Israeli strikes kill six paramedics in Lebanon as Biden advisers seek deal

The live blog has now ended and will be back at 9am GMT. You can read more of The New Arab's coverage of Israel's war on Gaza here, and Israel's war on Lebanon here.

The European Council President warned on Thursday that Israel's decision to ban the key UN aid agency for Gaza could result in the annulment of a deal establishing Israeli trade relations with Brussels.

Israel passed a law on Monday banning the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA from operating in the country, raising concerns about its ability to provide relief in Gaza after over a year of its war on the enclave.

"The decision made by parliament in Israel, if implemented, to ban UNRWA in Israel is absolutely not acceptable and I cannot imagine that there would be no consequences on the EU side," Charles Michel told reporters in Geneva.

"I can observe that more and more voices, including at the political level, the highest political level of the EU, are considering that the time will come to put on the table the Association Agreement between Israel and the EU," he said.

Ireland has previously called for a review of the deal on human rights grounds, which are cited in the terms of its provisions.

The deal, which entered into force in 2000, provides the legal basis for trade between the two parties. An EU website showed that the EU is Israel's biggest trade partner, accounting for 28.8 percent of its trade in goods in 2022, while Israel is the EU's 25th biggest trade partner

(Reuters)

Israeli attacks killed 45 people in Lebanon in the past 24 hours, bringing the total death toll to 2,865 since October 2023, the Lebanese health ministry said on Thursday.

(Reuters)

The Director of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has condemned Israel's morning attack on the Kamal Adwan Hospital in north Gaza, which caused injuries and damaged parts of the hospital.

"The hospital has been barely functioning since the most recent rad. The latest attack is putting patients' lives at grave risk," he said.

"The health situation in northern Gaza is appalling. We call on everyone to protect hospitals and fully comply with international humanitarian law," he added.

.@WHO condemns this morning's attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital, which caused injuries to some hospital staff members, and hit a storage space containing lifesaving WHO supplies brought in via complex missions, as well as the desalination station and water tanks on top of the…

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) October 31, 2024

Israeli sources close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that they don't expect a ceasefire in Lebanon before the US election on 5 November as US officials hammer out an agreement with their Israeli counterparts.

According to the WSJ, Israel's security establishment is pushing for a diplomatic solution as they believe many of the military goals it set out to achieve have been reached. 

A draft seen by the WSJ has a clause that would allow Israel to conduct strikes on Lebanon during a 60-day interim period in response to perceived threats, with Israeli forces having to withdraw from Lebanon within a week and allow the Lebanese army and UN personnel to deploy south. 

Israel is able to reach anywhere in Iran should the need arise, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.

Netanyahu, in a speech to new military officers, said that Israel has unprecedented freedom of action following its recent airstrikes against Iran.

"Israel today has more freedom of action in Iran than ever. We can reach any place in Iran as necessary," Netanyahu said. "The supreme goal I gave to the Israel Defence Forces and the security branches is to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon."

Seven people have been killed in new Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, according reports from Palestinian news agency Wafa. 

Three people were killed during a strike in Nuseirat in central Gaza, while two people were killed in a strike on the Jabalia refugee camp in north Gaza. Another two people were killed in a drone strike on Beit Hanoun, also in northern Gaza.

Lebanese official media reported Israeli strikes near Baalbek on Thursday, after Israel issued evacuation warnings for the main eastern city for the second day in a row.

"Enemy aircraft launched four strikes on the village of Douris and the surroundings of the city of Baalbek," the National News Agency said.

Lebanon's Hezbollah attacked the area of Krayot north of the Israeli city of Haifa on Thursday with a large missile salvo, the group said in a statement.

(Reuters)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told visiting US envoy Amos Hochstein and US Middle East adviser Brett McGurk on Thursday that any ceasefire deal with Lebanon's Hezbollah would have to guarantee Israel's security.

"The prime minister specified that the main issue is not paperwork for this or that deal, but Israel's determination and capacity to ensure the deal's application and to prevent any threat to its security from Lebanon," Netanyahu's office said after the meeting took place in Jerusalem.

The Israeli military's Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said that "weapons depots and headquarters used by" Hezbollah were hit in the Qusayr region of Syria.

