Southern Beirut suburb hit by Israeli strike after days of retaliation threats

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The US has reacted to Israel's attack on Beirut. The White House told Reuters:

"We defer to Israel to speak to its own military operations. We reiterate our clear position: Our commitment to Israel's security is ironclad and unwavering against all Iran-backed threats, including Hezbollah, and we are working on a diplomatic solution that will allow citizens to safely return to their homes."

(Reuters)

Palestinian group Hamas has condemned Israel's attack on southern Beirut, killing 3 at least people.

"We strongly condemn the brutal Zionist aggression against Lebanon and the brotherly Lebanese people, which targeted a Hezbollah headquarters in the southern suburb of Beirut, and resulted in the martyrdom and injury of a number of innocent citizens, and we consider it a dangerous escalation for which the Nazi Zionist occupation bears full responsibility."

Yoav Gallant, Israel's defence minister, praised the Israeli military over the attack on southern Beirut - killing at least 3 people.

"Tonight, we have shown that the blood of our people has a price, and that there is no place out of reach for our forces to this end." Gallant wrote on X.

Tonight, the IDF conducted a precise and professional operation to eliminate Hezbollah’s most senior military commander.

Fuad Shukr ‘Sayyid’ Muhsan has the blood of many Israelis on his hands. Tonight, we have shown that the blood of our people has a price, and that there is no…

— יואב גלנט - Yoav Gallant (@yoavgallant) July 30, 2024

The Israeli military said late Tuesday that it wanted to avoid any wider war with Hezbollah but that its forces were ready for "any scenario".

"Hezbollah's ongoing aggression and brutal attacks are dragging the people of Lebanon and the entire Middle East into a wider escalation," military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a statement. "While we prefer to resolve hostilities without a wider war, the IDF is fully prepared for any scenario," he said, referring to the Israeli army.

The UN's special coordinator for Lebanon on Tuesday voiced concern after an Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs, which she said resulted in multiple civilian casualties.

"UN Special Coordinator Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert is deeply concerned by tonight's strike," the envoy's office said in a statement, adding that she "underscores once again that there is no such thing as a military solution" to the ongoing conflict.

The Lebanese Ministry of Health said three people, including a young girl and a young boy, were killed, and 74 were wounded from Israel's strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The Israeli army has claimed its strike on Beirut has 'eliminated' Fuad Shukr.

"Israeli Air Force fighter jets eliminated the Hezbollah terrorist organization's most senior military commander and the head of its Strategic Unit, Fuad Shukr "Sayyid Muhsan", in the area of Beirut," the statement reads.

US Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic election nominee, said Tuesday that Israel had a "right to defend itself" following a strike in Hezbollah's stronghold in southern Beirut.

Israel "has the right to defend itself against a terrorist organization, which is exactly what Hezbollah is," Harris told reporters about the strike, which Israel said had targeted a commander responsible for rocket fire that killed 12 children.

UN Special Coordinator Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert expressed concern late on Tuesday over "tonight's strike, claimed by Israel, in the densely populated southern suburb of Beirut," which led to multiple civilian casualties.

"There is no such thing as a military solution," she said in a statement calling on both Israel and Lebanon to explore all diplomatic avenues to return to the cessation of hostilities and recommit to United Nations resolution 1701.

Hennis-Plasschaert stated that she is in close contact with key interlocutors and urged for calm to prevail amidst the escalating tensions.

(Reuters)

Blasts inside a base used by Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an official state security agency containing several Iran-aligned armed groups, south of Baghdad on Tuesday killed one member and wounded seven others, police and medical sources told Reuters on Tuesday. 

AFP report three have been killed.

Explosions ripped through a base belonging to former pro-Iran paramilitaries south of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, on Tuesday, a security source and a Hashed al-Shaabi official said.

"Blasts occurred in a base belonging to the Hashed al-Shaabi" in Babylon province, the security source said, referring to an alliance of pro-Iranian former paramilitary groups now integrated into the regular army. "The cause of the blasts was not immediately known," the source added, but a Hashed official said an "airstrike" hit the base.

(Reuters)

A security source confirmed to a local Lebanese MTV channel that Hezbollah military leader Fuad Shukr has been killed.

Sources have reportedly confirmed to Al Arabiya that Fuad Shukr, Israel's target in its strike on Beirut, has been killed.

