Israel says is it conducting ‘limited, localised, targeted operational activities’ inside southwestern Lebanon
In a statement Israel’s military has said it has deployed its reserve 146th division into Lebanon, where it claims it is conducting “limited, localised, targeted operational activities” against what it says are “Hezbollah terror targets and infrastructure in southwestern Lebanon.”
The divsion, it says, had previously been carrying out defensive duties in northern Israel for the last year.
On its official Telegram channel, the IDF says “The soldiers are operating alongside the 213th artillery brigade and additional forces in order to expose and dismantle terrorist infrastructure in the area.”
Israel’s military issued pictures of the soldiers getting ready for deployment.
Lebanon’s National News Agency has reported that Israeli forces have continued to launch air attacks on Beirut and across eastern and southern Lebanon this morning.
Key events
Lebanon’s army has issued a lengthy statement saying that it “maintains its readiness to defend the land within the available capabilities, based on the decisions of the political authority and its directives to do what it deems appropriate in order to protect Lebanon.”
It says it has issued the statement “in light of the increasing barbaric attacks by the Israeli enemy on various Lebanese regions, and the resulting deaths, injuries and great destruction.”
The army states “experience has proven that the army is the institution that forms the backbone of Lebanon” and that “we look forward to the success of international efforts to stop the Israeli aggression as soon as possible.”
It criticises “campaigns of slander, fabrication and treason” against the army in the media.
في ظل الاعتداءات الهمجية والمتزايدة من جانب العدو الإسرائيلي على مختلف المناطق اللبنانية، وما ينتج عنها من سقوط شهداء وجرحى ودمار كبير، يهم قيادة الجيش أن توضح أن الجيش اللبناني، إذ ينتشر على كامل مساحة الوطن بما فيها الحدود الجنوبية، يتولى مسؤولياته الوطنية ويقدّم الشهداء ويحافظ… pic.twitter.com/JlIEkIg9Xq
— الجيش اللبناني (@LebarmyOfficial) October 8, 2024
Several soldiers from Lebanon’s army have been killed by Israeli strikes in the last couple of weeks.
Iran’s Isna news agency is carrying a readout from a call between Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and his Egyptian counterpart, Badr Abdelatty.
Araghchi is said to have told the Egyptians that Hezbollah is “in a good situation” and “fully ready to confront a potential ground invasion of Lebanon.”
Israel says is it conducting ‘limited, localised, targeted operational activities’ inside southwestern Lebanon
In a statement Israel’s military has said it has deployed its reserve 146th division into Lebanon, where it claims it is conducting “limited, localised, targeted operational activities” against what it says are “Hezbollah terror targets and infrastructure in southwestern Lebanon.”
The divsion, it says, had previously been carrying out defensive duties in northern Israel for the last year.
On its official Telegram channel, the IDF says “The soldiers are operating alongside the 213th artillery brigade and additional forces in order to expose and dismantle terrorist infrastructure in the area.”
Israel’s military issued pictures of the soldiers getting ready for deployment.
Lebanon’s National News Agency has reported that Israeli forces have continued to launch air attacks on Beirut and across eastern and southern Lebanon this morning.
Iran warns it will retaliate if Israel launches expected attack
Tehran has warned Israel that any attack on Iran’s infrastructure will be met with retaliation.
Reuters reports that Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, made the statement on Tuesday morning.
On Monday evening Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported that Tehran’s military had prepared at least ten scenarios preparing for an expected Israeli attack.
It quoted a military source saying “Iran’s response will not be necessarily reciprocation at the same level of the Israelis’ action, but it may be harsher and aim for different targets that would intensify the effectiveness of the response.”
On 1 October Iran launched its second direct attack on Israel this year, triggered, it said, by Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Two Israelis were lightly wounded in the 1 October attack, and one Palestinian was killed by falling debris in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Iran successfully managed to hit and damage at least one military base in Israel.
Imran Khan has been reporting for Al Jazeera from Hasbaiyya in southern Lebanon. He tells the news network:
In southern Lebanon, about 130 towns and villages have been ordered to evacuate by the Israeli military. It’s got people worried because they’re wondering what the definition of Israel’s “limited” ground offensive is.
They’re hearing about the mass staging of troops on the Israeli side of the border, reserves being brought up. And just in the last few hours, Hezbollah says it’s hit Israeli soldiers.
Al Jazeera has been banned from operating inside Israel by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
Turkey will evacuate its citizens who have applied to leave Lebanon by sea on Wednesday, the Turkish foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
Reuters reports it said in a statement that two Turkish navy ships were expected to set off for Beirut on Tuesday with a total capacity of about 2,000 passengers, adding that the evacuation process will continue in the following days if necessary.
Donald Trump marked the first anniversary of the 7 October Hamas attacks, which he called “one of the darkest days in all of history”, with a commemoration for victims and hostages at his golf resort in Miami on Monday night.
