Deadly strikes on Gaza, Lebanon as Israel faces aid deadline - as it happened

Ahram Online , Sunday 10 Nov 2024

Israeli air strikes killed dozens of people in Lebanon and Gaza Sunday, rescuers and authorities said, ahead of a US deadline for improved aid delivery to the Palestinian territory.

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Rescuers search for victims and survivors at the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the village of Rasm El-Hadath in the eastern Lebanese Bekaa valley. AFP

 

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 Sunday, 10 November, as they unfolded.

 

23:10 Iran’s foreign ministry on Sunday called for an arms embargo on Israel and urged its expulsion from the United Nations following a deadly strike in Syria.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran “strongly condemned the aggressive attack carried out today by the Zionist regime against a residential building” in the Damascus area.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the strike targeted an apartment belonging to the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, killing nine people, including a Hezbollah commander.

Baghaei demanded action against Israel, including “an arms embargo” and its “expulsion from the United Nations.”

23:00 Hamas has offered Fatah full administrative control of Gaza, including authority over border crossings and security, a Hamas source told Al Arabiya. “We have not yet received a response from Fatah regarding the proposal presented at the Cairo meeting,” the source added.

Meanwhile, Fatah told Al Arabiya, “It is not possible to assess the talks with Hamas at this time, as they are still ongoing.”

22:30 The Israeli military reported that its air force intercepted two drones approaching from the east on Sunday but did not specify their origin.

The air force “intercepted two UAVs that approached Israeli territory from the east” without crossing into Israeli airspace, according to a military statement. "Sirens were sounded in the Dead Sea area" near Jerusalem, where AFP journalists reported hearing multiple aircraft over the city.

22:00 Israel, the United States, and Lebanon have reportedly exchanged draft agreements in negotiations aimed at securing a ceasefire along Israel's northern border, according to Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot. Officials familiar with the talks expressed cautious optimism, saying the chances for a deal are "not bad." The Biden administration and President-elect Trump’s team are reportedly pressing for a resolution before Trump takes office.

21:30 Three Palestinians were killed in an Israeli drone strike as they attempted to build a water well amid severe water shortages in central Gaza. The Israeli drone targeted a group installing a water pipe network in the Nuseirat refugee camp, with the bodies transferred to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.

21:20 The Gaza Government Media Office reported that the death toll of journalists in Gaza since the war began on 7 Oct. 2023, has reached 188, after four additional media workers were recently killed by Israeli forces, according to Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV.

21:10 Al Jazeera TV reported that Hezbollah targeted Israel's Naura base southwest of Lake Tiberias, a key site for emergency reserve supplies, using strike drones.

21:00 A raid targeting a home in the town of Rass al-Hadath on Sunday left four dead, and one wounded from the same family, Lebanon's National News Agency correspondent in Baalbek reported.

The Public Health Ministry's Emergency Operations Centre also released its daily report on the impact of the Israeli aggression, stating that airstrikes on Saturday killed 53 people and injured 99 others.

"The total number of casualties since the beginning of the aggression up to Saturday is 3,189 dead and 14,078 wounded," the report added.

20:30 Israel's Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, in a significant move, has given the green light for an expansion of ground operations in southern Lebanon, as reported by Israel's Public Broadcasting Authority on Sunday.

This move, which comes as Israel intensifies its military presence in the region, is particularly significant given the ongoing and complex ceasefire discussions. The Israeli army had previously indicated that it was nearing the end of its ground campaign in Lebanon.

19:30 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he okayed a deadly September attack on Hezbollah communications devices which exploded in Lebanon, the first time Israel has admitted involvement.

"Netanyahu confirmed Sunday that he greenlighted the pager operation in Lebanon," his spokesman Omer Dostri told AFP of the attacks.

18:45 Hezbollah says it targeted the Avital site in the occupied Golan Heights in Syria, with missiles describing it as "a technical and electronic reconnaissance centre," Al Jazeera reported, adding that its fighters also targeted a gathering of Israeli forces in Kahil Heights on the eastern outskirts of the southern Lebanese town of Maroun al-Ras.

