Updates: Israel launches new strikes on Beirut; Hezbollah attacks army base

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Watch the aftermath of Israeli strikes on a school in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, here.

To read our feature on how displaced Palestinians reacted to Yahya Sinwar’s killing, go here.

And you can read about Israel’s attacks on a Lebanese financial institution linked to Hezbollah, here.

But before leaving, let’s have a recap of the latest developments:

• There have been at least 13 strikes from Israeli drones and the Air Force targeted three locations: Ozai, Jinah and Haret Hreik in southern Beirut.
• Lebanon’s Health Ministry says the attacks have killed at least four people, including a child.
• The director of field hospitals at Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israel is targeting the three remaining medical facilities in northern Gaza.
• The Israeli army spokesperson claims that a strike in Syria’s capital killed the commander of a Hezbollah unit who was responsible for the transfer of weapons from Iran.
• Israeli authorities have arrested seven citizens who they say were paid by Iran to collect intelligence for more than two years.
• An Israeli air raid on the eastern city of Baalbek has hit a building in a densely packed residential area, killing six people, including a child.
• UNRWA says Israel continues to prevent humanitarian missions from reaching areas of northern Gaza with critical supplies, including water, food and medicine for people under siege.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is calling on the US Justice and State departments to investigate recent reports of Israel using Palestinians as human shields in the enclave.

Al Jazeera first reported on the Israeli military’s use of human shields in Gaza in June, and other media outlets have since published their own exposes on the practice.

“The State Department and the Department of Justice must investigate these credible charges of widespread and systematic human rights abuses by military forces that receive weapons paid for by American taxpayers and used against a civilian population,” CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad, said in a statement.

“These abuses, and the obvious and open ethnic cleansing of Gaza, violate our nation’s laws.”

The US provides Israel at least $3.8bn in military aid annually, and the Biden administration has authorised $14bn in further assistance to its ally to help fund the ongoing war.

Israel’s intensifying attacks on northern Gaza reflect the desire of its far-right government to seize Palestinian land historically viewed as being possessed by Jews, an analyst says.

“The Israelis are being driven by their objective of expansion. They want to take northern Gaza as a price to punish the Palestinians and teach next generations a lesson, that once you turn against the Israelis there will be a huge price,” Hassan Barari, a professor of Middle Eastern politics at Qatar University, told Al Jazeera.

“The main component of the Israeli government follows messianic ideology. It doesn’t care about the international community. It doesn’t even care about Israeli society. They want to expand because they feel this is their divine duty to settle the land. So this is the opportunity for them to implement their plan and get as much land as possible.”

The killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has come as a shock to the displaced people in Gaza, who have endured a devastating war for more than a year.

Some wonder if Sinwar’s death signals the end of the war and a ceasefire. Others hold out little hope.

From sadness to despair, anger to resignation, Sinwar’s death has shaken the people in Gaza.

In the makeshift displacement camps of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, those deeply affected by the war spoke to Al Jazeera.

Read the piece here.

Here’s the moment when a woman named Mai was rescued by a Palestinian Civil Defence team in Tal al-Hawa, a neighbourhood of Gaza City, five days after Israeli forces bombed her house.

There have been at least 13 strikes from Israeli drones and the Air Force across the southern suburbs of Beirut.

From the Lebanese Ministry of Health, we know four people have been killed, including one child, and at least 24 people injured. But they are still digging through the rubble, trying to find survivors.

We know that there were scenes of absolute chaos in an area called Ozai. That strike happened very soon after those warnings of forced evacuation from the Israeli army, and people were panicked, screaming, running to their vehicles, packed into cars and motorcycles.

There were traffic jams. There was real fear and chaos among those civilians in a highly populated area.

Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), has shared photos from Gaza City showing the scale of the destruction caused by Israel’s bombardment.

Egeland said NRC staff who visited the city spoke to residents who had fled northern Gaza, which has been under siege by Israeli forces.

“Testimonies they heard from people there included elderly parents unable to reach the bodies of their dead children for burial, of the sick & desperate with zero access to essential medicine, & of people now destitute having spent entire life savings just trying to survive,” he said.

https://x.com/NRC_Egeland/status/1848371129267974490

Lebanon’s Health Ministry says Israeli attacks across the country “will not deter medical personnel from staying on the front lines alongside their community”.

