Israeli attacks on UN forces in Lebanon must stop – Britain, Italy, France and Germany say
Israeli attacks on the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, are contrary to international humanitarian law and must stop at once, Italy, Britain, France and Germany said, Reuters reports.
In a joint statement, the four nations reaffirmed “the essential stabilising role” played by UNIFIL in southern Lebanon, adding that Israel and other parties had to ensure the safety of the peacekeepers at all times.
The UNIFIL mission, which includes hundreds of European soldiers, has said it has repeatedly come under attack from the Israeli military in recent days. Israel has called on the UN to move troops out of the area as it targets Hezbollah forces.
Key events
Red Cross calls for protection of medical workers in Lebanon
The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) has called for Lebanon’s heathcare system to be protected after reports that Israeli strikes hit medical staff during fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
“I really … appeal for the protection of healthcare workers, for ambulances, for hospitals, for primary health centres,” Nicolas Von Arx, the ICRC’s regional director for the Near and Middle East, said on Monday, AFP reported.
“Attacks on health facilities are deeply worrying,” he added. Such strikes mean “a hospital that doesn’t function any more.
That means thousands, tens of thousands of people who cannot get healthcare, who cannot deliver in a safe place, who cannot get their wounds treated.
Of the 207 primary health care centres in Lebanon’s conflict areas, 100 are now closed due to the escalating violence, according to the World Health Organization (Who). Von Arx said:
We are very, very concerned about the displacements, about the functioning of health care systems, about the continuous suffering now in Lebanon.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said one of its workers was killed by shrapnel injuries suffered to the legs and chest in Jabalia in northern Gaza, which has come under “relentless attacks” by Israeli forces.
Nasser Hamdi Abdelatif Al Shalfouh, 31, died of his injuries on 10 October in Kamal Adwan hospital, the medical charity said. It said he was “unable to receive the necessary level of care due to the hospital’s lack of capacity and an overwhelming number of patients in the facility”.
In a statement on Monday, MSF said it was “horrified” by the killing and called again for the “respect and protection of civilians”. It added:
Nasser is the seventh MSF colleague killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war. This bloodshed needs to end.
As we reported earlier, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a volley of artillery at a school used to shelter displaced Palestinians in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza on Sunday.
At least 22 people were killed, including 15 children, as well as dozens others injured by the Israeli attack, according to the Palestinian territory’s civil defence authority.
The school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat had been intended for use as a polio vaccination site on Monday, but a spokesperson for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) told the BBC that Sunday’s attack left the site unusable for vaccines today. Unrwa spokesperson Louise Wateridge told the UN:
Throughout the night, I spoke to a colleague sheltering in the compound who told me, ‘We miraculously survived, the fire caught everywhere even the tent where we were sleeping burnt. The scene is terrifying.’
The German government has sharply criticised the shelling of UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.
A spokesperson for Germany’s foreign office, Sebastian Fischer, told reporters on Monday:
All parties to the conflict, including the Israeli army, are obliged to direct their combat operations exclusively against military targets of the other party to the conflict
He added that a comprehensive investigation is expected and that discussions on the matter were being held with the Israeli side.
The situation in southern Lebanon is causing growing concern, Fischer added, saying:
The shelling of UN peacekeepers and the intrusion into their bases is in no way acceptable.
Summary of the day so far
It’s just past 9pm in Beirut, Tel Aviv and Gaza. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
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The death toll from an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in northern Lebanon on Monday has risen to at least 21 people. The strike targeted the Christian-majority village of Aitou, far from the Hezbollah group’s main areas of influence in the south and east of Lebanon. The Lebanese health ministry said DNA tests were being conducted to identify body parts. So far the main focus of Israel’s military operations in Lebanon has been in the south, the eastern Bekaa valley and the suburbs of Beirut.
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An Israeli airstrike killed at least 20 people including children at the Al-Mufti school in central Gaza on Sunday night, medics said. The school in Nuseirat was sheltering some of the many Palestinians displaced by the war when it was struck by a volley of artillery, killing entire families and wounding dozens more.
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An Israeli airstrike killed at least eight Palestinians and wounded many others in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, medics said on Monday.
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At least 10 Palestinians were killed and at least 30 injured in Israeli airstrikes on a food distribution center in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, Palestinian medics said.