Fuad Shukr, the most senior military official in #Hezbollah, has been killed in an #Israeli strike on the southern suburbs of #Beirut, Al Arabiya sources confirm. https://t.co/p3c9V6YHak pic.twitter.com/lIproZyqsv

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) July 30, 2024

Videos circulating online show the extent of the destruction caused by Israel's strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The aftermath of the Israeli airstrike targeting a residential complex in the Al-Hriek area of Beirut, Lebanon.

According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, three civilians were killed and dozens were injured in the attack. pic.twitter.com/Z0KjzcVUJh

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) July 30, 2024

Israeli public broadcaster Kan says the senior Hezbollah commander targeted was killed - contrary to sources stating he survived.

Iran condemned Tuesday what it called a "vicious" Israeli strike in Lebanon which Israel said targeted a Hezbollah commander behind last week's rocket attack on the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.

"The vicious and criminal action of the Zionist criminal gang in the suburbs of Beirut certainly cannot stop ... Lebanon's proud resistance from continuing the honourable path of supporting the oppressed Palestinians and standing against the aggression of the Israeli apartheid regime," said foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani in a statement.

Yemen's Houthis have strongly condemned the Israeli strike on Lebanon's southern Beirut suburb, calling it a "blatant violation" to Lebanese soverignty.

(Reuters)

A senior military official tells Israeli media: "If Hezbollah does not respond to the attack, we will not be drawn into a war."

According to Israeli media reports citing a senior Israeli military official: "If Hezbollah does not respond to the attack, we will not be drawn into a war." pic.twitter.com/hm5EDvvSpi

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) July 30, 2024

A Hezbollah source told The New Arab's sister publication, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed: "The nature of the conflict necessitates a response to the Israeli airstrike on the southern suburb of Beirut."

The Lebanese Foreign Minister has condemned the Israeli strike on Beirut and plans to file a complaint to the United Nations.

(Reuters)

The US does not believe war between Hezbollah and Israel is inevitable, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday, amid reports the Israeli military carried out a targeted strike in Beirut against a Hezbollah commander.

(Reuters)

Israeli media reports Israel informed the US government it would strike Beirut ahead of time.

The Iranian embassy in Beirut has condemned the Israeli strike in Beirut's southern suburb, killing two people.

"We strongly condemn the heinous and cowardly Israeli aggression that targeted the southern suburb of Beirut."

The top Hezbollah commander targeted in Israel's strike on Beirut has survived - two security sources told Reuters.

Israel struck Hezbollah's stronghold in southern Beirut on Tuesday in retaliation for rocket fire from Lebanon that killed 12 children over the weekend, saying it had targeted the commander responsible for the attack.

(Reuters)

An Israeli strike on Lebanon's capital, Beirut, is "a flagrant violation of international law," the Russian state-run TASS news agency reported on Tuesday, citing the Russian Foreign Ministry.

An Israeli air strike targeted a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut's southern suburbs late on Tuesday in what the Israeli military said was retaliation for a cross-border rocket attack three days before that killed 12 children and teenagers.

(Reuters)

Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday Lebanese armed group Hezbollah had "crossed the red line," after the military carried out a targeted strike in south Beirut.

"Hezbollah crossed the red line," Gallant wrote on X, minutes after the Israeli military said it had carried out a strike targeting a commander responsible for a rocket attack on the annexed Golan Heights on Saturday that killed 12 children.

Hezbollah crossed the red line.

— יואב גלנט - Yoav Gallant (@yoavgallant) July 30, 2024

A source close to Lebanon's Hezbollah told AFP two people were killed in Tuesday's Israeli strike on the southern Beirut suburbs.

"Two people were killed in the Israeli strike", said the source requesting anonymity after earlier saying the target was a "leading commander" of the group.

The strike came days after Israel vowed to retaliate over Saturday's deadly attack on the annexed Golan Heights that killed 12 children blamed on the Iran-backed Hezbollah. The group had denied any involvement.

The Israeli military said it carried out a targeted strike in Beirut on Tuesday against the Hezbollah commander it said was responsible for a strike in the Golan Heights that killed 12 children and teenagers at the weekend.

A loud blast was heard, and a plume of smoke could be seen rising above the southern suburbs - a stronghold of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah - at around 7:40 p.m. (1640 GMT), a Reuters witness said.

