Middle East crisis live: Israeli army urges residents to evacuate from southern Lebanese city | Middle East and north Africa

The social media platform X – owned by Elon Musk – has suspended a new account on behalf of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 85, that posted messages in Hebrew.

The account was suspended early on Monday with a brief note appended to it saying: “X suspends accounts which violate the X Rules.” It wasn’t immediately clear what the violation was.

Khamenei said in a speech on Sunday that Israel’s airstrikes on Iran early on Saturday “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed,” while stopping short of calling for retaliation.

The X account opened on Sunday with a message in Hebrew reading: “In the name of God, the most merciful,” a standard Islamic greeting.

A second message corresponded to a speech Khamenei gave on Sunday and was sent on his English account as: “Zionists are making a miscalculation with respect to Iran. They don’t know Iran. They still haven’t been able to correctly understand the power, initiative, and determination of the Iranian people.”

Khamenei – the ultimate authority in Iran – has reportedly previously had his Facebook and Instagram accounts removed by Meta over his support of Hamas after the militant group’s 7 October attack on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.

The Israeli army told residents in parts of Lebanon’s southern city of Tyre to leave immediately, warning that it would attack Hezbollah targets there.

“Hezbollah’s activities force the (Israeli army) to act against it forcefully,” military spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote in a post on X that included a map of targeted areas in the coastal city.

He wrote:

Hezbollah’s activities force the IDF to act against it forcefully, as we do not intend to harm you.

You must immediately move out of the area marked in red and head north of the Awali River.

Anyone who is near the elements of Hezbollah, its facilities and combat equipment, is putting his life in danger.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has repeatedly issued evacuation orders during its assault on Lebanon over the last month. Lebanon’s health ministry said earlier today that an Israeli airstrike in the centre of the city killed at least five people and injured 10 others.

As we mentioned in the opening summary, Iraq has condemned Israel’s use of its airspace to attack neighbouring Iran in a protest letter sent to UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, and the UN security council. Here is a little more information on the letter.

A statement from government spokesperson Bassim Alawadi said the letter condemns “the Zionist entity’s blatant violation of Iraq’s airspace and sovereignty by using Iraqi airspace to carry out an attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran on 26 October”.

Alawadi said the Iraqi foreign ministry would raise “this violation” in talks with the US, Israel’s biggest arms supplier and most powerful diplomatic ally.

The Iranian military said that some Israeli aircraft had fired a “small number of long-range missiles… from a distance”, inside the US-patrolled airspace of Iraq, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

Baghdad has close ties with Tehran but also a strategic partnership with Washington, which has troops in Iraq as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition.

While the Iraqi government has sought to avoid being dragged into the escalating regional conflict, some pro-Iran factions have launched attacks on US forces in the region and claimed responsibility for drones sent to Israel.

The UN security council is expected to meet today to discuss Israel’s attack on Iran, which targeted military sites in several regions of the country and killed at least four soldiers. The Swiss UN mission said the meeting had been requested by Iran with the support of Algeria, China and Russia.

In the opening summary, we mentioned that an Israeli attack on the historic Lebanese port city of Tyre had killed at least three people.

Lebanon’s health ministry is now saying the Israeli airstrike in the centre of the city on Monday killed at least five people and injured 10 others. The ministry said emergency workers are removing the rubble from the building struck this morning.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the Middle East crisis amid Israel’s ongoing wars on Lebanon and Gaza.

The top commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has warned Israel it would face “bitter consequences” after its attack on Iranian military sites early on Saturday, according to local media reports.

The Israeli airstrikes killed four Iranian soldiers, Iran’s army said. As my colleague Patrick Wintour writes in this story, a debate has been set off inside Iran on whether the attack, more limited than some had predicted, warrants a military response and if the country will be seen as weak if it does nothing.

The Israel’s airstrikes were in retaliation for the 1 October attack by Iran, which fired about 200 missiles at Israel, though most were intercepted by the country’s air defences.

IRGC chief Maj Gen Hossein Salami was quoted on Monday as having said that Israel had “failed to achieve its ominous goals” with its air attack on Saturday, calling it a sign of “miscalculation and helplessness”. He warned that “its bitter consequences will be unimaginable” for Israel.

The IRGC is a major military, political and economic force in Iran. It holds significant power within the country, with its own ground forces, navy and air force.

Here is a summary of the day’s other main events:

• Israel’s parliament – the Knesset – is expected to vote on Monday on a pair of bills that, if passed, will make it impossible for the UN relief and works agency for Palestinians (Unrwa) to operate in Gaza and the West Bank. One of the bills seeks to ban Unrwa from operating within Israel’s sovereign territory, stating that the agency “shall not establish any representation, provide any services or conduct any activities within the territory of Israel”. This would lead to closure of the Unrwa headquarters in East Jerusalem and end visas for Unrwa staff. The measures look to have a cross-party majority of about 100 of the 120 members, despite widespread opposition from other countries, including most of Israel’s allies.

• At least three people were killed and two others injured by Israeli attacks on the Raml neighbourhood in the Lebanese city of Tyre, according to the country’s national news agency.

• Approximately 70 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the past day, health officials in Gaza said, as Israel’s renewed assault on the north of the strip shows no sign of slowing. Information about the situation in northern Gaza has become increasingly sporadic and difficult to verify as Israel’s new ground and aerial assault focusing on Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun enters its fourth week. Internet and phone services were down for hours at a time, and civil defence workers were unable to reach the sites of recent strikes due to Israeli forces’ ever-tightening siege and attacks on their crews.

• The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, expressed his shock at the appalling conditions the remaining residents stuck in northern Gaza are in. His spokesperson released a statement, with the UN chief calling the dire situation there “unbearable” as citizens remain trapped in extreme danger and deprivation, under siege by the Israeli military. Guterres was “shocked by the harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction in the north”.

• Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said that his government has proposed a two-day ceasefire in Gaza, after which talks should resume within 10 days in efforts to reach a permanent one. During the two days he suggested a swap of four hostages held in Gaza by Hamas for four Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

• Iran’s leadership has said it is weighing a response to this weekend’s Israeli airstrikes, as the country called on the UN security council to meet on Monday. Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said Tehran was not looking for a war but would respond “appropriately” to Israel’s strikes. “We do not seek war but we will defend the rights of our nation and country,” Pezeshkian told a cabinet meeting on Sunday. He added: “We will give an appropriate response to the aggression of the Zionist regime.”

• Iraq has submitted a complaint to the UN over Israel’s use of its airspace to strike Iran on Saturday, an Iraqi government spokesperson said on Monday.

• One person was killed when a truck rammed into a bus stop in Ramat Hasharon, north of Tel Aviv, on Sunday, in what Israeli police are treating as a suspected terrorist attack. About 40 people were injured to varying degrees, some seriously, and were taken to nearby hospitals, police said. The Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad praised the suspected attack but did not claim it. The driver of the truck was a Palestinian citizen of Israel, police said, and was “neutralised” by passersby carrying firearms.