Israel targets 2,000+ sites in Lebanon as Iran FM lands in Beirut

This live blog has wrapped up. The New Arab will be back at 9am with live updates from Gaza and Lebanon.

Hezbollah said early Saturday it was engaged in ongoing clashes with Israeli troops in the Lebanon border area, after earlier saying it forced Israeli soldiers to retreat there.

"Israeli enemy soldiers renewed an attempt to advance towards the vicinity of the municipality in the village of Adaysseh", and Hezbollah fighters confronted the attempt "and clashes are continuing", the group said in a statement, after earlier saying its fighters had forced Israeli troops to "retreat" in the same area.

Republican White House hopeful Donald Trump said Friday he believes Israel should strike Iran's nuclear facilities in response to the Islamic republic's recent missile barrage.

The former president, speaking at a campaign event in North Carolina, referred to a question posed to Democratic President Joe Biden this week about the possibility of Israel targeting Iran's nuclear program.

"When they asked him that question, the answer should have been, hit the nuclear first, and worry about the rest later," Trump said.

A blast was heard and smoke was seen over Beirut’s southern suburbs in the early hours of Saturday, Reuters witnesses said, shortly after the Israeli military issued two alerts for residents of the area to immediately evacuate.

The first alert on Saturday called on residents specifically present in a building at Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood. The second alert mentioned those present in a building at Choueifat district.

The strikes on Beirut come as fighting between the Lebanese Hezbollah group and Israel rages amid Israel's military escalation in the country.

The United States will provide nearly $157 million in new humanitarian assistance to support populations affected by conflict in Lebanon and the region, the State Department said in a statement on Friday.

"This funding will address new and existing needs of internally displaced persons and refugee populations inside Lebanon and the communities that host them. The assistance will also support those fleeing to neighboring Syria," the State Department said.

The Israeli military issued in the early hours of Saturday a new alert for residents of Beirut's southern suburbs to evacuate immediately.

The UK has announced it has chartered a flight departing Beirut on Sunday to assist its citizens wishing to leave the country.

“Any remaining British nationals who want to leave Lebanon are urged to register their presence immediately to receive details on how to request a seat,” the government said in a statement.

It added that approximately 250 British nationals have already been evacuated.

The UK has chartered a flight to leave Beirut on Sunday 6 October.

Any remaining British nationals who want to leave Lebanon are urged to register their presence immediately to receive details on how to request a seat.
https://t.co/hA1MsdUn6f pic.twitter.com/OuyyNF6hyB

— Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (@FCDOGovUK) October 4, 2024

Germany has called the Israeli air strike on the Tulkarem refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, which resulted in at least 18 deaths, "shocking."

“The high number of civilian casualties in an Israeli air strike in Tulkarem is shocking. In the fight against terror, the Israeli army is obliged to protect civilians in the West Bank,” the German Foreign Ministry stated on X.

Hamas' armed wing al-Qassam Brigades confirmed death of one of its commanders Zahi Yaser Oufi in an Israeli strike on the West Bank city of Tulkarm along with seven other fighters, the group said in a statement on Friday.

The Israeli military said that it killed Oufi, head of the Hamas network in Tulkarm, in an attack on Thursday.

Two Israeli soldiers have been killed following a drone attack launched from Iraq, the Israeli military said on Friday. The soldiers were at an army base in northern Israel at the time of the incident.

Israel has taken serious losses from an attack from Iraq for the first time. Daniel Aviv Haim Sofer, 19,and Tal Dror, 19, both from Golani Brigade’s 13th Battalion, from Jerusalem were killed when they were hit by an explosive laden drone. Their base in the Golan Heights was hit… pic.twitter.com/Oh2MRmmYdt

— Shaiel Ben-Ephraim (@academic_la) October 4, 2024

Lebanon’s health minister has said that 2,023 people have been killed “since the start of Israeli aggression on Lebanon”.

The dead include 127 children and 261 women, along with 9,526 wounded.

President Joe Biden had terse words for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, and said he didn't know whether the Israeli leader was holding up a peace deal in order to influence the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

“No administration has helped Israel more than I have,” Biden said. “None. None, none. And I think Bibi should remember that. And whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know but I’m not counting on that.”

