Israeli airstrike on Lebanon kills at least one Lebanese soldier and injures 18 others
An Israeli airstrike on a Lebanese army centre on Sunday killed one soldier and injured 18 other people, the Lebanese military said. The deadly strike occurred in southwestern Lebanon on the coastal road between Tyre and Naqoura. The Israeli military claimed in a statement issued afterwards that its operations are directed solely against Hezbollah and not the Lebanese military, and that the strike was under review.
Multiple injuries have been reported following an Israeli airstrike targeting a Lebanese Army checkpoint near the village of Naqoura, southern Lebanon. pic.twitter.com/9VyexfFyFJ
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) November 24, 2024
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, however, condemned it as an assault on US-led ceasefire efforts, calling it a “direct, bloody message rejecting all efforts and ongoing contacts” to end the war.
“(Israel is) again writing in Lebanese blood a brazen rejection of the solution that is being discussed,” a statement from his office read.
Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Israel’s assault on the country has displaced about 1.2 million people, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population.
Key events
As we have mentioned in the blog, the Israeli military said today that over 160 rockets have been fired at Israel from Lebanon since this morning. It is unclear how many people have been injured in the attacks but Al Jazeera is reporting that 10 Israelis are estimated to have been wounded. The outlet reports:
There have been six direct impact incidents in five different locations, including two military installations, and this has covered a very large area. So it’s not just the northern communities.
We’ve seen impact in the Tel Aviv area, in Haifa and in other areas. All in all, about 10 Israelis have been injured.
Most of the injuries are light, but one is described as a severe injury.
Speaking at the news conference in Beirut, Josep Borell also urged Lebanese leaders to pick a president to end a two-year power vacuum in the country, and he pledged €200m (£166m) in support for Lebanon’s armed forces.
The EU’s outgoing foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has called for pressure to be exerted on both the Israeli government and on Hezbollah to accept a US ceasefire proposal.
“We see only one possible way ahead: an immediate ceasefire and the full implementation of United Nations security council Resolution 1701,” he said after meeting Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who has Hezbollah’s support to negotiate. Borrell also met with Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, earlier.
So what stage are the Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire talks at? This is an extract from a story my colleagues William Christou and Bethan McKernan filed on Wednesday:
Over the past week, Lebanese, Israeli and US officials have said that a ceasefire was increasingly possible – though the details of what that would entail are not yet clear.
Central to ceasefire negotiations is the presence of Hezbollah in Lebanon’s south and its sway over the country in general, the politics of which it has dominated for the past decade.
Israel has said it wants Hezbollah to be pushed back beyond the Litani River, 20 miles away from its border, as a form of security guarantee for people in northern Israel, tens of thousands of whom have been displaced by Hezbollah rocket fire over the past year.
It had previously also said it wanted the power to unilaterally enforce a ceasefire agreement, which would give it de facto permission to carry out airstrikes in Lebanon at will. The Lebanese speaker of the house, Nabih Berri, said last Tuesday that “no sane person” would agree to such a condition.
Israeli airstrike on Lebanon kills at least one Lebanese soldier and injures 18 others
An Israeli airstrike on a Lebanese army centre on Sunday killed one soldier and injured 18 other people, the Lebanese military said. The deadly strike occurred in southwestern Lebanon on the coastal road between Tyre and Naqoura. The Israeli military claimed in a statement issued afterwards that its operations are directed solely against Hezbollah and not the Lebanese military, and that the strike was under review.
Multiple injuries have been reported following an Israeli airstrike targeting a Lebanese Army checkpoint near the village of Naqoura, southern Lebanon. pic.twitter.com/9VyexfFyFJ
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) November 24, 2024
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, however, condemned it as an assault on US-led ceasefire efforts, calling it a “direct, bloody message rejecting all efforts and ongoing contacts” to end the war.
“(Israel is) again writing in Lebanese blood a brazen rejection of the solution that is being discussed,” a statement from his office read.
Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Israel’s assault on the country has displaced about 1.2 million people, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population.
Iran will hold talks with France, Germany and Britain on 29 November about nuclear and regional issues, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei has said.
He did not say where the talks would take place but Japan’s Kyodo news agency earlier reported that representatives of the four countries would meet in Geneva.
In 2018, the then-Donald Trump administration exited Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six major countries and reimposed harsh sanctions on Iran, prompting Tehran to violate the pact’s nuclear limits, with moves such as rebuilding stockpiles of enriched uranium, refining it to higher fissile purity and installing advanced centrifuges to speed up output.