"The IDF carried out a targeted strike in Beirut, on the commander responsible for the murder of the children in Majdal Shams and the killing of numerous additional Israeli civilians," the Israeli Defence Forces said in a statement.

It said it had issued no new instructions for civil defence in Israel following the strike.

A senior Lebanese security source said the commander's fate remained unclear.

(Reuters) 

The New Arab's Arabic language sister paper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed's correspondent in Beirut is reporting that a senior Hezbollah figure may have been targeted in the strike.

A security source told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed ambulances have rushed to the scene of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut's southern suburb.

The attack has caused significant damage to a building and several vehicles. Authorities are currently investigating the incident to ascertain if there are any casualties from the Israeli airstrike.

An Israeli air strike hits Beirut city. pic.twitter.com/Fx0q2XYmwd

— Eye on Palestine (@EyeonPalestine) July 30, 2024

Source close to Hezbollah says Israeli strike hits southern Beirut suburb, agencies are reporting.

Reuters reported a senior Hezbollah commander has been targeted with his fate unknown.

This is a developing story.

Israel said on Tuesday its military prosecutor filed an indictment against a reservist soldier for "several offenses of abuse" of a Palestinian detainee, in a separate case to the nine soldiers arrested on Monday.

The indictment alleges that the soldier used severe violence against detainees he was responsible for during multiple incidents throughout February to June this year.

"During some of the trips, despite no threat from the security detainees and the detainees were handcuffed and blindfolded, the defendant hit them, some of the times using a club and another time using his personal weapon," the statement said.

The soldier filmed himself hitting the detainees, it added.

Israel has been rocked by the arrest of nine soldiers over serious sexual abuse allegations of a Palestinian detained at Sde Teiman detention camp. The arrest sparked protests from the far-right and some Israeli ministers.

Israel's military blew up more than 30 water wells in Gaza this month, a municipality official and residents said, adding to the trauma of air strikes that have turned much of the Palestinian enclave into a wasteland ravaged by a humanitarian crisis.

Salama Shurab, head of the water networks at Khan Younis municipality, said the wells were destroyed by Israeli forces between July 18-27 in the southern towns of Rafah and Khan Younis.

The Israeli military did not respond to the allegations that its soldiers had torched the wells.

It is not only ever-present danger from Israeli bombardment or ground fighting that makes life a trial for Gaza's Palestinian civilians. It is also the daily slog to find bare necessities such as water, to drink or cook or wash with.

People have dug wells in bleak areas near the sea where the bombing has pushed them, or rely on salty tap water from Gaza's only aquifer, now contaminated with seawater and sewage.

(Reuters)

Hezbollah has rejected calls from international envoys to avoid responding to an anticipated Israeli attack in retaliation for a deadly rocket strike on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, an official from the Lebanese group said on Tuesday.

Hezbollah, which has denied involvement in Saturday's strike, informed mediators it would still respond to any Israeli attack, the official said in written comments sent to reporters.

The official did not say which countries the mediators represented.

"International envoys are indirectly raising with us the idea that we should not respond to the expected aggression under the pretext of the need to avoid escalation and sliding towards a comprehensive war," the Hezbollah official said.

Hezbollah had "informed them of our explicit rejection of this request" and would respond, the official said.

(Reuters)

Despite the war since October, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are following the news that Israel may launch a large-scale military attack on Lebanon with great concern for the safety of the population.  

Speaking to The New Arab, several Palestinians did not think Israel would risk expanding the war to Lebanon, especially due to strong Hezbollah is compared to Hamas politically and militarily, as well as the risk for Israel to face further international isolation.

However, other Palestinians think that the general "Arab silence" may encourage Israel to expand its war, backed by the United States.

Read more from The New Arab's Gaza correspondent here.

Britain on Tuesday urged its citizens in Lebanon to leave the country, warning that tensions along the Israeli border could worsen quickly.

"There are frequent artillery exchanges and air strikes, tensions are high, and the situation could deteriorate rapidly," Foreign Secretary David Lammy told parliament.

"I am working with foreign office consular teams to make sure we are prepared for all scenarios, but if this conflict escalates, the government cannot guarantee we will be able to evacuate everyone immediately. People may be forced to shelter in place."

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer chaired a meeting of the government's emergency response committee, known as COBRA, on the matter earlier on Tuesday, Lammy said.

"My message to British nationals in Lebanon is therefore quite simple: leave," Lammy said. 

