In the face of the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian and Lebanese people amid Israel’s wars in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, Ahram Online provided you with live updates of the most recent developments across the Middle East on Saturday, 2 November, as they unfolded.
22:50 The World Health Organization (WHO) said six people including four children were injured on Saturday in an Israeli strike on a polio vaccination centre in northern Gaza.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a message on X, that the UN agency had received "an extremely concerning report" that the centre "was struck today while parents were bringing their children to the life-saving polio vaccination" drive.
Without naming who carried out the strike, he said the Sheikh Radwan primary health care centre was "in an area where a humanitarian pause was agreed to allow vaccination to proceed."
The WHO launched a needed second round of child polio vaccinations in northern Gaza on Saturday after Israeli bombing halted the drive.
The vaccination drive began on 1 September with a successful first round after the Israeli-besieged Palestinian territory confirmed its first case of polio in 25 years.
"A WHO team was at the site just before" Saturday's strike, Ghebreyesus said.
"This attack, during the humanitarian pause, jeopardises the sanctity of health protection for children and may deter parents from bringing their children for vaccination," he added.
"These vital humanitarian-area-specific pauses must be absolutely respected," he said, calling for a ceasefire in the territory.
The WHO says some 119,000 children in the north are awaiting a second dose, while 452,000 have been vaccinated in central and southern Gaza.
21:00 The World Health Organization said six people including four children were wounded Saturday in a strike on a polio vaccination centre in northern Gaza.
"The Sheikh Radwan primary health care centre in northern Gaza was struck today while parents were bringing their children to the life-saving polio vaccination in an area where a humanitarian pause was agreed to allow vaccination to proceed," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a message on X without saying who had launched the strike.
Women and children make up more than two-thirds of the 43,000 Palestinians who were killed by Israel since the start of its war on the Gaza Strip.
20:20 The Israeli army said two soldiers from the Givati Brigade, one of the two infantry brigades under the Southern Command, were killed and a third was seriously wounded in battles with Palestinian fighters in northern Gaza on Saturday.
On Saturday, Israeli airstrikes in Gaza killed 28 Palestinians, including 18 in northern Gaza, bringing up the number of martyrs to 43,314 and the wounded to 102,019 since 7 October 2023.
20:10 Israeli jetfighters pummeled Khiyam and Balat and other towns and villages in southern Lebanon on Saturday.
The Lebanese Health Ministry updated the casualties in the Israeli bombing of Lebanon since October 2023 to nearly 3,000 and the wounded to 13,300.
19:00 The UNICEF issued another dire appeal for an immediate ceasefire in the Israeli war on Gaza.
In a post on X, the UN children's welfare agency said: "Indiscriminate assaults on children, civilians, and humanitarian workers in the Gaza Strip continue. It is beyond time to end this war. We need a ceasefire now."
Meanwhile, Anas Al-Sharif, an Al Jazeera reporter in northern Gaza, posted a heartbreaking video of several children after they were rescued from the rubble of a home demolished in an Israeli airstrike in Beit Lahia.
18:00 UNICEF warned that the ongoing Israeli war on Lebanon is "massively impacting children's mental health."
In a post on the UN agency's X account on Saturday, UNICEF shared a video and written message that said: "The ongoing war in Lebanon is shattering children's lives, inflicting severe physical wounds and deep emotional scars.
With prolonged periods of traumatic stress, children face severe health and psychological risks, and the consequences can last a lifetime.
True healing can only begin when this war on childhood ends. Ceasefire now."
UNICEF said it had reached more than 10,000 children and caregivers with psychological and community support.
The video also included the story of nine-year-old Mira, who shared her story by saying, "We were at home. Suddenly, there was the threat of bombing near our house. At that moment, we got scared and ran away.
We don't know if our house was damaged, but the windows might be broken because they bombed near our house.
Here we're doing social activities. I'm making new friends, studying, and learning. They're [UNICEF] giving us blankets and supplies.
I long to return home, sleep in bed, and play with toys.
"Once the war ends, the first thing I want to do is visit my relatives. I want to check on them, and I hope we'll all be safe and well."
