A number of people were killed early on Monday in an Israeli airstrike on a school in the central Gaza Strip where displaced Palestinians were sheltering, causing a fire and burning people alive.
Gory scenes from the school-turned-shelter in Deir al-Balah were shared online, showing individuals caught in the inferno as rescuers struggled to pull them out amid the blaze.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital said that at least four people were killed and dozens more wounded, some of them seriously. It was already struggling to treat victims of an earlier Israeli strike also on a school where people were sheltering nearby, in which at least 20 people were killed.
Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip on Monday, Palestinian medics said that at least 10 people were killed and at least 30 injured in Israeli airstrikes on a food distribution centre in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, with casualties including women and children.
Israeli forces have for 10 days now carried out a renewed ground offensive in Jabalia, devastating the camp and killing at least 300 people, while not allowing anyone to enter or leave.
Palestinians there say they are being subjected to a 'war of annihilation'.
On the Lebanon-Israel front, the Israeli military is reeling following a large-scale drone attack by Hezbollah on Sunday night which killed at least four soldiers and injured 70 others. The military says it is one of the deadliest attack on its forces since fighting with Hezbollah began more than a year ago.
At the border, fighting continues between Hezbollah and the Israeli forces, with Hezbollah pushing back against invading troops and firing a large salvo of rockets into northern and central Israel.
The Israeli military continues to launch airstrikes in south Lebanon and the eastern Beqaa region, with a cautious calm prevailing over Beirut's heavily hit southern suburbs for days now.
The UK government on Monday announced sanctions on top Iranian military figures after Iran's October 1 missile attack on arch-foe Israel.
Among those hit with an assets freeze and travel ban are army commander-in-chief Abdolrahim Mousavi and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence chief Mohammad Kazemi, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Hezbollah said its fighters were battling Israeli troops inside a south Lebanese border village on Monday, and that they had launched a guided missile at an Israeli troop carrier in the same area.
Hezbollah fighters "are engaged in violent clashes with the Israeli enemy forces... in the village of Ayta al-Shaab with... machine guns, rockets and artillery shells," the group said, later adding it targeted an "Israeli troop carrier with a guided missile" in the village.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told his US counterpart Lloyd Austin that Israel would deliver a strong response to Hezbollah after the Lebanese armed group struck an Israeli army base killing four soldiers.
Gallant spoke to Austin overnight and "highlighted the severity of the attack and the forceful response that would be taken against Hezbollah", the minister's office said in a statement.
The Lebanese Red Cross says at least 18 were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the north Lebanon village of Aitou.
غارة إسرائيلية استهدفت منطقة ايطو في قضاء #زغرتا pic.twitter.com/DgcGElFcEy
— AL Jadeed Tv (@AlJadeed_TV) October 14, 2024
Iran said Monday it currently sees "no grounds" for its indirect talks with the United States via intermediary Oman, citing the crisis in the Middle East.
Iran said in June that it had held indirect talks with the United States via Oman, despite having no diplomatic relations with its foe.
"Currently we don't see any ground for these talks, until we can get past the current crisis," Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters in Oman's capital Muscat.
The process, he said, had been halted "due to the specific conditions of the region".
Five people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the north Lebanese village of Aito in an initial death toll, Lebanese media reported.
It was the first time the area was hit in over a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
An Israeli strike hit an east Lebanon town as an aid convoy drove through it Tuesday, injuring one of its drivers, a governor and the state news agency said.
The governor of Baalbek, Bachir Khodr, on X reported "an Israeli strike very close to an aid convoy as it drove through the town of Ain" on its way to Ras Baalbek.
He posted a picture from the back window of the car he was in, showing a huge column of smoke billowing up into the sky dozens of metres (yards) behind it. "The driver of the truck driving directly behind us was injured," he added.
Israeli strikes hit Ain during "the passage of a convoy consisting of three trucks" heading towards the town of Ras Baalbek, said the National News Agency (NNA).
"One of the aid trucks heading to Ras Baalbek was damaged as a result of the blowback of the strike in Ain, which led to the injury of the truck driver".
Minister of Public Works and Transport Ali Hamieh told AFP that the convoy was carrying "humanitarian aid from the Lebanese government". It "was travelling to the area accompanied by the Lebanese Red Cross with agreement from the United Nations," he said.
The convoy was made up of five trucks, and carried aid from several countries including the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. Two had previously unloaded goods in Baalbek, NNA said.
The number of soldiers who are in critical condition as a result of Hezbollah's drone attack on Binyamina on Sunday has risen to eight, the Israeli military said.
Four soldiers were confirmed dead with at least another 70 wounded.
France on Monday rejected demands made by Israel's prime minister for U.N. peacekeeping mission in south Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, to pull back from its position.
"The protection of peacekeepers is an obligation incumbent on all parties", the foreign ministry in Paris said.