“My message to British nationals in Lebanon is clear – leave.” @DavidLammy

⚠️The FCDO also advises against travel to Lebanon.

Read the current travel advice here: https://t.co/NlKYKGCj70 pic.twitter.com/vesnPxoXBr

— Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (@FCDOGovUK) July 30, 2024

In central Gaza, Israeli bombardment of the Bureij refugee camp killed at least nine people, according to hospital authorities.

Seven of the dead were killed in an airstrike on a residential building, Awda hospital said. As residents were transferring the bodies, Israeli forces opened fire on the vehicle close to the Salahuddin road, killing two, it said.

Another seven people were killed by Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis late Monday and early Tuesday, according to officials at Nasser Hospital, where the bodies were brought.

A rocket fired from Lebanon killed an Israeli civilian on Tuesday, Israeli N12 reported.

The Israeli military said 10 rockets had been fired from Lebanon and that one of them hit Kibbutz Hagoshrim, causing one casualty. Tension has spiked along the frontier after a rocket Israel said Hezbollah fired killed 12 children on Saturday in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, says its health centres and shelters in war-hit Gaza have recorded nearly 40,000 hepatitis cases since Israel’s war on Gaza started.

"Desperate sanitary conditions facilitate the spread of diseases including Hepatitis A," UNRWA said on X.

800 to 1,000 cases are recorded weekly, the agency said.

800 to 1,000 new hepatitis cases are reported weekly from @UNRWA health centres & shelters across #Gaza - a total of nearly 40,000 since the war began

Desperate sanitary conditions facilitate the spread of diseases including Hepatitis A #WorldHepatitisDayhttps://t.co/TaZNph52iz pic.twitter.com/TvFwMvVpor

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) July 30, 2024

Lebanon's Hezbollah said on Tuesday it fired at Israeli warplanes that broke the sound barrier in Lebanese airspace.

Hezbollah added that it forced the warplanes to turn back.

(Reuters)

Gaza's civil defence agency said Tuesday that an Israeli operation in and around the territory's second city of Khan Younis has killed about 300 people since it began on July 22.

"Since the beginning of the Israeli ground invasion of the eastern part of Khan Yunis province, the civil defence and medical teams have recovered approximately 300 bodies of martyrs, many of them decomposed," agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

International humanitarian organisation ActionAid said that aid services in Gaza have been disrupted by ongoing Israeli attacks and a collapse in law and order.

ActionAid said that the Israeli blockade restricting essential items such as fuel, food and water is hampering aid efforts. Ongoing military operations and movement restrictions are preventing the "delivery of medical services" and the rebuilding of critical infrastructure.

Supplies are piled up by the Kerem Shalom (Karam Abu Salem) crossing but are not able to be retrieved because of "high insecurity" and "lawlessness".

The UK-registered charity called on the international community to intervene to demand the lifting of the blockade and address "one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world".

Gaza's health ministry released its daily report stating that 37 people had been killed and 73 others injured in the past 24 hours from Israeli attacks against three families.

The total number of killed has now risen to 39,400 and total injured 90,996 since the war began on 7 October.

Thousands of Palestinians returned to their homes in the ruins of Gaza's main southern city Khan Younis on Tuesday, after Israeli forces ended a week-long incursion there which they said aimed to prevent Hamas from regrouping.

Palestinian health officials said rescue workers had so far recovered 42 bodies of Palestinians killed in the Israeli incursion into eastern Khan Younis. Gaza's Civil Emergency Service said more searches were underway with 200 people still reported missing.

The Israeli military said its forces killed more than 150 Palestinian gunmen during the week-long raid, destroyed militant tunnels and seized weapons.

After the Israeli forces left, people streamed back to their homes on foot and with donkey carts carrying their belongings. Many found their houses damaged or destroyed.

Witnesses said army forces had bulldozed the main cemetery in Bani Suhaila, the town on the eastern outskirts of Khan Younis that was the main focus of the raid, as well as houses and roads nearby.

"I am coming back and I have faith in God. I don't know whether we will live or die, but it is all for the sake of the homeland," said Etimad Al-Masri, who had walked for at least five kilometers back to her home.

(Reuters)

(Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)

The Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City was damaged by an Israeli airstrike overnight on Monday, according to local media reports.

Footage shared online, unable to be verified by The New Arab, showed the inner ceilings and walls of an adjacent building of the church compound crumbled and damage.