Biden, in a rare appearance in the White House press briefing room, was responding to comments made by one of his allies, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who said on CNN this week that he was concerned Netanyahu had little interest in a peace deal in part because of U.S. politics.

President Joe Biden on Friday said the United States was working to rally the international community to avoid all-out war in the Middle East.

"The main thing we can do is try to rally the rest of the world and our allies into participating... to tamp this down," he told reporters.

The US continues to arm and diplomatically support Israel as it wages its expanding war.

President Joe Biden said on Friday he would think about alternatives to striking Iranian oil fields if he were in Israel's shoes, adding he thinks Israel has not yet concluded how to respond to Iran.

"The Israelis have not concluded what they are going to do in terms of a strike. That's under discussion," Biden said in remarks to reporters at a White House press briefing.

"If I were in their shoes, I'd be thinking about other alternatives than striking oilfields," the president added.

Vice President Kamala Harris will meet with leaders from the Arab American community in Flint, Michigan, on Friday, as her presidential campaign seeks to win back voters angry at U.S. support for Israel's wars in Gaza and Lebanon, two sources said.

Meeting participants include leaders from the Muslim advocacy group Emgage, which recently endorsed Harris, the American Task Force on Lebanon, and a long-standing friend of Harris, Hala Hijazi, who has lost dozens of family members in Gaza, said the sources, who did not wish to be named.

Other such as Jim Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute and a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee, said he declined the invitation. Leaders from the Uncommitted National Movement protest campaign said they have not been invited to the meeting.

"I wish she would meet with leaders from the community who haven't endorsed her or support her," said one of the sources.

According to a report by ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative journalism organisation, senior officials in the US State Department have dismissed internal warnings about Israelis misusing American-made bombs and have worked relentlessly to expedite additional weapons shipments, even as Gaza’s death toll rises.

Leaked cables and emails reveal that the State Department approved these arms sales, stating there was “no potential” for the Israeli military to misuse the weapons, the report claims. This approval occurred despite staff repeatedly noting attacks that resulted in high civilian casualties, which many experts classify as potential war crimes, ProPublica reported.

The article, titled Inside the State Department’s Weapons Pipeline to Israel, draws on internal State Department cables, emails, memos, meeting minutes, and interviews with current and former agency officials. It details incidents such as the late December gesture when staff in the arms transfer bureau in Washington, DC, received Christmas gifts—cases of wine from a winery in the Negev desert—with personalised notes on each bottle from the Israeli embassy.

A State Department spokesperson told ProPublica that arms transfers to any country, including Israel, “are done so in a deliberative manner with appropriate input” from other agencies. An Israeli government spokesperson responded to the report, calling it “biased” and asserting that it seeks to portray “legitimate and routine contacts” between the Israeli Embassy in Washington and State Department officials as improper

The Polish Foreign Ministry reports that a plane carrying several dozen Polish citizens, along with nationals from other countries who sought to leave Lebanon, has safely arrived in Poland.

In response to Israel’s escalating bombing campaign in Lebanon, multiple countries have developed contingency plans to evacuate their citizens. Although no nation has initiated a large-scale military evacuation, some are arranging charter flights as Beirut’s airport remains operational.

The Polish military operated the flight to Warsaw, and the ministry announced on X that it is "prepared for various scenarios" while closely monitoring the situation in Lebanon.

In Warsaw, a plane from Beirut landed with several dozen citizens of 🇵🇱 and other countries in a humanitarian transport.

The flight was carried out by the Polish Armed Forces. The MFA is monitoring the situation in 🇱🇧, and the 🇵🇱 government is prepared for various scenarios.

— Ministry of Foreign Affairs 🇵🇱 (@PolandMFA) October 4, 2024

The United Nations on Friday condemned what it called an "unlawful air strike" by Israel on a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank that the Palestinian health ministry said killed 18 people the previous day.

"The strike is part of a highly concerning pattern of unlawful use of force by ISF (Israeli security forces) during military-like operations in the West Bank that have caused widespread harm to Palestinians and significant damage to buildings and infrastructure," the United Nations rights office said in a statement.

"This incident is another clear example of ISF's systematic resort to lethal force in the West Bank that is frequently unnecessary, disproportionate, and therefore unlawful," the office said, as it called for an independent probe into the incident.