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At least four people were killed after an Israeli airstrike hit near the grounds of al-Aqsa hospital in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, causing a fire that engulfed several tents housing displaced Palestinians. Footage showed people desperately trying to extinguish the flames as explosions could be heard within the camp.
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At least 42,289 Palestinians have been killed and 98,684 wounded in Israeli strikes since 7 October 2023, the Palestinian health ministry said on Monday.
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Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed to strike Hezbollah without mercy following the drone strike on a military base in Israel on Sunday that killed four people. “We will continue to mercilessly strike Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon – including Beirut,” the Israeli prime minister said on Monday.
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Netanyahu is examining a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza in an attempt to starve out Hamas, according to a report. The plan proposed by a group of retired generals would give Palestinians a week to leave the northern third of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, before declaring it a closed military zone. Those who remain would be considered combatants – meaning military regulations would allow troops to kill them – and denied food, water, medicine and fuel, according to a copy of the plan given to the Associated Press.
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Lebanese officials said an Israeli airstrike hit near an aid convoy in Lebanon on Monday, wounding a driver and lightly damaging the trucks. The humanitarian aid, which reached Beirut on Monday, was marked with the flags of Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as well as the Red Cross insignia.
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Hezbollah said it launched a barrage of rockets at the north Israeli town of Safed on Monday. Hezbollah said it battled Israeli troops in south Lebanon, and claimed several new attacks on Israel after a drone strike on an Israeli base near Binyamina, south of Haifa, killed four soldiers on Sunday night. Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant vowed “a forceful response” to the Hezbollah drone attack during a conversation with his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin.
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Israel’s military said that three projectiles had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory, and that all of them had been intercepted, following reports that sirens were sounding across the country. The Israeli military said it also intercepted two drones approaching from Syria, a day after a drone attack by Hezbollah on a base killed four soldiers.
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The UN’s secretary-general, António Guterres, condemned the “large number of civilian casualties in the intensifying Israeli campaign in northern Gaza”, his spokesperson said on Monday. The UN chief “strongly urges all parties to the conflict to comply with international humanitarian law and emphasises that civilians must be respected and protected at all times,” spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.
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The UN’s human rights office said it was appalled by more than a week of heavy Israeli strikes on northern Gaza, where it said tens of thousands of civilians are trapped without food or supplies. It said the Israeli army “appears to be cutting off North Gaza completely from the rest of the Gaza Strip and conducting hostilities with absolute disregard for the lives and security of Palestinian civilians”.
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Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians in the northern West Bank city of Jenin on Monday, the Palestinian health ministry said. According to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, one of the men was 17 years old. Four others were injured by Israeli fire during the raid, it said.
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Israeli attacks on the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (Unifil) are contrary to international humanitarian law and must stop at once, according to a joint statement by Italy, Britain, France and Germany on Monday. The four nations reaffirmed “the essential stabilising role” played by Unifil in southern Lebanon, adding that Israel and other parties had to ensure the safety of the peacekeepers at all times. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said there would be “no withdrawal” of the UN peacekeeping force from southern Lebanon after Israeli attacks and calls to leave. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Unifil’s work “is very important. It’s completely unacceptable attacking United Nations troops.”
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Unifil said Israeli tanks forcibly entered the gates of one position early Sunday and destroyed the main gate. They later fired smoke rounds near peacekeepers, causing skin irritation. The UN peacekeeping mission called the incident a “further flagrant violation of international law”.
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Israel’s infrastructure minister, Eli Cohen, accused Unifil of being a “shield for Hezbollah” and called on Guterres to remove the force. In a post on Twitter/X on Monday, Cohen said the UN force has “contributed nothing to maintaining stability and security in the region” but denied Israel was deliberately targeting peacekeepers.
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Ireland’s foreign minister, Micheál Martin, accused Israel of trying to prevent the world from seeing what its troops are doing in Lebanon and Gaza, and of working to undermine the UN. Asked what Israel’s aim might be in demanding that UN peacekeepers leave their bases in Lebanon after a series of attacks, Martin said: “essentially to drive the eyes and ears out of south Lebanon and to give itself free rein”.
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Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, and economics minister Robert Habeck, are said to have blocked German arms exports to Israel over concerns as to what the weapons would be used for, according to German media reports. No military exports to Israel have been approved since March according to the reports.
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Officials from the US’s main humanitarian agency attend daily meetings on an Israeli military base that also hosts a notorious prison for Palestinian detainees where torture reportedly runs rampant, the Guardian has learned.
