Middle East crisis live: Israeli airstrikes kill 36 people in Lebanon and seven in Syria, officials say | Israel

It’s 1am in Tel Aviv, Gaza and Beirut. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:

• Seven people, including women and children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Damascus on Tuesday, the Syrian defence ministry said. The strike obliterated the first three floors of a building in the Mezzeh neighbourhood, east of Damascus, according to AP. At least 11 others were also wounded in the attack, the Syrian ministry said, adding that they were only preliminary figures as rescuers are still searching for survivors under the rubble.

• Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has cancelled plans for a visit to Washington scheduled for this week, according to a Pentagon spokesperson. The Israeli minister was expected to visit Washington and meet with his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, on Wednesday. The announcement came after reports that Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered Gallant not to travel to the Pentagon for talks on Iran until the Israeli prime minister receives a phone call with Joe Biden and until the Israeli security cabinet approves the response to Iran’s missile attack.

• Israel said it is expanding its ground operation in Lebanon with the deployment of a fourth division. The number of Israeli troops on the ground is now likely to number 15,000. The rapid deployment of four divisions operating across south Lebanon, alongside evacuation orders for Lebanese villages on the coast upwards of 20 miles from the blue line and the intensive bombing of the country’s south and east and the capital, suggests Israel is preparing for a wider push north against the Lebanese militia.

• The Israeli military launched new airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Tuesday. The night before, Israel again bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs where Hezbollah is headquartered and said it had killed Suhail Hussein Husseini, commander of Hezbollah’s logistical headquarters. Lebanon’s mayor, Abdallah Darwich, said there is “no safe place in Beirut” because of Israel’s attacks. Lebanon’s capital city has been the site of an intense Israeli bombing campaign over the last few weeks, flattening residential buildings and heavily populated civilian areas.

• The Lebanese health ministry said on Tuesday that 36 people have been killed in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours. At least 1,400 Lebanese people, including civilians, medics and Hezbollah fighters, have been killed and 1.2 million – about a quarter of the population – have been driven from their homes since fighting escalated three weeks ago. In Gaza, at least 41,965 Palestinian people have been killed in Israeli strikes and 97,590 injured since 7 October 2023, according to figures by Gaza’s health ministry on Tuesday.

• Fighting also continues to rage in Gaza. Israeli airstrikes killed 17 people in a refugee camp in the centre of the Palestinian territory on Tuesday, medics said. At least 15 people, including two women and four children, were killed on Tuesday in ground fighting in the Jabaliya neighbourhood of Gaza City, the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital said, after new Israeli evacuation orders for the city were issued on Monday. The IDF has intensified bombing of the area and moved in tanks. The Israeli military said it killed about 20 militants in Jabaliya and located a large quantity of weapons, including grenades and rifles.

• The Israeli military also ordered the full evacuation of all three main hospitals in northern Gaza – Al-Awda, Indonesian, and Kamal Adwan hospitals, the territory’s health ministry said. Israeli forces shot at the administration office at the Kamal Adwan hospital, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which said that the complex was being besieged. Médecins Sans Frontières warned that the Israeli evacuation orders will worsen the humanitarian catastrophe in the Palestinian territory. The three northern Gaza hospitals “must be protected at all costs”, it added.

• Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces have taken out the would-be successors of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, without naming them. The Israeli prime minister also warned the people of Lebanon they could face “destruction and suffering” like the Palestinians in Gaza. Earlier on Tuesday, Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant said Hashem Safieddine, the man expected to replace Nasrallah, had probably been “eliminated”. Hezbollah has not confirmed Safieddine’s death.

• Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem, said that the question of who will succeed Nasrallah remains undecided. In a defiant speech on Tuesday, Qassem said the group’s military capabilities were still functional despite two weeks of heavy Israeli airstrikes. Hezbollah had replaced all of its senior commanders, he said, and Israeli ground troops had not made any advances after a week of fighting. Two Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut’s Shia-majority southern suburbs almost immediately after Qassem’s speech.

• Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, warned Israel that any attack on Iran’s infrastructure will be met with retaliation, a week after Tehran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel. On Monday evening Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported that Tehran’s military had prepared at least ten scenarios preparing for an expected Israeli attack.

• Hezbollah fired another barrage of rockets into Israel on Tuesday and warned that it would intensify attacks on Israel, including the northern port city of Haifa, if it continues to strike Lebanon. The IDF said Hezbollah launched more than 170 rockets across the border. The Israeli government warned residents north of the coastal city of Haifa to limit activities, prompting the closure of more schools.

• Israel’s home front command tightened restrictions on civilians in the port city of Haifa on Tuesday in the wake of a barrage of rockets launched by Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah said it had fired rockets towards the Haifa and Krayot area in northern Israel, having launched “a large salvo of missiles”. About seven people were injured in the attack, according to reports. Hezbollah rockets also hit Haifa early on Monday morning, in what was the first direct attack on the city that evaded the military’s usually reliable air defence systems.

• Hezbollah said it killed and injured Israeli soldiers crossing the Lebanese border near a UN position near the al-Labouneh forest, in the western section of the border area. Hezbollah said that the attack forced Israeli soldiers to withdraw behind the border.

• Ireland’s prime minister, Simon Harris, said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdrawal from a firing position next to Irish peacekeepers on the Lebanese border was “extremely welcome”. Harris said he had spoken to UN secretary general, António Guterres, about his deep concerns about their safety after the IDF requested them to vacate their positions to make way for their war on Hezbollah.

• António Guterres, the UN secretary general, warned that Lebanon is on the verge of “an all-out war” and Gaza is “in a death spiral.” Guterres, speaking to reporters on Tuesday, said that the Middle East “is a powder keg with many parties holding the match” and that the conflict is “getting worse by the hour”. He said he has written to Netanyahu warning him that draft Israeli legislation to prevent the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) from working in the occupied Palestinian territory would be a “catastrophe”.

• The World Food Programme country director in Lebanon voiced concern about the country’s food supply, saying thousands of hectares of farmland across the country’s south has burned or been abandoned. “Agriculture-wise, food production-wise, (there is) extraordinary concern for Lebanon’s ability to continue to feed itself,” Matthew Hollingworth told reporters on Tuesday.

• Joe Biden, the US president, pulled out of scheduled talks between the leaders of the US, UK, France and Germany on the Middle East and Ukraine on Saturday. Biden will no longer be travelling to Berlin in order to focus on the response to Hurricane Milton, expected to make landfall as an “extremely dangerous hurricane” in Florida on Wednesday night, local time, the White House said.

• Israeli forces detained at least 30 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, including a journalist, Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reports, citing updates from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society and the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs. Over 11,000 Palestinians have been detained in Israeli raids across the occupied West Bank since last October, the groups have said.

• Prosecutors in the Netherlands are considering a request to open a criminal case against senior Israeli intelligence officials for allegedly interfering with an investigation by the international criminal court (ICC).

A US state department spokesperson said Hezbollah’s call for a ceasefire earlier on Tuesday shows the group is on the back foot and “getting battered”.

Hezbollah’s acting secretary general, Naim Qassem, said during a speech earlier today that the group’s military capabilities were still functional despite two weeks of heavy Israeli airstrikes, including Beirut bombings that killed the group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and much of the militia’s top command.

Qassem also said the group supported the efforts of Lebanon’s speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, to secure a ceasefire, without providing further details on any conditions demanded by Hezbollah.

US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller, at a briefing in Washington on Tuesday, said:

For a year, you had the world calling for this ceasefire, you had Hezbollah refusing to agree to one, and now that Hezbollah is on the back foot and is getting battered, suddenly they’ve changed their tune and want a ceasefire.

He added that the US continues to want a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

Miller also said the Biden administration no longer supports an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon, according to the Washington Post’s John Hudson:

ActionAid said it is “gravely alarmed” by reports from Gaza’s health ministry that the Israeli military has ordered the full evacuation of the Al-Awda, Indonesian, and Kamal Adwan hospitals in northern Gaza.

Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan hospital, which lies between Beit Lahia and Jabalia, told CNN on Tuesday:

The army spoke to me directly in threatening language that tomorrow all the patients will be forced out of Kamal Adwan hospital … or else we would subject our lives to danger.

He said the hospital was the only operating hospital in northern Gaza and that it would continue to provide medical services. He added:

Putting the hospital out of service would be a big disaster for the people who need [it] … There are still many patients in the hospital and there are many babies and children in the neonatal unit, so it is difficult to evacuate.

Israeli forces shot at the administration office at the Kamal Adwan hospital, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which said that the complex was being besieged.

Similar evacuation orders were issued at the Indonesian hospital and the Al-Awda hospital, it said.

ActionAid said the Al-Awda hospital is a “vital healthcare facility serving the most vulnerable in Gaza”, and said that forcing its evacuation “is not only unconscionable but also a violation of international humanitarian law.”

The Lebanese health ministry said 36 people have been killed in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours.

Another 150 people have been injured in Lebanon, it said.

The latest figure brings the total number of people killed in Lebanon since October 2023 to 2,119, most of them in the past two weeks, the ministry said.

Joanna Walters

Hezbollah has warned today that it would intensify attacks on Israel, including the northern port city of Haifa, if it continues to strike Lebanon.

The Israeli enemy’s intensifying strikes” mean that “Haifa and other locations will be targeted by our rockets just as much as Kiryat Shmona, Metula, and other” locations, the group said, referring to locations right on the line with Lebanon in norther Israel, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

The Israeli army earlier reported that 85 projectiles were fired from Lebanon at northern Israel, including Haifa.

Joanna Walters

Early pictures are coming through of the additional Israeli strikes on southern Beirut tonight.

As air strikes continue.

This is all still unfolding and we hope to have more images soon from closer to the affected areas.

Here is a post from Israeli public broadcasting.

Israel’s military has launched fresh airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, according to reports.

From the BBC’s Nafiseh Kohnavard:

As we reported earlier, the Israeli military issued a new evacuation warning earlier on Tuesday for residents in specific buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs including Haret Hreik.

Lisa O’Carroll

Ireland’s prime minister, Simon Harris, has said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdrawal from a firing position next to Irish peacekeepers on the Lebanese border was “extremely welcome”.

Harris said he had spoken to UN secretary general António Guterres about his deep concerns about their safety after the IDF requested them to vacate their positions to make way for their war on Hezbollah. Harris said:

The safety of our soldiers is paramount and when I spoke to Secretary General Guterres last night he was completely at one with me on the urgency of the situation.

Guterres said after speaking to Harris that he had a number of “démarches with different entities” and that those Israeli tanks and “other armed elements” have left.

Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has cancelled plans for a visit to Washington scheduled for this week, according to a Pentagon spokesperson.

The Israeli minister was expected to visit Washington and meet with his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, on Wednesday.

The Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, Sabrina Singh, said on Tuesday:

We were just informed that Minister Gallant will be postponing his trip to Washington DC. Secretary Austin looks forward to seeing him soon.

Asked the reason for the delay, she referred reporters to Israeli officials. She said the two defence ministers had not spoken by phone on Tuesday, and that she was not aware of any planned call.

The announcement comes after reports that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had been blocking Gallant’s visit to the US.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Netanyahu had ordered Gallant not to travel to the Pentagon for talks on Iran until such time as Joe Biden calls him.

Sources indicated to the outlet that Netanyahu had probably cancelled the flight to prevent Gallant from getting any credit for solidifying a joint US-Israel strategy on Iran.

The Syrian defence ministry said seven people, including women and children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Damascus on Tuesday.

At least 11 others were also wounded in the attack, the ministry said, adding that they were only preliminary figures as rescuers are still searching for survivors under the rubble.

As we reported earlier, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four people were killed in the airstrike.

The strike obliterated the first three floors of a building in the Mezzeh neighbourhood, east of Damascus, according to an AP journalist at the scene. The AP report says:

The debris covered the surrounding area, crushing several cars. Ambulances and excavators arrived at the scene to rescue survivors and clear the wreckage.