"The levelling of an entire building filled with people via aerial bombing shows flagrant disregard for Israel's obligations."

France's foreign minister will head to Saudi Arabia on Friday evening, beginning a four-day trip that will end in Israel and the West Bank. Paris seeks to revive stalled diplomatic efforts in the region.

Jean-Noel Barrot will be in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan over the weekend before arriving in Israel ahead of 7 October, when Israel will mark a year since the Hamas attacks, a French diplomatic source said.

He is also due to travel to the West Bank. 

(Reuters) 

The Islamic Health Committee emergency service said 11 of its rescue personnel were killed in Israeli strikes in south Lebanon on Friday.

In a statement, it said seven emergency personnel died in "direct Zionist aggression on emergency teams" at the Marjayoun governmental hospital, with four others killed in two attacks elsewhere in south Lebanon.

The toll on civilians in Lebanon from Israel’s war on Lebanon is “totally unacceptable,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Friday.

“All parties must do whatever they can at all times to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure and ensure that civilians are never put in harm's way,” Dujarric told reporters.

(Reuters)

A plane carrying several dozens of Poles and citizens of other countries who wanted to leave Lebanon landed in Warsaw on Friday, the Polish Foreign Ministry said on social media platform X.

Western nations have drafted contingency plans to evacuate citizens from Lebanon after a dramatic escalation in Israel's war on Lebanon, coupled with Iran's missile attack on Israel on Tuesday.

No country has launched a large-scale military evacuation yet, though some are chartering aircraft as Beirut airport stays open.

(Reuters)

Humanitarian aid must be allowed into Gaza, where life is becoming "impossible" for the population, the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity urged on Friday.

The organisation's president for France, Isabelle Defourny, told AFP on her return from southern Gaza that aid deliveries needed to be "sufficient to address the emergencies" suffered by the civilian population there.

"We have said again and again that the Gaza Strip has become uninhabitable, but now it's actually becoming impossible to live there," she said.

Over two million people were living "virtually outdoors", she said, with only plastic sheets for cover.

"As cold weather approaches, this is going to go very badly," she said, adding that current humanitarian aid had been "in no way sufficient".

US-British airstrikes were launched at several parts of Yemen, including its capital, Sanaa, and Hodeidah airport, Al Masirah TV, the leading television news outlet run by the Houthi movement controlling much of Yemen, and residents said on Friday.

Strikes also targeted the south of Dhamar city, Al Masirah TV added.

Iran-aligned Houthi militants have launched attacks on international shipping near Yemen since last November in solidarity with Palestinians in Israel's war with Hamas.

The Houthi attacks have drawn US and British retaliatory strikes and disrupted global trade as ship owners reroute vessels away from the Red Sea and Suez Canal to sail the longer route around the southern tip of Africa.

(Reuters)

Hezbollah said it targeted Israeli troops in the south Lebanon border area for a second time on Friday after earlier saying it had shelled Israeli soldiers nearby.

Hezbollah fighters targeted "an Israeli enemy troop force during its advance" towards an area west of the border village of Yarun "with artillery shells and a rocket salvo", a statement said, with the group also claiming a series of attacks on Israeli soldiers across the border on Friday.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed in a drone attack from Iraq in an army base in the northern Golan Heights - the Israeli army said on Thursday.

The attack wounded 24 more.

The army said two explosive-laden drones were launched from Iraq in the attack, one which was shot down and the second hit their army base.

Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 29 Palestinians on Friday, medics said, and sirens blared in southern Israel in response to renewed rocket fire from militants in the Palestinian enclave.

The new rocket salvoes indicated that Hamas factions in Gaza are still able to fire projectiles into Israel despite a year-long Israeli aerial and ground offensive that has turned wide areas of the enclave into wasteland.

On Friday, the Israeli military said sirens sounded in southern Israel for the first time in around two months.

"Almost a year after Oct. 7, Hamas is still threatening our civilians with their terrorism and we will continue operating against them," it added, referring to the anniversary of Hamas' cross-border attack that touched off the Gaza war.

(Reuters)

The Israeli army on Friday said its forces had hit more than 2,000 sites during its four-day incursion into southern Lebanon.