Here are some of the latest images sent from the newswires from Lebanon, where at least 1,700 people have been killed and 1.2 million people displaced in the past month.
Israeli attacks on UN forces in Lebanon must stop – Britain, Italy, France and Germany say
Israeli attacks on the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, are contrary to international humanitarian law and must stop at once, Italy, Britain, France and Germany said, Reuters reports.
In a joint statement, the four nations reaffirmed “the essential stabilising role” played by UNIFIL in southern Lebanon, adding that Israel and other parties had to ensure the safety of the peacekeepers at all times.
The UNIFIL mission, which includes hundreds of European soldiers, has said it has repeatedly come under attack from the Israeli military in recent days. Israel has called on the UN to move troops out of the area as it targets Hezbollah forces.
CCTV caught the moment a Hezbollah rocket hit a northern Israeli town.
Israeli ambulances and firefighters rushed to the northern Israeli town of Karmiel on 14 October after Hezbollah launched a rocket barrage into Israel.
Firefighters struggled to extinguish a car that caught fire in the middle of the street, while medics treated one lightly wounded woman, Israel’s ambulances service MDA said.
United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres condemned the “large number of civilian casualties in the intensifying Israeli campaign in northern Gaza,” his spokesperson said.
“He strongly urges all parties to the conflict to comply with international humanitarian law and emphasises that civilians must be respected and protected at all times,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters.
At least 10 people were reportedly killed by Israeli fire at a food distribution centre at Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, where Israeli tanks and troops are continuing a ground offensive.
Some more on the two Palestinians reportedly shot and killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank earlier today.
The governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu al-Rub, said Israeli soldiers surrounded a house in the Jenin refugee camp adjacent to the city.
“The occupation (Israeli) soldiers climbed on the roofs of the houses and started shooting at anything that moved, resulting in the martyrdom of a minor and a young man in his 20s,” he told AFP.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa said one of the dead was a 17-year-old boy.
The Israeli military said it was “looking into the reports”.
Netanyahu says Israel will ‘mercilessly strike’ Hezbollah after drone attack
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to strike Hezbollah without mercy following the drone strike on a military base in Israel on Sunday that killed four. He said retaliation would extend to targets in Beirut, AFP reports.
“We will continue to mercilessly strike Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon – including Beirut. All this according to operational considerations. We have proven it recently and we will continue to prove it in the days to come,” he said while visiting the military base.
Israeli airstrike kills eight in Gaza City
An Israeli airstrike has killed at least eight Palestinians and wounded many others in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, medics told Reuters on Monday.
We will provide more details as we get them.
Hezbollah said it launched a barrage of rockets at the north Israeli town of Safed, AFP reports.
Hezbollah fighters fired a “big rocket salvo” at Safed, the group said in a statement, adding it was “in defence of Lebanon” and in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanese “cities, villages and civilians”.
Some analysis from AP on the drone strike that killed four Israeli soldiers last night:
One of the worst mass casualty strikes on Israel in a year of war came not from dozens of Iranian ballistic missiles nor the repeated barrages of rocket fire launched by Hamas and Hezbollah. Instead, it was a single drone.
The unmanned aerial vehicle, laden with explosives, evaded Israel’s multilayered air-defence system and slammed into a mess hall at a military training camp deep inside Israel, killing four soldiers and wounding over 60.
It shined a light on Israel’s struggle over the past year of war to knock down unmanned aircraft incoming from as far away as Yemen, Iraq and Iran.
Over the years, Israel has built up its aerial defence array to provide broad protection against short-range rocket fire and medium- and long-range missiles, although experts caution it is not airtight. While the system has taken down drones repeatedly, many have penetrated Israel’s airspace and sidestepped its defences, in some cases with deadly results.
An Israeli security official said Israel was still investigating how the drone made it through Israel’s air defences. A pair of drones initially entered Israeli airspace, but while one was shot down, the other one continued to its target.
Air raid sirens had blared in northern Israel as the aircraft flew overhead. But no sirens sounded at the base, giving the soldiers no advance warning and indicating that the drone may have fallen off Israel’s radar.
Hezbollah said the drone was “able to penetrate the Israeli air defence radars without being detected” and reach its target. It claimed it had outsmarted Israel’s air defences by simultaneously launching dozens of missiles and “squadrons” of drones.