Indirect talks between the Biden administration and Tehran to try to revive the pact have failed, but Trump, the president-elect, said during his election campaign in September: “We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal”. You can read what exactly the Iran deal consisted of in this useful explainer.
Israeli government approves nomination of hardline backer of settlements as Israeli envoy to US
Yechiel Leiter, an American-born rightwing publicist and former government aide who immigrated to Israel four decades ago, was announced as Israel’s next ambassador to Washington earlier this month.
The Israeli government said earlier today that it had approved the nomination of Leiter, an ally of the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The government has unanimously approved the appointment of Dr Yechiel Leiter as ambassador to the United States,” the foreign ministry said.
A former adviser to Netanyahu, Leiter, 65, lives in a settlement in the occupied West Bank.
Close to the US Republican Party, Leiter used to be one of the leaders of the Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing Israeli settlers in the West Bank in the 1990s, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
He is also a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party and currently works as a strategic adviser to Israeli think tanks. His son, Moshe Leiter, was killed in combat in November 2023 in the Gaza Strip.
Leiter is a fierce critic of outgoing US president Joe Biden, condemning what he described in an interview as “American pressure” during Israel’s war in Gaza. He will take on the ambassador role after Donald Trump’s inauguration next January, succeeding Mike Herzog (president Isaac Herzog’s brother) who was appointed in 2021.
Israel’s military said around 160 projectiles had been fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon into northern and central Israel Sunday, some of which were intercepted.
“As of 15:00 (1300 GMT), approximately 160 projectiles that were fired by the Hezbollah terrorist organisation have crossed from Lebanon into Israel today,” the army said.
Medical agencies reported that several people had been injured, including a man in a “moderate to serious” condition. We have not been able to independently verify this information yet.
Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson, has said that eight rockets were fired towards Israel from Lebanon, adding that most of them were successfully intercepted.
It comes as Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, said its fighters launched a drone attack on the Ashdod naval base in southern Israel for the first time.
Death toll from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza reaches 44,211, says health ministry
At least 44,211 Palestinian people have been killed and 104,567, injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
Of those, 35 Palestinians were killed and 94 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry said.
Gaza’s health ministry has said in the past that thousands of other dead people are most likely lost in the rubble of the territory..
Reports of Israeli military dropping bombs on northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital
Meanwhile in north Gaza, health officials said an Israeli drone dropped bombs on Kamal Adwan hospital, injuring its director Hussam Abu Safiya.
“This will not stop us from completing our humanitarian mission and we will continue to do this job at any cost,” Abu Safiya said in a video statement circulated by the health ministry on Sunday.
“We are being targeted daily. They targeted me a while ago but this will not deter us …,” he said from his hospital bed.
Israeli forces say armed militants use civilian buildings including housing blocks, hospitals and schools for operational cover. Hamas denies this, accusing Israeli forces of indiscriminately targeting populated areas.
A renewed Israeli assault was launched on the northern part of the Gaza Strip last month, with the Israeli military claiming it was to stop Hamas fighters regrouping there. The blockage of aid and food deliveries and the targeting of civilian infrastructure, however, have led to accusations that Israel is committing the war crime of seeking to forcibly displace the remaining population. The entirety of northern Gaza has been under Israeli evacuation orders but it is unclear how many people remain.
IDF orders evacuation orders to residents of Gaza City suburb
The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders to residents in areas of an eastern Gaza City suburb, setting off a new wave of displacement on Sunday, and a Gaza hospital director was injured in an Israeli drone attack, Palestinian medics said.
The new orders for the Shejaiya suburb posted by the Israeli army spokesperson on X on Saturday night were blamed on Palestinian militants firing rockets from that heavily built-up district in the north of the Gaza Strip.
“For your safety, you must evacuate immediately to the south,” the military’s post said. The rocket volley on Saturday was claimed by Hamas’ armed wing, which said it had targeted an Israeli army base over the border.
Footage circulated on social and Palestinian media showed residents leaving Shejaia on donkey carts and rickshaws, with others, including children carrying backpacks, walking.
Families living in the targeted areas began fleeing their homes after nightfall on Saturday and into Sunday’s early hours, residents and Palestinian media said – the latest in multiple waves of displacement since the war began 13 months ago.