Adraee said the strikes sought to thwart attempts to "transfer weapons from Iran via Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon".

Gaza's Ministry of Health has said that Israeli attacks on the enclave have killed 41 people and wounded a further 131 over the past 24 hours.

The ministry said the total death toll is now 43,204 people killed and a further 101,641 wounded.

Lebanon's health ministry reports that the Israeli strike had killed six medics and wounded four others in multiple attacks today, according to state news agency NNA.

It said Israeli forces hit a gathering point for the civil defence forces, killing four medics. Two other medics were killed in two further incidents.

There was another attack in the town of Salaa, which destroyed an ambulance, but the paramedic operating it had "miraculously survived", it said.

"The international community's silence regarding this brutality is unjustified at a time when voices must be raised to restore humanitarian laws and put an end to the machine of brutality that continues to kill front-line personnel," the ministry statement said.

It said that 178 paramedics were killed and 279 injured by Israeli strikes across different regions since October 2023.

Lebanon's prime minister condemned Israel Thursday for issuing displacement orders for entire areas and called for diplomatic pressure for a halt to its strikes more than a month into the war.

"The threats issued by the Israeli enemy against Lebanese civilians to evacuate entire cities and leave their areas and homes are an additional war crime added to the series of crimes committed by the enemy," Najib Mikati said in a statement, adding that he is "requesting intensified pressure on Israel to stop its aggression".

Several strikes hit Al-Hawsh, near the south Lebanon city of Tyre, on Thursday, an AFP correspondent reported, after the Israeli army issued a displacement order for the area.

The strikes on Al-Hawsh coincided with an exodus of civilians from the Rashidieh camp for Palestinian refugees near Tyre which was also covered by the displacement order, the official National News Agency said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three people were killed Thursday in Israeli strikes on Syria's Qusayr region near the border with Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Hezbollah.

The Britain-based war monitor said a strike targeted "a weapons depot and a fuel storage facility for Hezbollah in the industrial city of Qusayr", killing three people.

The United Nations children's agency said on Thursday that at least one child a day in Lebanon has been killed over the past month as Israel pursues its war against Hezbollah in the country.

"Since October 4th of this year, at least one child has been killed and 10 injured daily," UNICEF said, adding that "the ongoing war in Lebanon is upending children's lives".

Five people were killed, including four foreign workers and one Israeli farmer, in a Hezbollah attack on Israel's northern town of Metula on Thursday, according to Israel's Channel 12. 

(Reuters)

Doctors without Borders (MSF) have said that one of their doctors, Dr Mohammed Obeid, has been detained from the Kamal Adwan Hospital during an Israeli operation at the hospital on 26 October.

"Our last contact with Dr Obeid was on the afternoon of 25 October. He had been sheltering and offering his support as a surgeon at Kamal Adwan hospital when it was besieged by Israeli forces," MSF said in a statement.

"We have officially requested information from the Israeli authorities on Dr Obeid's detention status, his current location, and any information regarding his psychical and mental wellbeing." 

"WE call on the safety and protection of our colleague, and for all medical staff in Gaza who work under impossible conditions and are facing horrific violence as they try to provide care," MSF added.

Israel's military said on Thursday it shot down a drone smuggling weapons from Egyptian territory to Israel on Wednesday.

Israeli officials have said during the war that Palestinian armed group Hamas used tunnels running under the border into Egypt's Sinai region to smuggle arms.

Egypt says it destroyed tunnel networks leading to Gaza years ago and created a buffer zone and border fortifications that prevent smuggling. 

(Reuters)

An "Israeli aggression" targeted a number of residential buildings in the area of Qusayr in the southern countryside of Homs province, in central Syria, the country's state news agency (SANA) reported on Thursday.

Israel typically does not comment on specific reports of strikes in Syria, but it has been carrying out strikes for years against what it says are Iranian-linked targets in the country. 

Hamas's armed wing, the Izz-al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, has confirmed the killing of one of its commanders in the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarm in an Israeli operation yesterday.

It said in a Telegram statement that Hossam al-Mallah, a key commander in the Tulkarm Brigade, was killed in a "cowardly Zionist assassination" in the Tulkarm refugee camp.

