Gaza rescuers report deadly strikes in Nuseirat camp which killed 13

A French court on Tuesday ordered organisers of a defence trade show to suspend a ban on Israeli firms, the lawyer for the Franco-Israeli chamber of commerce told AFP.

The Paris Commerce Tribunal said the decision by Coges Events to ban 74 Israeli exhibitors from Eurosatory was "discriminatory", said the lawyer, Patrick Klugman.

Coges Events said last month that the ban was ordered by the French government. No explanation was provided.

The defence fair is being held from June 17 to 21 at fairgrounds close to the main Paris international airport.

In response to the ban, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Arieh King, asked that rubbish collectors bypass the French consulate, though a City Hall statement said the request would not be implemented.

Israel's more than eight-month offensive on the Gaza Strip has destroyed 70 percent of the enclave's healthcare sector, the territory's health ministry said on Tuesday.

As of June 7, the World Health Organization (WHO) had documented 476 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza, which killed 727 people and injured 933.

Hezbollah on Tuesday published a nine-minute 31 second-long video of what it said was footage gathered from its surveillance aircraft of locations in Israel, including the city of Haifa's sea and air ports.

Haifa is 27 kilometres (17 miles) from the Lebanese border.

The group's head, Hassan Nasrallah, said in November that Hezbollah had been sending surveillance drones over Haifa.

هذا هو السبب في المعلومات الاستخباراتية الدقيقة والاصابات القاتلة والمدمرة التي يملكها حزب الله .
الهدهد عاد بمعلومات قيمة ومهمة وفي غاية السرية من ميناء حيفا .

المسيرات تخترق الحدود الشمالية للاستهداف وجمع المعلومات ، للمراحل القادمة .

اسرائيل متخوفه من حجم المعلومات… https://t.co/tol0Go39ph pic.twitter.com/b8kgKOGE1w

— Tamer | تامر (@tamerqdh) June 18, 2024

Israeli settlers in the West Bank have injured two Palestinians following an attack on the village of Burin, south of Nablus, the Palestinian news agency Wafa said on Tuesday.

Ambulance crews transferred the two victims who were identified as a 54-years-old woman and 50-year-old man to a nearby hospital, a spokesperson for the Red Crescent said.

Additionally, a group of Israeli settlers stormed the village and attacked several homes near the Burin Industrial School. 

The Israeli army has launched artillery shelling, striking the outskirts of the town of Shebaa in southern Lebanon,  Al Jazeera Arabic is reporting.

A French court on Tuesday ordered organisers of a defence trade show to suspend a ban on Israeli firms, the lawyer for the Franco-Israeli chamber of commerce told AFP.

The Paris Commerce Tribunal said the decision by Coges Events to ban 74 Israeli exhibitors from Eurosatory was "discriminatory", said the lawyer, Patrick Klugman.

Coges Events said last month that the ban was ordered by the French government. No explanation was provided.

The defence fair is being held from June 17 to 21 at fairgrounds close to the main Paris international airport.

In response to the ban, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Arieh King, asked that rubbish collectors bypass the French consulate, though a City Hall statement said the request would not be implemented.

An Israeli intelligence brief prepared weeks before Hamas's October 7 attack had warned military officials of the Palestinian group's preparations for an assault, according to Israeli public broadcaster Kan.

The conflict in Gaza has created unprecedented soil, water and air pollution in the region, destroying sanitation systems and leaving tons of debris from explosive devices, a United Nations report on the environmental impact of the war said on Tuesday.

Explosive weapons have generated some 39 million tons of debris, the report said. Each square metre of the Gaza Strip is now littered with more than 107 kilograms (236 lbs) of debris. That is more than five times the debris generated during the battle for Mosul, Iraq, in 2017, the report said.

The Gaza Strip's health ministry said Tuesday that at least 37,372 people have been killed in the territory during more than eight months of Israel's offensive.

The toll includes at least 25 deaths in the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that a total of 85,452 people had been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began on October 7.

Jerusalem's deputy mayor, an ultranationalist Israeli politician, has asked for rubbish not to be collected from the French consulate after Paris barred Israeli firms from an arms show.

Organisers of the Eurosatory trade show just outside Paris said last month French authorities had banned Israeli firms, with the French defence ministry attributing the decision the Israel's military operations in the Gaza Strip's Rafah city.

Deputy Mayor Arieh King posted on social media platform X a letter he had addressed to the municipal sanitation department, asking "to instruct Jerusalem municipal maintenance workers to cease immediately garbage removal service from the French consulate building".

A City Hall statement said King's request would not be implemented.

U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein said on Tuesday that Washington was seeking to avoid "a greater war" following an escalation in cross-border fire between Hezbollah and the Israeli military along Lebanon's southern frontier in recent weeks.

Hochstein described the situation along the border as "serious" and said that was why U.S. President Joe Biden had dispatched him to Lebanon.

The United Nations human rights chief on Tuesday warned that the rights situation in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was drastically deteriorating, while there had been "unconscionable death and suffering" in Gaza.

"The situation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is dramatically deteriorating," said Volker Turk, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

He said that as of June 15, 528 Palestinians, 133 of them children, had been killed by Israeli security forces or settlers since October, in some cases raising "serious concerns of unlawful killings."

U.S. and British forces have carried out at least six airstrikes on Yemen's Hodeidah International Airport and four strikes on Kamaran Island near the port of Salif off the Red Sea, Al-Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by Yemen's Houthi movement, said on Monday.

The strikes on Kamaran mark the first time U.S.-led coalition forces have targeted the island since airstrikes on Houthi targets began in early February.

They follow the Iran-backed Houthis' first successful armed maritime drone strike and other missile assaults that damaged the Tutor and Verbena cargo ships last week. Both of the vessels are abandoned and adrift - with Tutor at risk of sinking, military and security experts said.

A senior adviser to US President Joe Biden will visit Beirut on Tuesday to discuss ways of ending months-long border clashes between Lebanon's Hezbollah and Israel.

Amos Hochstein is expected to meet with Lebanese officials such as caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Lebanon is still without a president.

Hochstein was in Israel on Monday as Washington seeks a diplomatic solution to end the conflict.

Two key Democrats in the U.S. Congress have agreed to support a major arms sale to Israel that includes 50 F-15 fighter jets worth more than $18 billion, the Washington Post reported on Monday, citing three unnamed officials.

Representative Gregory Meeks and Senator Ben Cardin have signed off on the deal under heavy pressure from the Biden administration after the two lawmakers had for months held up the sale, the Post reported.

"Any issues or concerns Chair Cardin had were addressed through our ongoing consultations with the (Biden)Administration, and that’s why he felt it appropriate to allow this case to move forward," Eric Harris, communications director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Post in a statement.

Meeks told the paper that he had been in close contact with the White House and had urged them to pressure Israel over humanitarian efforts and civilian casualties. He said the F-15s would not be delivered until "years from now," according to the Post.

Thousands of Israelis protested against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government on Monday over the Gaza war and failure to negotiate the release of scores of hostages still held in the Palestinian territory.

Protests against Netanyahu's handling of the war have gathered pace, with tens of thousands taking to the streets of Israel's biggest city, Tel Aviv, every weekend.

But protesters travelled to Jerusalem to rally outside the Israeli parliament and Netanyahu's residence on Monday, clashing with police and urging new elections as part of what has been dubbed a week of disturbance by activists.