"Over 2,000 military targets have been struck," including militants, military buildings, weapons and more, the Israeli military said in a statement.

Ali Hamieh, the Lebanese Minister of Public Works in the caretaker government, warned that Lebanon is about to enter a land and air blockade.

In a meeting with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Friday, Hamieh informed him about the ongoing operations at all maritime, land, and air facilities, particularly Beirut's Rafic Hariri International Airport, and the procedures in place for the airport and all maritime ports, especially regarding the import and export of goods, including essential food supplies for the Lebanese people.

He highlighted the recent attack of the Al-Masnaa crossing, the main land border between Lebanon and Syria, which has now become a humanitarian passage, with around 70,000 Lebanese having crossed towards Syria and Damascus.

The caretaker Minister of Public Health, Firass Abiad, received a shipment of medical supplies and medications at Rafic Hariri International Airport provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in the presence of WHO representative in Lebanon, Dr. Abdul Nasser Abu Bakr, and UNHCR representative Ivo Freijsen.

Abiad stated, "We are at Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut, receiving a shipment of aid consisting of medical supplies and medications for war casualties, prepared by the WHO and UNHCR, with support from the United Arab Emirates."

He pointed out that "this shipment comes at a very critical time, coinciding with the ongoing and expanding Israeli attacks on Lebanon. It carries two important messages: first, from our brothers and friends, saying that you are not alone in facing this aggression. We stand with your people, whether they are injured or displaced, with everything they need. The second message is the material assistance amid this crisis so that the health and relief sectors can fulfil their duties."

Abiad also announced that "there will be an air bridge from the United Arab Emirates to Lebanon, and this afternoon, a plane carrying 55 tons of aid will arrive, with more planes to come from Slovakia, Poland, and other countries."

He emphasized that "all of this is to strengthen our relief system in confronting the crisis we are in."

On his part, Abu Bakr said, "The WHO and the United Nations system, in general, are committed to alleviating the pressures on Lebanon and its people, as well as other vulnerable individuals living in the country. We stand by the government and the people of Lebanon to overcome this challenge."

UNHCR representative Ivo Freijsen added, "We want to show our solidarity with Lebanon through the work of all humanitarian organizations in providing the necessary assistance, and we call on all donors to respond swiftly."

Three hospitals in Lebanon, including one on the outskirts of Beirut's southern suburbs, announced Friday the suspension of work amid ongoing Israeli bombardment.

In statements carried by the official National News Agency, Sainte Therese Hospital near Beirut's southern suburbs reported "huge damage" to the building on Thursday due to Israeli bombardment in the vicinity and the subsequent "halt of hospital services", while two hospitals in the country's south also said services had stopped.

The Israeli military claimes it has killed around 250 Hezbollah fighters, including a number of battalion and company commanders, since the start of its ground operation in Lebanon earlier this week, a military spokesperson said on Friday.

Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said the military was still assessing the damage caused by airstrikes in southern Beirut on Thursday night, which he said targeted Hezbollah's intelligence headquarters. 

(Reuters) 

Iran will target Israeli energy and gas installations if Israel attacks it, the semi-official Iranian news agency SNN quoted Revolutionary Guards deputy commander Ali Fadavi as saying on Friday.

"If the occupiers make such a mistake, we will target all their energy sources, installations and all refineries and gas fields," Fadavi said. 

(Reuters)

Some migrant domestic workers in Lebanon have been locked in homes while their employers flee from Israel's air strikes, the United Nations said Friday.

The UN's International Organisation for Migration said foreign domestic staff were increasingly being abandoned by the Lebanese families to face heightened danger in the conflict.

The IOM raised the plight of Lebanon's 170,000 migrant workers, many of whom are women from countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Bangladesh and the Philippines.

"We are receiving increasing reports of migrant domestic workers being abandoned by their Lebanese employers, either left on the streets or in their homes as their employers flee," said Mathieu Luciano, the IOM's head of office in Lebanon.

"They face very limited shelter options," he told a press briefing in Geneva, via video from Beirut, adding that on Thursday he visited a shelter in the capital housing 64 Sudanese families "who have nowhere else to go".

He said the IOM was receiving increasing requests from migrants seeking help to go home. Many countries have also sought the agency's help to evacuate citizens.