The Israeli army said on X that it had carried out an air strike in Nur Shams, near Tukaram, targeting a group of armed men. 

It added that it had "eliminated [...] Hassam Malach" it said was a "key operative" in Hamas involved in "planning imminent attacks".

The MTV channel reported this morning "mass destruction" of residential areas in Lebanon, and a rising number of casualties in the wake of "violent and continuous Israeli strikes" in the south and in the Bekaa Valley. 

It said that that the Bekaa Valley and Baalbek had been most affected yesterday.

The L'Orient-Le Jour newspaper reported that Israeli forces had launched a "series of strikes" in Baalbek yesterday, following a call to evacuate the area. It said that thousands of people had evacuated the area, with many fleeing to the north.

Lebanese media reported yesterday that the strikes in the eastern Baalbek-Hermel region were the most violent yet.

According to Lebanon's health ministry, the strikes in Baalbek killed 19 people and injured eight others. Israel has since given new displacement orders for the city of Baalbek and the surrounding area.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah announced on its Telegram channel that it had confronted the Israeli army on the southern frontier, targeting "gatherings of Israeli soldiers" with missile salvoes. 

It also said it had launched rockets overnight targeting several areas in northern Israel.

A senior Hamas official said Thursday that the group rejects any proposal for a temporary halt to more than a year of fighting in Gaza and insists on a lasting ceasefire.

"The idea of a temporary pause in the war, only to resume aggression later, is something we have already expressed our position on. Hamas supports a permanent end to the war, not a temporary one," Taher al-Nunu, a senior leader of the movement, told AFP.

The Israeli military Arabic language spokesperson has given displacement orders on the Lebanese city of Baalbek and the surrounding areas for the second day in a row. 

Germany, France and Britain call for the urgent renewal of correspondent banking services between Israel and the Palestinian Territories for at least one year, the German foreign office said on Thursday.

"Failure to renew would suspend cross-border trade and be catastrophic for the Palestinian economy," the ministry said in a post on social media platform X. 

(Reuters)

The Israeli army issued an evacuation call for several areas of south Lebanon Thursday, including a Palestinian refugee camp, warning it was poised to hit Hezbollah targets in those areas.

"Hezbollah's terrorist activities force the IDF (army) to act forcefully against it in these areas, and we do not intend to harm you," the Israeli military's Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on X. Among the areas listed was Rashidieh camp, which houses thousands of Palestinian refugees.

Dozens of people were reportedly killed in a wave of morning airstrikes and shelling by Israel across the northern and central Gaza Strip.

According to Palestinian news agency Wafa, shelling killed civilians in Beit Lahia in the north of the enclave, which has entered the 27th day of besiegement by Israeli forces.

Wafa also reported that four people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a vehicle west of the al-Maghazi camp in the centre of the enclave.

Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati last night expressed hope for a ceasefire agreement with Israel "in the coming hours" following a phone call with US special envoy Amos Hochstein.

In an interview with Al-Jadeed TV channel, Mikati said that Hochstein had indicated the possibility of "positive" developments before the US presidential elections on 5 November.

He added that he was "cautiously optimistic" about the possibility of a truce after Hezbollah's newly appointed Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem's remarks on the matter during his speech yesterday.

Separately, the MTV channel said that it had obtained information that Hezbollah had informed parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri - who Qassem said was tasked with leading Lebanon's truce negotiations - that it had agreed to a 60-day truce.

The news has not yet been confirmed by Hezbollah. 

White House national security spokesperson Sean Savett said yesterday that reports on truce developments "do not reflect the current state of negotiations".

US President Joe Biden's Middle East adviser Brett McGurk and special envoy Amos Hochstein are to arrive in Israel today amid reports of progress on a deal between Israel and Lebanon that would halt fighting with Hezbollah.

The Israeli public broadcaster Kan published what it said was a draft of the ceasefire agreement, which includes the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, who will be replaced by the Lebanese army under international supervision.

The website of Channel 12 reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a meeting on the deal last night, during which there was a "consensus among all the participants that the time was ripe" to reach an agreement.

The main point of contention now revolves around how Israel will act if Hezbollah violates the agreement and if it is not enforced by other international bodies, Channel 12 added.