“The ongoing Israeli aggression against Lebanon records a series of daily attacks that affect the Lebanese health sector. The latest of these occurred this evening with the targeting of two major hospitals in the capital and Mount Lebanon,” the ministry said in a statement.

“After the Israeli enemy threatened the Sahel Hospital in the southern suburbs of Beirut, which was still partially operational despite extremely difficult security conditions, a hostile raid hit one of the entrances of Rafik Hariri University Hospital. This hospital continues to operate normally with its full medical and health staff.

The UNRWA head says Israel is stopping humanitarian assistance from reaching northern Gaza which has been under siege for more than two weeks.

“The Israeli authorities continue to deny humanitarian missions to reach the north with critical supplies including medicine and food for people under siege,” Philippe Lazzarini said, adding that those wounded could not be treated because the hospitals had no electricity after being hit.

“Remaining shelters are so overcrowded, some displaced people are now forced to live in the toilets,” he said.

“Denying & weaponizing humanitarian assistance to achieve military purposes is a sign of how low the moral compass is … A ceasefire is the beginning to putting an end to this endless nightmare,” he wrote.

Iran’s mission to the UN says that Biden has signalled “tacit approval and explicit support for Israel’s unlawful military aggression against Iran”, citing remarks by the US president in Germany last week.

“The United States will bear full responsibility for its role in instigating, inciting and enabling any acts of aggression by Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran… as well as for the catastrophic consequences on regional and international peace and security,” Iran’s UN mission said in a letter to the Security Council.

Biden, on a visit to Berlin, also told reporters that he had an understanding of how and when Israel would respond to the missile attacks by Iran, without elaborating.

Here are the latest developments:

• Israeli forces have bombed the vicinity of Rafik Hariri Hospital in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Lebanon’s National News Agency is reporting.
• According to local media reports, Israeli air strikes have targeted three locations: Ozai, Jinah and Haret Hreik.
• Lebanon’s Sahel General Hospital in Beirut’s southern suburbs is being evacuated after Israel claimed that Hezbollah has a bunker filled with cash under it, the hospital director says.
• Hezbollah has released a statement saying it launched rockets at an Israeli army intelligence base near Tel Aviv.
• The director of field hospitals at Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israel is targeting the three remaining medical facilities in northern Gaza.
• The Israeli army spokesperson claims that a strike in Syria’s capital killed the commander of a Hezbollah unit who was responsible for the transfer of weapons from Iran.

Following an evacuation order, the Israeli military is alleging that Sahel Hospital in the southern suburbs of Beirut is being used as a facility to store money, potentially gold, for Hezbollah.

A member of the Lebanese parliament who is aligned with Hezbollah said these allegations are completely baseless. He said the hospital, which is at least 40 years old, has been serving the community for decades.

One can only imagine the Lebanese government, officials and the army on high alert and very concerned.

Some people on social media say they’re concerned this could be the beginning of Israel now targeting medical institutions across Lebanon.

An advanced missile defence battery is now “in place” in Israel, US Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin has said, as Washington seeks to help shield the country against Iranian retaliation.

The deployment of the US-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system comes as Israel prepares to hit back against Iran for a major ballistic missile attack earlier this month, the second time Tehran directly targeted its arch foe this year.

“That system is in place,” Austin told reporters, according to a transcript of his remarks. “We’re not going to talk about … whether it’s operational or not, but we have the ability to put it into operation very quickly.”

The Pentagon announced on October 13 that it would deploy a THAAD battery to Israel. Spokesman Pat Ryder said last week that an advance team of US personnel and components for the battery had arrived, with more to follow soon.

The deployment of the THAAD battery puts the US troops who will operate it – as well as the highly costly system itself – on the ground in Israel and more directly in harm’s way.

We’re getting reports of at least three Israeli air strikes in various locations in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

In an area called Jinah, we understand that the strike was very close to a medical facility, around 400 metres (1,312 feet) from the Hariri hospital.

We’ve also seen pictures of the aftermath of a strike in an area called Ozai, which is again very close to the western runway of the Beirut International Airport.

We’ve seen video of people fleeing that area, scenes of absolute pandemonium on the streets, people screaming down the road as they run away, cars packed full of people, people on motorcycles.

We understand that Haret Hreik, which we’ve seen repeatedly hit over the last few weeks, is the other area that has been struck.