Children play at a school turned into a shelter for people fleeing Israeli bombardment of the Baalbek area in eastern Lebanon's Deir al-Ahmar town. AFP
The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon has destroyed hundreds of residential units in the south, Beqa Valley, and Dahiya in south Beirut, forcing more than 1.3 million to flee their homes.
Israeli airstrikes have killed nearly 3,000 and wounded almost 14,000 civilians—many of them women and children.
Lebanese soldiers inspect the beach at a reported landing site for a "naval commando force," which abducted a Lebanese mariner, according to a military source, in the northern coastal town of Batroun. AFP
16:30 The Israeli army said Hezbollah launched 115 rockets towards Israel in the last several hours.
Warning sirens were activated in Nahariya, Haifa, and Ashkelon.
The army said its jetfighters responded to drones that were not detected by radars and appeared to target Ashkelon and eastern Haifa.
15:28 At least two more people were killed in northern Gaza.
According to Palestinian media outlets, one person has been killed and several injured in an Israeli drone attack on Jabalia's Nazla area.
The second person was killed as a result of Israeli shelling targeting a group of people in the vicinity of Muscat Clinic in Gaza City's Sabra neighbourhood.
14:21 An aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is one of several suspects arrested on suspicion of leaking classified information, Axios reported. Israeli authorities believe the leaks were intended to influence public support for Netanyahu's approach to the ongoing war on Gaza.
The scandal surfaced a few weeks ago when a top-secret Israeli intelligence document was leaked to the German newspaper Bild, which published an article revealing what it described as a Hamas strategy document. The document allegedly drafted by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar outlines the group's position on negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Bild report has stirred significant controversy in Israel, as the document appears intended to sway public sentiment in favour of Netanyahu's uncompromising stance against any immediate ceasefire with Hamas, presenting the Gaza-based group as manipulating the situation to stall Israeli operations, Axios said.
13:56 The Israeli occupation forces have detained at least 20 Palestinians from the West Bank during the last 24 hours, according to a joint statement by the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners Society.
The detentions occurred across various provinces—Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus, Qalqilya, Jericho, and Bethlehem—and involved widespread raids marked by reports of violent treatment.
According to the statement, detainees faced severe beatings, threats to themselves and their families, and significant property damage during the raids.WAFA news agency reported.
Since the onset of the ongoing Israeli genocidal onslaught against the Palestinians in October 2023, over 11,500 Palestinians have been detained by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
Israeli forces are detaining Palestinians in the West Bank—photo courtesy of Quds News X account.
13:22 Israeli naval commandos conducted a raid on Batroun in northern Lebanon on Friday, where they kidnapped a man, Al-Hadath Saudi TV channel reported.
Lebanese security officials said they are investigating the incident.
According to Hasan Illaik, a Lebanese journalist, more than 25 soldiers arrived on the coast of Batroun, south of Tripoli, and raided a chalet near the beach.
One Lebanese civilian was escorted from the area via speedboats, the report says.
Illaik shares surveillance camera footage purportedly from the incident. It shows a group of soldiers taking a detained person with them.
An Israeli military official stated its forces captured a “senior operative of Hezbollah” and transferred him to its territory to be investigated by military intelligence.
Lebanon’s caretaker minister of transport, Ali Hamie, said that Amhaz was a civilian boat captain, while Hezbollah did not comment on allegations that he belonged to the organisation.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, said Lebanon would be submitting a complaint to the UN Security Council and that he had asked both Lebanon’s military and the UN’s peacekeeping mission to investigate the incident.
13:15 Israel has killed at least 55 people and injured 192 others across Gaza in the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said.
The ministry said that the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza has risen to 43,314, with 102,019 others injured since 7 October 2023.
A woman reacts as others recite a prayer over the bodies of victims killed in an Israeli strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in front of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. AFP
13:10 Hezbollah said it bombed for the second time today the Israeli Zevulun military industries base north of Haifa with a barrage of rockets.
Twice on Saturday, "salvos of rockets" were fired at "the Zvulun base for military industries north of the city of Haifa," the Lebanese group said in a statement.
Earlier, it said it had launched drones at the Palmahim air base south of Tel Aviv.
The group has claimed responsibility for firing missiles toward the Israeli army's Unit 8200 base in Glilot on the edge of Tel Aviv, saying they "scored precise hits on targets."
