervision of state institutions.

Ali Hamie spoke to reporters hours after the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman posted on X that Lebanon’s Hezbollah group is trying to transport military equipment through the Masnaa border crossing with Syria.

“All border crossings, the first among them the Masnaa border crossing” are under the monitoring of state institutions including the transport ministry, customs authorities, the General Security Directorate and the Lebanese army.

Israeli military spokesperson, Avchay Adraee, called on Lebanese authorities earlier Thursday to conduct inspections on trucks crossing its eastern border and to turn back any vehicle found to be containing combat equipment.

“The Lebanese State is responsible for its official border crossings and is able to prevent Hezbollah from passing through these crossings,” Adraee said on X.

In the same post, Adraee said Israeli forces bombed a truck on Sunday packed with weapons that Hezbollah was trying to smuggle into Lebanon. No further details about this airstrike were made public.

In recent weeks, the Israeli air force has struck hundreds of targets across Lebanon, including the eastern border area and the Bekaa Valley, areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

Analysts have long accused the Iran-backed group of transporting weapons across the porous Lebanese-Syrian border.

Spain’s defense ministry says its two planes sent to Beirut to evacuate Spanish civilians have taken off and are heading to an airbase near Madrid.

Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said that between 400 and 500 of the around 1,000 Spaniards registered as living in Lebanon are being airlifted out. The government has urged all Spaniards to leave and is offering to assist those who say they want to be evacuated.

Robles said that a third plane could be sent if needed.

Spain also has 676 soldiers in Lebanon deployed under a United Nations peacekeeping mission. Robles said that the troops are staying put until otherwise ordered by the U.N. command.

Belgium’s VTM broadcaster says that one of its television reporters and a cameraman have been attacked in central Beirut while reporting on the war between Israel and Hezbollah.

VTM said that correspondent Robin Ramaekers and cameraman Stijn De Smet were working on a report on Wednesday evening about a bombing in the Lebanese capital when they were attacked in unclear circumstances.

“Stijn is currently in a hospital in Beirut where he is being treated for a leg wound. Robin is also still being cared for, in another hospital, for some fractures to the face,” a statement said. It underlined that the cause of the attack is not yet known.

VTM said the two men have worked in conflict zones for more than a decade. Lebanon’s Information Minister Ziad Makary said only that he is “following” the situation

It says the convoy near the village of Taybeh, which was accompanied by Lebanese troops, was targeted Thursday despite coordinating its movements with U.N. peacekeepers.

Correction: The previous item erroneously reported that the paramedics were killed

The Israeli military has ordered the evacuation of villages and towns in southern Lebanon that are north of a United Nations-declared buffer zone established after the 2006 war.

The warning issued Thursday signaled a possible broadening of Israel’s incursion into southern Lebanon, which until now has been confined to areas close to the border.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry Thursday said that at least nine people were killed in an Israeli strike in central Beirut, as it is also running DNA tests on remains they have obtained to identify others.

Read More

Hezbollah said that seven paramedics and rescue workers from its medical arm the Islamic Health Committee were killed in the strike that hit its office in Bashoura. The Health Ministry said 14 others were wounded in the strike early Thursday.

Prior to the attack, the ministry said that 55 people were killed and 156 others were wounded in Israeli strikes over Lebanon on Wednesday.

The frequent strikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs as well as occasional strikes in central Beirut have exacerbated Lebanon’s displacement crisis. The government estimated days ago that some one million people are currently displaced in the cash-strapped country.

Environment Minister Nasser Yassin, who is spearheading the government’s response efforts to the war, told local media that some 167,000 Syrians left Lebanon over the past 24 hours alone. The Associated Press could not independently confirm.

The Israeli military said Thursday that it killed a senior Hamas leader in an airstrike in the Gaza Strip around three months ago.

It said that a strike on an underground compound in northern Gaza killed Rawhi Mushtaha and two other Hamas commanders, Sameh Siraj and Sameh Oudeh.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas.

The military said the three commanders had taken refuge in a fortified underground compound in northern Gaza that served as a command and control center.

It said Mushtaha was a close associate of Yahya Sinwar, the top leader of Hamas who helped mastermind the Oct. 7 attack into Israel that triggered the war.

Sinwar is believed to be alive and in hiding inside Gaza.