Many families have taken refuge in the church compound which is one of the oldest church's in the region, and was badly damaged by a large Israeli airstrike early on in the war which killed 16 people who were sheltering there.

The extensive damage caused by the Israeli artillery shelling to the Church of Saint Porphyrius in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. pic.twitter.com/pJdbrubuqc

— V PALESTINE 🇵🇸 (@V_Palestine20) July 29, 2024

Greece's Aegean Airlines and Germany's Condor cancelled flights to Beirut on Tuesday, the latest airlines to suspend services to the Lebanese capital in recent days as tensions escalate between Israel and armed political group Hezbollah.

Aegean said it would suspend flights until Thursday, while Condor cancelled Tuesday's flight from Dusseldorf.

Air France and Lufthansa Group carriers Swiss, Eurowings and Lufthansa on Monday announced flight cancellations.

A number of other carriers have suspended, delayed or cancelled some flights, although Beirut's Rafic Hariri International Airport listed arrivals on Tuesday from airlines including Pegasus, Emirates, Royal Jordanian, EgyptAir, Iran Air, Qatar Airways and Etihad.

(Reuters)

Druze leaders in the annexed Golan Heights have distanced themselves from Israeli threats to retaliate against Lebanon's Hezbollah group for a deadly rocket strike on a Druze Arab town in the territory.

Most of Majdal Shams's around 11,000 mainly Druze residents still identify as Syrian more than half a century after Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community.

In a statement issued after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit on Monday, Druze lay and religious leaders said the community rejects the "attempt to exploit the name of Majdal Shams as a political platform at the expense of the blood of our children".

Noting that the Druze faith "forbids killing and revenge in any form", the community leaders said "we reject the shedding of even a single drop of blood under the pretext of avenging our children".

United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin does not believe that a fight between Israel and Hezbollah is inevitable, and said Washington would like to see things resolved in a diplomatic fashion.

Austin made the comments on Tuesday at a joint press conference in Manila, following security talks between himself, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their respective Philippine counterparts, Gilberto Teodoro and Enrique Manalo.

(Reuters)

Israeli missiles struck two air defence bases in southern Syria overnight, a war monitor said Tuesday, as tensions surge on Israel's northern border after a deadly rocket strike on the annexed Golan Heights.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported no casualties in the overnight strikes in Daraa province, which abuts the armistice line separating Syrian and Israeli forces on the Golan.

Syria's state-run media did not report any strikes.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that its air force had struck "approximately 10 Hezbollah targets in seven different areas in southern Lebanon".

The strikes killed one member of the militia group, and also hit weapons and storage facilities, the army said in a post on its Telegram channel.

Israeli has been conducting heavy strikes on areas across southern Lebanon and into the eastern Bekaa valley in its war on the Iran-aligned Shia militia group.

Lebanon is bracing for a response to the weekend attack on the Israeli occupied Golan Heights which has been blamed on Hezbollah that killed 12 children from a Druze community.

Polio is spreading in Gaza, the enclave's health ministry warned on Monday evening, after ten months of war has depleted the country's sewage and sanitation systems and Israeli assaults on hospitals.

It said that after "many years of polio eradication" in Gaza, the deadly virus had been discovered in water sewage samples.

The health ministry said that Israel's brutal aggression had destroyed sewage infrastructure and seen the "accumulation of thousands of tons of garbage" and the majority of the population forced into tented camps.

"The poliovirus type CVPV2 in wastewater in the governorates of Khan Yunis and Al-Wusta," the ministry said in a statement.

Hassan Hussein from the town of Beit Lif in southern Lebanon was announced dead by Hezbollah on Tuesday.

Some 350 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since 8 October when the fighting began. More than 100 Lebanese civilians have also been killed.

The Lebanese Shia militia group routinely announces the deaths of fighters.

Israeli military said on Tuesday that its air force struck "a Hezbollah terrorist in the area of Bayt Lif" and a weapons storage facility.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Palestinian Islamist group Hamas is preventing a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, and that Israel has not changed any of its conditions.

Netanyahu said that Israel is sticking to the principles of the original proposal, which include securing the release of the maximum numbers of hostages still alive, Israeli control of the Gaza-Egypt border corridor, and preventing weapons and Palestinian militants from returning to the northern Gaza Strip.

(Reuters)