Hezbollah also said that its fighters have fired salvos of rockets into northern Israeli towns, including Dalton, Yesud HaMa'ala, and Bar Yohai.
12:00 A coalition of groups in Iraq said it carried out four drone attacks on the Israeli resort of Eilat after Israel said it intercepted three drones approaching from the east.
In a statement, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it was behind the attacks on "four vital targets" in Eilat, all conducted within one hour.
11:42 "If UNRWA is kicked out, the cost for the Israeli taxpayer is going to be ginormous," Chris Sidoti, member of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, said, criticising Israel's decision to ban the UN Palestinian refugees agency.
He added that the agency "has saved Israel billions of dollars."
"Because Israel, as an occupying power, under the Fourth Geneva Convention, is responsible for the care, protection, and provision of services to persons under occupation," he explained, and instead "the international community has been doing that by its financial support to UNRWA."
Sidoti, along with commission chair and International Court of Justice judge Navanethem Pillay, is a member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the official United Nations body of inquest into the war in Gaza.
Israel's killing and wounding of children in Gaza is the "greatest of any conflict in recorded warfare," Sidoti said in a press briefing.
"As of last week, 13,319 children have been killed in Gaza, of whom 786 were under the age of one. In addition, 165 children have been killed in the West Bank."
"Kids aren't terrorists," Sidoti emphasised, adding, "We have had thousands and thousands of kids killed, and that's not even including those who are injured, those who are under the rubble, those who have lost limbs."
Dismissing Israel and Western claims that the Israeli war on Gaza began with the 7 October operation by Hamas on Israel, Pillay said, "History didn't start on 7 October, and we have recorded again and again the huge violations that occurred historically. It's the occupation."
11:27 Iran's supreme leader threatened Israel and the US with "a crushing response" over the Israeli strikes against Iran that killed at least five people.
"The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and the resistance front," Khamenei said in a video released by Iranian state media.
The supreme leader did not elaborate on the timing or scope of the threatened attack.
The US military operates throughout the Middle East, with some troops now manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, battery in Israel.
Khamenei had earlier said officials would weigh Iran's response and that Israel's attack "should not be exaggerated nor downplayed."
Gen. Mohammad Ali Naini, a spokesman for Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which controls the ballistic missiles, warned in an interview published by Fars news agency just before Khamenei's remarks that Tehran's response "will be wise, powerful, and beyond the enemy's comprehension."
"The leaders of the Zionist regime should look out from the windows of their bedrooms and protect their criminal pilots within their small territory," he warned.
11:05 UNRWA Senior Communications Officer Louise Wateridge said that the catastrophic humanitarian situation will only worsen for Palestinians in Gaza without the UN refugee agency.
11:00 Six Palestinians were reported killed in an Israeli occupation artillery shelling that targeted the Tel Al-Dhahab area in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip.
10:57 Armed Israeli terrorist settlers attacked Palestinian olive pickers in the occupied West Bank province of Salfit.
Yousef Al-Deek, a local farmer, told WAFA news agency that the settlers, from an illegal outpost built on Palestinian land near the town of Kafr Al-Deek, assaulted olive pickers in the Khalat Al-Haramiya area, attempting to force them off their land and prevent them from harvesting olives.
Al-Deek noted that over the past week, the settlers have stolen bags of olives and agricultural equipment, grazed their livestock among the trees, and provoked farmers to obstruct access to their land.
Agricultural Palestinian lands are subjected to daily attacks by the Jewish settlers and the Israeli occupation army. This situation intensifies during the olive harvest season as part of a broader effort to displace local residents.
Terrorist Israeli settlers, under the protection of Israeli occupation forces, also stormed the village of Arab Ar Rashayida north of Jericho and attacked Palestinian families in the area.
10:52 Several citizens have been killed and injured since dawn due to Israeli bombing in Gaza City and the central Gaza Strip.
Medical sources reported that three were killed in the bombing of the Saftawi neighbourhood northwest of Gaza City, the WAFA news agency reported.
Additionally, 15 people were killed and others injured in the bombing of a house in the Nuseirat camp in the centre.
Since last night, Israel has continued to destroy residential buildings north of the Nuseirat camp.