He also repeated a previous claim that the attack on Israel would never have happened if he was still in the White House.
Blaming Harris and Joe Biden for the “weakness” he said gave Hamas the confidence to launch the attack, the Republican presidential nominee told a crowd of about 300 supporters, mostly from the Jewish community, that a wave of anti-Israel sentiment, which he said was sweeping the US and wider world, could be blamed on their administration.
“Almost as shocking as 7 October itself is the outbreak of antisemitism that we have all seen in its wake,” he said.
After claiming the attacks would not have taken place had he been elected to a second term, Trump said he would restore the closeness with Israel he insisted the US had lost, despite Biden and Harris both expressing support for Israel’s right to defend itself.
“If, and when, they say, when I’m president, the US will once again be stronger and closer [to Israel] than it ever was. But we have to win the election,” he said.
Kamala Harris questioned on Middle East in 60 Minutes interview
Kamala Harris refused to call Benjamin Netanyahu a close ally during a wide-ranging sit-down interview that aired on Monday.
With the presidential race between Harris and Donald Trump effectively deadlocked, Harris has launched a media blitz.
Harris navigated around the thorny question of whether the Israeli prime minister was “a real close ally”, saying: “The better question is: Do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people? And the answer to that question is yes.”
In a sign Harris intends to hew closely to Joe Biden’s approach to foreign policy, the vice-president said that Israel had a right to defend itself, while adding that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed”.
Air raid alerts have continued to sound in northern Israel.
In the last hour, sirens have gone off in communities around Meron in the country’s north.
Overnight, sires were heard in Kiryat Shmona and Rosh Hanikra, both locations which lie right on the border with Lebanon.
Gaza’s health ministry says it has identified 34,344 Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks in the territory, publishing a list of names, ages, sex and ID numbers that cover more than 80% of Palestinians killed in the war so far.
The Guardian used this list to seek out the families of the oldest victim, a 101-year-old, and one of the very youngest, a newborn who lived only two hours.
Ahmed al-Tahrawi
Tahrawi was born in 1922 in al-Masmiyya, which today exists only as a handful of ruins, fading memory and the name of an Israeli road junction about half an hour’s drive from Gaza’s northern border.
Its residents fled during the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948, in which about 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland after the creation of Israel.
Tahrawi was 26 that year, a father to two young sons. The family left their old life behind on foot, carrying little more than the key to the village home they would never see again, his grandson Abd al-Rahman al-Tahrawi said.
The boys did not survive the flight into exile, and so in Bureij, a refugee camp in Gaza, Ahmed al-Tahrawi and his wife started again, rebuilding their family, their home and their lives from scratch.
Tahrawi’s single-storey home in Bureij had a corrugated asbestos roof, so at the start of the war he moved in with one of his daughters, hoping her concrete roof would offer more protection from Israeli airstrikes, but on 23 October, the daughter’s house was bombed.
Twelve people were killed immediately and eight were injured including Tahrawi. He was taken to hospital with internal bleeding, but because wards were overwhelmed and medical equipment in short supply, doctors prioritised the young.
He died a week later, leaving his family bereft.
Waad Walid Samir al-Sabah
Waad was not yet born when an Israeli airstrike buried her mother, Salam al-Sabah, under an avalanche of rubble. The target of the airstrike on 15 February was a neighbour’s house, but the bomb was so big that it brought down parts of the Sabah family home too.
Rescuers raced to the site but had to work without heavy equipment so it took more than an hour to free Sabah, who was nine months pregnant. Already mother to four sons, she had been hoping to meet her first daughter within days.
Her uncle by marriage, Eid Sabah, is director of nursing at the Kamal Adwan hospital. He was on duty when his relatives were brought in so covered in dust and soot from the explosion that he did not recognise them at first.
It was too late for his niece, but the unborn baby in her womb was still fighting for life, so doctors performed an emergency caesarian and rushed Waad to intensive care. She survived for two hours.
“What saddened me the most was the release of the birth certificate and the death certificate of Waad at the same time,” Eid Sabah said. Both mother and daughter could have been saved if they had got treatment faster, he added.
China will provide emergency medical supplies to Lebanon, the official China International Development Cooperation Agency said on Tuesday.
Li Ming, spokesperson for the agency, said in a statement that as the fighting escalated recently, explosions and air strikes “have occurred in many places in Lebanon, causing a large number of casualties”.
“At the request of the Lebanese government, the Chinese government has decided to provide emergency humanitarian medical supplies to Lebanon to help Lebanon carry out medical assistance,” the statement said.
IDF says it ‘eliminated’ a Hezbollah commander in Beirut
The Israeli military has said it killed Suhail Hussein Husseini – commander of Hezbollah’s logistical headquarters – in a strike in an area of Beirut.
In a statement online, an IDF spokesperson said Husseini was a “partner in the agreements to transfer combat equipment between Iran and Hezbollah and was responsible for distributing smuggled combat equipment to various units in Hezbollah”.