It was the second deadly drone strike in just two weeks. Earlier this month, a drone launched from Iraq killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded roughly two dozen, according to Israeli media. On Friday, during a major Jewish holiday, a Hezbollah drone slammed into a nursing home in central Israel, causing damage.
Israel said it allowed 30 trucks of aid to reach northern Gaza, breaking a 2-week-long stretch during which the UN said aid levels fell precipitously in the area, AP reports.
The Israeli body managing aid crossings into the territory, COGAT, said 30 trucks carrying flour and food from the UN’s main food agency traveled through the northern crossing after inspection. The UN has not yet confirmed Israel’s claims.
For the last two weeks, nearly no food, water, fuel or supplies have reached the north, the UN said, with both major crossings closed since 1 October.
The cutoff, combined with a renewed Israeli offensive in the area, has raised fears that Israel is pursuing an extreme plan proposed to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would besiege the northern third of the strip in an effort to prompt a Hamas surrender.
News agency AFP has spoken to volunteer rescuers in Lebanon.
When rescue worker Aya Wehbeh was called to respond to a rare Israeli strike in central Beirut last week, she was terrified it had hit her family home. “This period is really tough,” the 25-year-old said days after the twin strikes on the Nweiri and Basta districts of the capital left at least 22 dead. “I could have ended up pulling my mother, father, aunt or neighbour from the rubble,” she said.
Across the country, rescue workers are struggling to respond to Israeli air strikes, with their resources already depleted by five years of economic crisis and fearing that they could be killed like dozens of colleagues over the past year.
Wissam al-Qubeissi, 29, said he was determined to continue trying to save people despite the challenges. “We’re many and highly motivated,” said the volunteer, wearing a grey uniform he paid for himself. “But what’s the point if we lack bulldozers, equipment and protective gear?” he asked.
In the storage room, he showed AFP rusty helmets, worn-out fire hoses and extinguishers about to reach their expiry dates.
In the south of the country, the job is even more tiring. Israeli air strikes have pounded the area, while Israeli troops have clashed with Hezbollah on the frontier in recent days.
Anis Abla, civil defence chief in the southern border town of Marjayoun, said he suffered severe burns to his face and hands two months ago while extinguishing a fire caused by Israeli shelling. “Our rescue missions are becoming more and more difficult, because the strikes are never-ending and target us,” he said. “We’re exhausted.”
The Lebanese Red Cross says the death toll from the Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in northern Lebanon is now at least 21.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military and it was not clear what the target was.
The strike on Monday hit a small apartment building in the majority-Christian village of Aitou, far from the Hezbollah militant group’s main areas of influence in the south and east of Lebanon.
William Christou
Hezbollah released a new video showcasing their drone fleet on Monday afternoon, with the message “our capabilities are fine”. The slickly produced slip showed fighters preparing several drones for flight with pictures of late secretary general Hassan Nasrallah and slain military chief of staff Fouad Shukur.
The video was released the day after Hezbollah’s deadliest attack on Israel since the beginning of fighting one year prior, killing four soldiers and injuring over 60 in a drone attack on Haifa. It was one of 64 attacks carried out on Sunday by the group, according to the Israeli Alma Research and Education Center.
Hezbollah has insisted that its military capabilities and structure remain intact and ready to fight Israel, despite the massive aerial campaign carried out against it since 23 September and the elimination of almost all of its senior military leadership. In a speech on Friday, head of Hezbollah’s military office Mohammed Afif said that the group’s fighters on the border with Israel were “fine” and ready for “fierce fighting.”
Fighting in Lebanon’s south over the last two weeks has killed over a dozen Israeli soldiers and an unknown amount of Hezbollah fighters – the Lebanese group stopped releasing death notices of its fighters last month.
Israel carried out a strike on an apartment building hosting displaced people in Zgharta, north Lebanon, on Monday, killing at least 18. Israel said that it had targeted the head of Hezbollah’s Radwan force’s anti-tank unit, Mohammed Kamel Naim. Monday’s strike was one of several over the last two weeks targeting residences hosting displaced people in areas of Lebanon thought to be ‘safe’, including a strike on a displacement center in Wardaniyeh, south Lebanon, on Wednesday.
Hezbollah releases a video showcasing their drones, with pics of late-Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and military chief of Staff Fouad Shukur in background.
“Our capabilities are fine” is the message of the video, in a triumphant message after yday’s drone attack in Haifa pic.twitter.com/ffb5MsqyeU
— Will Christou (@will_christou) October 14, 2024
