Israel bombards Beirut, carries out deadliest West Bank strike in decades

Hezbollah said an Israeli strike on Friday killed a rescuer at the site of an overnight air raid in south Beirut, accusing Israel of deliberately targeting civil defence teams.

After massive Israeli strikes overnight in the Lebanese capital, "Israeli aircraft targeted civil defence teams who were working to remove the rubble and rescue the wounded, leading to the death of a civil defence member," the Iran-backed group said. A source close to Hezbollah earlier told AFP the strike was carried out with a drone.

A World Health Organisation official on Friday said the organisation has requested that Israel begin the second phase of the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza on 14 October.

"We have asked the Israeli authorities to consider a similar scheme that we had for the first round, something they call 'tactical pauses' (in fighting) during the working hours of the campaign," said Ayadil Saparbekov, WHO lead for emergencies in the occupied Palestinian territory.

He said negotiations were ongoing and that a meeting with Israeli authorities about the campaign's next phase was planned for Sunday.

(Reuters) 

A UN refugee agency official on Friday said that most of Lebanon's nearly 900 shelters were full and that people fleeing Israeli strikes were increasingly sleeping out in the open.

"Most of the nearly 900 government established collective shelters in Lebanon have no more capacity," UNHCR's Rula Amin told a Geneva press briefing. "With the onset of winter, UNHCR is concerned that conditions for those affected by the escalating conflict in other will only worsen," she added.

(Reuters) 

Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said it shelled Israeli troops in a border area of south Lebanon Friday, in the latest such clash on the frontier.

The Iran-backed group said its fighters targeted "Israeli enemy troops in the Maroun al-Ras plain with artillery".

Israel's military said on Friday that it had eliminated the head of Hezbollah's communication networks, Mohammad Rashid Sakafi, by conducting a "precise, intelligence-based strike" in Beirut on Thursday.

(Reuters)

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday that the US and its allies were preserving the security of Israel to make it an energy exporting gate from the region to the West but that the resistance in the region would not back down against Israel. 

(Reuters) 

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday that his country would not "procrastinate or rush to carry out its duty" in confronting Israel.

"The brilliant action of our armed forces a couple of nights ago was completely legal and legitimate," he said, referring to Iran's missile attack on Israel. 

(Reuters)

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday defended Iran's missile attack on Israel as "legal and legitimate".

"The operation of our armed forces a few nights ago was totally legal and legitimate," he said during a rare Friday prayer sermon.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had a rifle by his side as he addressed worshippers in Tehran in a rare public sermon Friday, days after Iran's missile attack on Israel.

Khamenei delivered the sermon -- his first in nearly five years - to thousands of worshippers carrying portraits of slain leaders of Iran's "axis of resistance" against Israel and the United States.

A source close to Hezbollah said Friday the Lebanese militant group's slain chief Hassan Nasrallah has been temporarily buried in a secret location fearing Israel would target a large funeral.

"Hassan Nasrallah has been temporarily buried, until the circumstances allow for a public funeral," the source said, after an Israeli strike killed the leader last week.

Britain said it would provide an additional 10 million pounds ($13 million) of humanitarian support to Lebanon to help the country deal with the mass displacement of people and the growing number of civilian casualties. 

(Reuters)

The Israeli military on Friday told the residents of over 20 more southern towns in Lebanon to evacuate immediately, spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on X.

(Reuters)

#عاجل ‼️ انذار عاجل جديد إلى سكان الضاحية الجنوبية وتحديدًا المتواجدين في المبنى المحدد في الخارطة والواقع في حي حدث بيروت والمباني المجاورة له

🔴أنتم متواجدون بالقرب من منشآت ومصالح تابعة لحزب الله حيث سيعمل ضدها جيش الدفاع على مدى الزمني القريب
🔴من أجل سلامتكم وسلامة أبناء… pic.twitter.com/I88Q5tvWEZ

— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) October 3, 2024

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi landed in Beirut on Friday, according to Lebanese state media. A Reuters live broadcast showed an Iranian-flagged plane landing at Beirut airport just hours after air strikes hit outside the airport perimeter overnight.

Araqchi is set to meet Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, a close ally of Iran-backed Hezbollah, according to his schedule.

(Reuters) 

An Israeli strike on Friday morning near Lebanon's Masnaa border crossing with Syria cut off a road used by hundreds of thousands of people to flee Israeli bombardments in recent days, Lebanon Transport Minister Ali Hamieh told Reuters.

Hamieh said the strike hit inside Lebanese territory near the border crossing, creating a four-metre (12 feet) wide crater.

An Israeli army military spokesman had accused the Lebanese group Hezbollah on Thursday of using the crossing to transport military equipment into Lebanon.

"The IDF will not allow the smuggling of these weapons and will not hesitate to act if forced to do so, as it has done throughout this war," army spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X.

Hamieh had said at a press conference on Thursday that the crossing was subject to the authority of the Lebanese state.

According to Lebanese government statistics, over 300,000 people - a vast majority of them Syrian - had crossed from Lebanon into Syria over the last 10 days to escape escalating Israeli bombardment.

(Reuters)