An Israeli airstrike has reportedly targeted a residential building in Aito in north Lebanon's Zgharta district.
It is the first time the area has been hit since the start of the war. It is still unclear if there are any casualties.
مراسلة الجديد: غارة إسرائيلية استهدفت منطقة ايطو في قضاء زغرتا pic.twitter.com/PJGokmkIA7
— Al Jadeed News (@ALJADEEDNEWS) October 14, 2024
The Israeli military said it intercepted two drones approaching from Syria on Monday.
"A short while ago, two UAVs that approached Israeli territory from Syria were successfully intercepted by the IAF (air force). The UAVs were intercepted before crossing into Israeli territory," the military said in a statement.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday said there would be "no withdrawal" of the UN peacekeeping force from southern Lebanon after Israeli attacks and calls to leave.
Spain condemns Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's call on Sunday for the force to pull back "because there will be no withdrawal of UNIFIL", Sanchez told a forum in Barcelona.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday urged other members of the European Union to respond to Madrid and Ireland's request to suspend the bloc's free trade agreement with Israel over its actions in Gaza and Lebanon.
For months, both Spain and Ireland have been in talks with other EU countries who want a review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement on the basis that Israel may be breaching the agreement's human rights clause.
The World Health Organization said on X on Monday that the second phase of a polio vaccination campaign had started in central Gaza.
Aid groups carried out a first round of vaccinations last month, after a baby was partially paralysed by the type 2 polio virus in August, in the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
One boy was shot dead by Israeli forces in Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Monday, Al Araby TV reported.
UN Refugee Chief Filippo Grandi has warned that "many more" people will be displaced in Lebanon and some will move to other countries if Israeli airstrikes continue in the country.
Hezbollah said it shelled Israeli troops inside a south Lebanon village on Monday, after earlier saying it targeted Israeli soldiers elsewhere along the border.
Hezbollah fighters targeted "a gathering of Israeli enemy soldiers in the south of Maroun al-Ras with artillery shells", a statement from the Iran-backed Lebanese group said.
Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 42,289 Palestinians and wounded 98,684 since October 7, 2023, the Palestinian enclave's health ministry said on Monday.
At least one of many rockets fired by Hezbollah into Israel on Monday landed in Netanya, a city north of Tel Aviv.
Hezbollah later said it targeted a military base in Bayt Lid, a small town in the occupied West Bank.
Sirens sounded in central Israel due to a number of projectiles fired from Lebanon, the Israeli military said, which Hezbollah says is in response to Israel's continued aggression in Lebanon.
⚡️Exact location of enemy AD systems in Netanya pic.twitter.com/lD0oHfjtqk
— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) October 14, 2024
Hezbollah says it targeted an Israeli naval base near the northern port city of Haifa on Monday with a salvo of rockets, in response to Israel's continued aggression on Lebanon.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met in Muscat on Monday with Mohammed Abdelsalam, a senior official from Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi movement, according to his office.
The foreign ministry released pictures of the pair holding talks during Araghchi's visit to the Omani capital, the latest in a series of diplomatic trips in the region following Israel's vow to retaliate against an Iranian missile attack.
Hezbollah said its fighters fired artillery rounds at Israeli troops attempting an "infiltration" into south Lebanon on Monday, while also targeting soldiers elsewhere.
"During an enemy infantry force's attempted infiltration into Lebanese territory" near the border village of Markaba, Hezbollah fighters targeted the force "with artillery shells", a statement said, adding fighters targeted soldiers elsewhere with rockets, including in south Lebanon's Labbouneh area.
Israel's army chief said Monday a Hezbollah drone strike on a military training base that killed at least four soldiers at the weekend was "difficult and painful".
"We are at war, and an attack on a training base on the home front is difficult and the results are painful," Lieutenant Geneal Herzi Halevi told soldiers during a visit to the Golani Brigade training base that was hit Sunday night in the area of Binyamina, south of the city of Haifa.
The European Union's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell Monday denounced as "completely unacceptable" a series of Israeli attacks that have injured United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.
"The 27 (EU) members agreed on asking Israeli to stop attacking UNIFIL," Borrell told reporters ahead of a meeting of the bloc's foreign ministers in Luxembourg. "It's completely unacceptable attacking United Nations troops," he said.
Attacks by Israel on the United Nations' peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, are "unacceptable" and contrary to U.N. rules, Spain's Foreign minister Jose Manuel Albares said on Monday.
"It is contrary to what we expect from any member state of the United Nations, which is ultimately an organisation that protects world peace," he told reporters ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers held in Luxembourg.
EU countries, led by Italy, France and Spain, have thousands of troops in the 10,000-strong peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, which has said it has repeatedly come under attack from Israeli forces in recent days. Israel has called on the U.N. to move the troops out of the combat zone.
Albares said only U.N. can order the withdrawal of UNIFIL.
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