However, "this would require significant funding -- which we currently do not have," he added.

Tehran backs efforts for a ceasefire in Lebanon on the condition it would be backed by Hezbollah and simultaneous with a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araqchi said in Beirut on Friday.

"We support efforts for a ceasefire on the condition that it would be acceptable to the Lebanese people, acceptable to the resistance, and thirdly, it would be synchronized with a ceasefire in Gaza," he said.

Iran's most senior diplomat also said his presence in Beirut "in these difficult circumstances" was the best evidence that Iran stood by Lebanon and supported the Shi'ites. 

(Reuters) 

The Palestine Red Crescent Society has announced that it has resumed operations in the Bureij refugee camp after temporarily ceasing operations due to Israeli airstrikes.

"The station has been rehabilitated and re-equipped to serve the citizens of Al-Bureij and Al-Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, despite the limited available recourses," PRCS said in a post on X.

The Palestine Red Crescent Emergency Medical Services station in Al-Bureij camp has resumed operations after being temporarily out of service due to the dangerous conditions caused by Israeli occupation strikes. The station has been rehabilitated and re-equipped to serve the… pic.twitter.com/4wrxCOmDBN

— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) October 4, 2024

Iran will target Israeli energy and gas installations if Israel attacks it, the semi-official Iranian news agency SNN quoted Revolutionary Guards deputy commander Ali Fadavi as saying on Friday.

"If the occupiers make such a mistake, we will target all their energy sources, installations and all refineries and gas fields," Fadavi said.

The Israeli military said on Friday that for the first time in nearly two months, there were sirens sounding in southern Israel, near the Gaza Strip.

"Almost a year after Oct. 7, Hamas is still threatening our civilians with their terrorism and we will continue operating against them," the army added in a post on X. 

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Friday vowed support for Tehran's "friends" in Lebanon, on his first visit to Beirut since fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah intensified last month.

"Be sure that the Islamic Republic of Iran is and will be firmly standing by the friends in Lebanon," Araghchi told reporters, adding that Tehran supports Lebanon, its Shiite Muslim community and Hezbollah, "and it was necessary to say this in person".

A delivery of medical supplies from the United Nations reached Lebanon on Friday, a first since last week's escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, said a UN agency and a Lebanese minister.

"An airlift... landed in Beirut earlier this morning with 30 metric tonnes of trauma and surgical supplies, enough to treat tens of thousands people," the World Health Organisation's regional director Hanan Balkhy said on social media platform X.

"More flights are arriving later today and tomorrow, carrying trauma supplies, cholera supplies and mental health supplies," she added.

Health Minister Firass Abiad was at the Beirut airport on Friday to receive aid organised by the World Health Organization and UN refugee agency UNHCR, which was funded by the United Arab Emirates.

"We are receiving the first shipment out of many," he said.

The shipment included "many trauma kits that will be crucial to support the hospitals as they receive the casualties from the Israeli attacks on Lebanon," he added.

Over 41,802 Palestinians have been killed and 96,844 injured in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, Gaza's Health Ministry said in a statement on Friday.

(Reuters)

The Israeli army said Friday its fighter jets struck Hezbollah targets near a key Lebanese-Syrian border crossing overnight, the latest in a series of heavy strikes against the Iran-backed group.

"Infrastructure sites adjacent to the Masnaa border crossing between Syria and Lebanon were struck last night," the military said in a statement.

It said the air raids were aimed at preventing the flow of weapons into Lebanon from neighbouring Syria and included targeting an alleged underground tunnel used to move arms across the border.

Fighter jets "struck an underground tunnel crossing from the Lebanese border into Syria. The 3.5 kilometre (two mile) long tunnel enables the transfer and storage of large quantities of weapons underground," the military said.

"The tunnel's operations were led by the 4400 Unit, the unit responsible for the transportation of weapons from Iran and its proxies to Hezbollah in Lebanon."

An Israeli strike on the southern Lebanese town of Marjayoun on Friday hit around five metres from the entrance of its main hospital, and medical staff have decided to temporarily evacuate, the hospital director, Mounes Klakesh, told Reuters.

"No one was wounded from the medical staff but we have decided to evacuate temporarily until the security situation becomes clearer," Klakesh said.

(Reuters) 

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)