Since October 2023, Israel has killed more than 43,000 people in Gaza, the majority of whom are children and women, while approximately 102,000 others have been injured.
10:40 The United States announced it would deploy B-52 Stratofortress bombers, fighter jets, refuelling aircraft, and Navy destroyers to the Middle East as it readjusts military assets ahead of the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group's departure from the region.
The Pentagon said that these deployments will occur in the coming months.
In the past year, marked by escalating tensions since the onset of the brutal Israeli war on Gaza, the United States has had as many as two aircraft carriers in the Middle East, Reuters reported.
The United States has pledged to help defend Israel, which has been attacking Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Iran, and Syria.
10:20 Two Israeli airstrikes on residential buildings in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza killed 84 Palestinians, including more than 50 children, the government media office in Gaza reported.
At least 170 Palestinians were reportedly inside the two buildings that were struck, and people remain trapped beneath the debris.
Civil defence emergency workers in northern Gaza told Al Jazeera that they were unable to reach the site of the attack, leaving rescue operations to be conducted by local civilians.
09:54 More than 100 BBC employees have accused the corporation of providing favourable coverage toward Israel, calling on the broadcaster to "recommit to fairness, accuracy, and impartiality" in its reporting on Gaza.
In a letter sent to Tim Davie and signed by over 230 media industry members, including 101 anonymous BBC staff, the corporation is criticised for failing to uphold its own editorial standards by lacking "consistently fair and accurate evidence-based journalism" in its coverage of Gaza.
BBC office in London. AFP
09:32 The UN peacekeeping chief said that the Blue Helmet Force in Lebanon would hold its line despite facing attacks in recent weeks, adding that its positions would be "occupied" if it left.
More than 10,000 peacekeepers with the UNIFIL mission have been stationed in southern Lebanon since 1978 and are tasked with monitoring the "Blue Line" of demarcation with Israel.
Jean-Pierre Lacroix, undersecretary-general for peace operations, said, "UNIFIL peacekeepers are staying; they're holding their line, and they're determined to continue doing what they're mandated to do."
He said the force had rejected Israel's pressure to move five kilometres from the Blue Line.
"First of all, because there is a mandate... we are duty born to the mandate, the peacekeepers need to stay," Lacroix said in an interview with the UN Information Service.
"Second, because we thought that if those positions along the Blue Line were abandoned, they would likely be occupied by one party or the other. That would be very bad for many reasons, including the perception of impartiality and neutrality of the United Nations," he added.
A confidential report revealed that Israeli forces have launched at least a dozen documented targeted attacks on UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, including the use of white phosphorus near UN bases, injuring 15 soldiers and significantly damaging the UN infrastructure.
09:26 The Hezbollah resistance group said it had launched rockets at an Israeli intelligence base near Tel Aviv in the early hours of Saturday.
At 2:30 AM (00:30 GMT), the group "fired a salvo of rockets at the Glilot base of the 8200 military intelligence unit in the suburbs of Tel Aviv," Hezbollah said in a statement.
The resistance group also said it had fired rocket salvos on Saturday morning at areas in the north of Israel, in particular at the city of Safed, another repeat target.
The Israeli army said that sirens were activated following the arrival of "suspicious aerial targets" from Lebanon, and the targets remained under surveillance in an ongoing incident.
Israeli authorities also reported 19 people injured in the central town of Tira after three projectiles crossed from Lebanon. Israel's army claimed some were intercepted.
Israeli police officers and residents check the damage following a rocket attack from southern Lebanon that targeted the central Israeli-Arab city of Tira. AFP
09:00 Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon killed at least 52 people and injured dozens more on Friday, the Lebanese health ministry reported, marking one of the deadliest days of attacks.
In the northeastern Bekaa Valley, rescuers searched through rubble in Younine after airstrikes destroyed a building housing 20 people, killing nine.
Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted Lebanon's eastern city of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley. AFP
Further bombardments claimed 12 lives in Amhaz and 31 others across multiple villages, bringing the total death toll to 52.
The strikes also left 72 people wounded, the health ministry said.
UN agencies say that Israel's ground invasion and bombardment of Lebanon has displaced 1.4 million people.
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