The Guardian was unable to verify the claim and Hezbollah has so far made no comment.
In New York, protests marking 7 October have seen pro-Palestinian demonstrations grow to a blocks-long column that marched through Manhattan streets, avenues and landmarks.
Protesters spread a large Palestinian flag on a street near the New York Stock Exchange early on Monday afternoon, while a smaller group of counter-protesters held an Israeli flag.
Associated Press journalists saw several people being taken into police custody at various points in the march. Police said multiple arrests were made; no further information was immediately available.
While the protesters paused to conduct a Muslim evening prayer at the south-western corner of Central Park, the parents of American-Israeli hostage Omer Neutra shared their anguish from the park’s SummerStage venue.
“We would never have imagined we would still be standing here a whole year later, with no news of him,” his mother, Orna Neutra, told hundreds of people at an event that drew New York’s governor, mayor, US senators and other elected officials. Her son, a New York-born Israeli soldier, turns 23 next week.
Israel targets Beirut’s southern suburbs in late Monday strikes
Lebanese state media said new strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight, after Israel’s military issued a warning to inhabitants of the area.
An AFP correspondent saw smoke rise from the suburbs, and the country’s National News Agency reported that the area was “the target of two raids”.
Israel launched an intense wave of air raids on southern Lebanon on Monday, with 100 aircraft targeting about 120 sites in the space of an hour, according to the Israeli military (IDF).
An IDF Arabic spokesperson issued an urgent warning to Lebanese civilians to avoid being on the beach or on boats on the coast from the Awali River southward until further notice.
The wave of strikes came as Israelis marked the anniversary of last year’s 7 October attacks by Hamas, the trigger for a year of escalating war in the region.
On Monday evening, sirens sounded in central Israel after several projectile launches were identified crossing from Lebanon. The Israeli military said some projectiles were intercepted, while the rest fell in open areas.
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the Middle East crisis.
Israel launched new strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Monday, within hours of intense Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon where 100 aircraft targeted about 120 sites in the space of an hour, according to the IDF.
Lebanese state media said two new strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs on Monday night, shortly after Israel’s military issued a warning to inhabitants of the area.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched around 190 rockets at Israel, the IDF reported, adding that most were targeting the north of the country.
Late on Monday, Hezbollah said that it had launched a “barrage” of rockets at a military intelligence base on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
Air raid alerts were activated across the centre of the country. The IDF said “about five launches were detected that crossed from Lebanon, some of them were intercepted by the Air Force and the rest fell in an open area”.
More on that in a moment’s – first here’s a summary of the day’s other main events.
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Israel’s military declared areas around a number of towns in north-west Israel as closed to the public on Monday. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that a “new closed military zone” would be imposed along the border with Lebanon and would include the towns of Shlomi, Rosh Hanikra, Hanita, Arab al-Aramshe and Adamit. A separate IDF statement warned Lebanese civilians to avoid being on the beach or on boats on the coast from the Awali River southward until further notice.
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At least 1,400 Lebanese people including civilians, medics and Hezbollah fighters have been killed and 1.2 million driven from their homes, Lebanese officials announced. In southern Lebanon an Israeli strike late on Sunday killed at least 10 firefighters, the latest in a series of attacks that have killed dozens of first responders, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported more than 30 strikes overnight into Sunday.
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Israel also intensified its bombardment of northern Gaza, calling for evacuations of the north of the territory amid renewed military operations. Israeli tanks advanced on Monday into Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic urban refugee camps, after encircling it, residents said. “We are in a new phase of the war,” the Israeli military said in leaflets dropped over the area. “These areas are considered dangerous combat zones.”
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Ceremonies were held across Israel on Monday marking the first anniversary of the 7 October Hamas attacks. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed in a televised address to continue fighting to “thwart any future threat against the state of Israel”. As memorial events took place across Israel, violence continued to rage on multiple fronts, with Israel also expanding its ground operation into Lebanon with elements of a third division joining the fighting. Demonstrations and memorials marking the anniversary of the 7 October attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza took place across the world.
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Families of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza gathered near Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence and stood during a two-minute siren, replicating a custom from Holocaust Remembrance and Memorial Day. Out of 251 people taken hostage on 7 October 2023, an estimated 97 are still being held inside the Gaza Strip, including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead.
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Joe Biden commemorated the anniversary of the 7 October attacks in Israel with a candle-lighting ceremony at the White House. The US president in a statement earlier on Monday marked “the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust” and condemned the “vicious surge in antisemitism in America” since the attacks. Biden also spoke with Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, on Monday.
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The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, urged all sides to pull back from the brink in the Middle East as he addressed the House of Commons on the anniversary of the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel. Starmer said stopping all arms sales to Israel would “never” be his position. The UK has withdrawn the families of its embassy staff working in Israel due to the escalation in fighting.