18:30 Salim Ayyash, a senior figure in Hezbollah, was killed on Sunday in an Israeli airstrike in Al-Qusayr District in southern Syria, Al-Arabiya reported.

Ayyash was sentenced in absentia in December 2020 to five concurrent life sentences on charges connected to the February 2005 suicide truck bombing in Beirut that killed Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Al-Arabiya sources said that the target of the Sayyida Zainab airstrike was Hezbollah's Golan file official, Ali Musa Daqduq.

Reports have not confirmed whether Daqduq was killed or not.

18:10 The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says the humanitarian situation in Gaza is rapidly deteriorating, and "famine is imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip".

UNRWA said immediate action is required "within days to avert and alleviate this catastrophic situation".

"Immediate, safe, unimpeded humanitarian access and a ceasefire now are needed more than ever."

18:00 An Israeli strike on an apartment belonging to the Lebanese Hezbollah group killed seven people Sunday in a stronghold south of Damascus, a war monitor said.

"An Israeli strike killed seven people and wounded 14, including women and children, in the Sayyida Zeinab area," Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP, revising an earlier toll of three dead.

"The Israeli attack targeted (Hezbollah) figures in the building," said the monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria.

It said that two locations "where Hezbollah members live" near the Sayyida Zeinab municipality were hit.

Syria's official SANA news agency reported an "Israeli aggression targeting a residential building in the Sayyida Zeinab" area that killed and injured an unspecified number of people.


A damaged car lies amid the debris in front of a building targeted overnight by Israeli airstrikes in the southern Lebanese village of Ain Baal in the Tyre district. AFP 

17:00 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Sunday he had spoken three times with US President-elect Donald Trump over the past few days about the "Iranian threat" to Israeli security.

"In the last few days, I have spoken with President-elect Donald Trump three times... Talks designed to further tighten the strong alliance between Israel and the US," Netanyahu said, quoted in a statement issued by his office.

"We see eye to eye on the Iranian threat in every aspect," he added during a weekly cabinet meeting, according to the statement.

Netanyahu also said he had talked to Trump about "great opportunities before Israel in the field of peace and its expansion".

The United States is Israel's top ally and military backer, and the election came at a critical time for the Middle East amid wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

Analysts believe Netanyahu had hoped for a Trump return to the White House, given the longstanding personal friendship between the two as well as the former president's hawkishness on Israel's arch-foe Iran.

During his first term, Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, recognised Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights and helped normalise ties between Israel and several Arab states under the so-called Abraham Accords.

16:00 Rescuers in Gaza said 13 children were among 30 people killed by Israeli strikes in the territory's north.

The first strike early Sunday hit a house in Jabalia, killing "at least 25" people, including 13 children and injuring more than 30, Gaza's civil defence agency said.

At around 6:00 am, "there was a very huge explosion... When we arrived here, all the bodies were torn apart," a distraught relative of the Alloush family, Abdullah al-Najjar, said.

They had been preparing for breakfast when the strike happened.

The United Nations has described the area as under "siege," and Washington set a deadline of this coming week for Israel to get more aid in or face possible cuts to military assistance.

Another strike on the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City killed five people, Gaza's civil defence agency said.

15:00 The Israeli army said a drone launched at Israel from the east (reportedly from Iraq) was shot down by the air force, with parts of the drone landing in an open area in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, The Guardian reported. 

The update came shortly after the army reported a barrage of 15 rockets it said was launched from Lebanon at the Western Galilee area.

14:30 Arab and Muslim leaders have begun arriving in Saudi Arabia for a summit scheduled for Monday that will focus on Israel's wars on Gaza and Lebanon, Saudi state media said.

The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the summit in late October during the first meeting of an "international alliance" pushing for a two-state solution.

Attendees will "discuss the continued Israeli aggression on the Palestinian territories and the Lebanese Republic, and the current developments in the region," the official Saudi Press Agency said on Sunday.

It comes one year after a similar gathering in Riyadh of the Cairo-based Arab League and the Jeddah-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), during which leaders condemned Israeli forces' actions in Gaza as "barbaric."

