Israel pounds Beirut, kills three Lebanese soldiers in south

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Qatar for talks on Thursday with the key mediator on the war in Gaza, as he seeks momentum for a ceasefire after Israel's killing the leader of Hamas.

After meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Blinken flew to Saudi Arabia and then Qatar, where he will meet the Gulf state's Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani to assess Hamas's position on a truce.

Blinken is paying his 11th trip to the region since the 7 October attacks, after repeated disappointment as he seeks to end the Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

Gaza's civil defence agency said Thursday it could no longer provide first responder services in the north of the territory, accusing Israeli forces of threatening to "bomb and kill" its crews.

Since 6 October, the Israeli military has mounted a sweeping air and land assault on north Gaza, initially focused on the Jabalia area, with evidenceless claims that it is to prevent Hamas from regrouping.

"We are unable to provide humanitarian services to citizens in the northern governorate of the Gaza Strip due to threats from Israeli occupation forces, who have threatened to kill and bomb our teams if they remain inside Jabalia camp", the agency's spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

Bassal said that its first responders "have been targeted" on several occasions, leaving "several members injured, and others are left bleeding on the streets with no one able to rescue them".

Bassal published a photograph of a burnt truck on social media, explaining that it was "the only civil defence vehicle in the northern Gaza Strip governorate", which includes Gaza City.

Bassal wrote that the truck was "targeted by the Israeli army" in the northern city of Beit Lahia, just north of Jabalia and near Gaza's northern border with Israel.

Hezbollah said it launched a "large rocket salvo" at the northern Israeli town of Safed on Thursday.

Hezbollah fighters bombed "the town of Safed... with a large rocket salvo", the group said in a statement, adding the launch came "in response to Israeli enemy attacks" on Lebanon.

The Israeli military claimed, without any evidence, on Thursday it hit several Hezbollah weapons production facilities in overnight strikes in Dahiyeh.

This comes as Lebanese state media reported that six buildings were levelled in at least 17 Israeli strikes during the night.

"Overnight, the IAF (air force) conducted intelligence-based strikes on several weapons storage and manufacturing facilities belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation in the area of Dahiyeh," the military said in a statement.

Lebanon's official National News Agency said an Israeli strike targeted a car on a highway leading to the capital Beirut, as Israel and Hezbollah fight a month-old war.

"An enemy drone targeted a car on the Kahale road," the NNA said, referring to a mountain area on the main highway between Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley.

International support will be needed to shore up and expand Lebanon's army and rebuild the country's destroyed infrastructure, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati told a Paris conference convened amid Israel's war on Lebanon.

Mikati said the Lebanese government had decided to recruit more troops and could deploy 8,000 soldiers as part of a plan to implement a ceasefire and UN Security Council resolution, which calls for the army to be deployed in southern Lebanon.

(Reuters)

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday called for a ceasefire in Gaza and the prevention of further conflict in Lebanon, as he addressed leaders of the BRICS emerging economies.

"We need to continue to push for a ceasefire in Gaza, relaunch the two-State solution and stop the spread of war in Lebanon. There should be no more suffering and destruction in Palestine and Lebanon," Xi told a summit in Russia.

French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated his call for a ceasefire in Lebanon on Thursday, adding he regretted that Iran had engaged Hezbollah against Israel but also criticising Israel's operations in the south of the country.

(Reuters)

France pledged to provide a 100-million euro ($108-million) package to support Lebanon at an international conference Thursday, as President Emmanuel Macron said “massive aid” is needed to support Lebanon and Israel has displaced a million people, killed over 2,500 and deepened an economic crisis.

“In the immediate term, massive aid is needed for the Lebanese population, both for the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the war and for the communities hosting them,” Macron said in his opening speech at the conference.

French organisers hope participants’ financial pledges of humanitarian aid will meet the $426 million the United Nations says is urgently needed.

Hezbollah says it targeted an Israeli military base near Haifa for the second time within 24 hours.

Hezbollah fighters bombed the “defence industry” base “north of the city of Haifa with a salvo of rockets,” a statement said, after claiming an attack Wednesday on the same site.

Germany will provide a further 96 million euros ($103.57 million) in humanitarian and development aid to Lebanon, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Thursday ahead of a meeting of some 70 delegations in Paris focused on helping the country.

"We are making it clear that we not only see the suffering in Lebanon these days, we are taking action; we are supporting the people on the ground who, for the most part, want only one thing: to live in safety and peace in the future, just like so many people in Israel," added Baerbock.

France is hoping that the meeting will raise about 500 million euros ($540 million) in humanitarian aid, according to a French foreign ministry framework document for the conference.

(Reuters)

Syrian state media said Israeli airstrikes hit a residential area of Damascus and a military site in Homs Thursday, killing a soldier and wounding seven other people.

The Israeli army "launched an attack from the occupied Syrian Golan and from north Lebanon targeting two sites" in the Kafr Sousa district of Damascus and a military site near Homs, the official SANA news agency reported citing a military source.

SANA said a soldier was killed and seven others wounded in the strike in Homs, a central province which borders Lebanon, where Israeli troops are fighting Hezbollah.

Syrian state media made no mention of any casualties in the Damascus strike but the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights spoke of "human losses".

Israel unleashed a wave of air strikes in Beirut on Wednesday night, Lebanese state media said.

The official Lebanon National News Agency reported at least 17 Israeli strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, calling the raids "the most violent in the area since the beginning of the war".

Six buildings were destroyed around the suburb of Laylaki, NNA said, including a residential complex hit by four Israeli strikes "causing a large fire".

The Lebanese army said Thursday that three of its soldiers were killed by Israeli fire while carrying out a rescue operation in the south.

"The Israeli enemy targeted Lebanese army personnel in the vicinity of Yater village, in the Bint Jbeil area of the south, while carrying out an operation to evacuate wounded, which led to the deaths of three martyrs, including an officer," an army statement said.