The Saudi state-affiliated Al-Ekhbariya news channel broadcasted footage on Sunday of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu and Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati landing in Riyadh.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was also scheduled to attend, the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs said last week, adding that he planned to call for "an immediate end to the genocide in Gaza" and the "immediate cessation of the ongoing Israeli adventurism in the region."

14:00 Lebanon's health ministry said the Israeli strike on north Beirut, launched earlier Sunday, killed 20 people, including three children.

"The Israeli enemy strike on Almat in the Jbeil district killed 20 people, including three children and injured six, in an updated toll," the health ministry said in a statement.

In videos purporting to show the aftermath of the strike, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Beirut, people were seen pulling the body of a little girl out of the rubble, AP reported.

The house had been flattened, and several cars nearby were also damaged.

More than 3,130 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israeli aggression began in October last year, according to Lebanon's health ministry, most of them since 23 September.

12:09 The Palestinian health ministry said the Israeli bombardment on Gaza has killed 51 Palestinians in the previous 24 hours, raising the death toll to at least 43,603 people since the Israeli war on Gaza began.

The toll includes 102,929 wounded people.

12:05 Lebanon's Ministry of Health said an Israeli strike killed 12 people, including three children, in the village of Almat, north of the capital Beirut.

"The Israeli enemy strike on Almat in the Jbeil district killed 12 people, including three children, in a preliminary toll," the ministry said in a statement.

 

 

11:55 Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth reported that the United States has halted the supply of "D-9" military bulldozers to the Israeli army amid growing contention over use to raze homes in Gaza. 

Two security sources who spoke with Ynet on condition of anonymity said an extensive shipment of 134 "D9" bulldozers, which Israel ordered and paid for, is awaiting export approval from the US State Department in Washington.

11:45 Israeli Haaretz revealed that Israel's Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the commander of the 162nd Division in the Israeli army to carry out "cleansing" operations against Palestinians in northern Gaza, preventing their return to the area.  

Last week, the Israeli army Brig. Gen. Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that the military has no intention to allow the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes, The Guardian reported. 

He said humanitarian aid would be allowed to "regularly" enter the territory's south but not the north since "no more civilians were left."

11:30 Lebanese official media reported an Israeli strike on a house in the central eastern city of Baalbek, which was not preceded by an Israeli army evacuation warning.

"Enemy aircraft launched a strike on a house in the Al-Laqees neighbourhood" of the city, the official National News Agency (NNA) said.

Earlier, NNA had reported a rare Israeli strike north of Beirut, targeting the Almat village.

11:10 Israeli airstrikes continued on areas in southern Lebanon, including the Tyre district, as well as on Baalbek and towns in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, according to Al Jazeera. 

On Saturday, Israeli airstrikes killed 33 Lebanese civilians across various areas in southern and eastern Lebanon. 

Israeli attacks across Lebanon have killed at least 3,110 people and injured 13,819 since October 2023, according to Lebanon's health ministry, with most of them at least 2,700 since 23 September.

 

A destroyed car lies amid the debris a day after Israeli airstrikes that targeted the eastern Lebanese village of Knaisseh near Baalbek in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley. AFP

 

10:00 "The number of journalists killed in Gaza has reached 188 since the start of the genocidal Israeli war on the Strip," the Media Office in Gaza announced.

9:40 The Civil Defence in Gaza reported that five Palestinians were killed and others injured in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a house near the Maghrabi Junction in the Sabra neighbourhood, south of Gaza City.

 

 

9:30 At least 36 Palestinians, including 13 children, have been killed in an Israeli massacre targeting a home in Jabalia, northern Gaza, WAFA news agency reported.

Local sources reported that Israeli warplanes hit a home crowded with residents and displaced people in the centre of Jabalia camp.

 

The bombing levelled the building, and rescue workers have so far pulled 36 bodies from the rubble, the sources said.

Many of the injured have been transferred to Al-Mamdani Hospital while emergency teams continue to search for those feared trapped beneath the wreckage.

 

 

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