Middle East Latest: Israel Strikes In The Heart Of Lebanon’s Capital Near Parliament And Embassies

Israeli airstrikes targeted a neighborhood in the heart of Lebanon’s capital late Monday evening, slamming into an area near the Parliament, several embassies and the U.N. headquarters, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency.

Ambulance sirens echoed through the area in Beirut, and Lebanon’s Health Ministry said at least four people were killed and 18 wounded. A reporter with The Associated Press at the scene described significant casualties on the street.

Since late September, Israel has dramatically escalated its bombardment of Lebanon, vowing to cripple the militant group Hezbollah and end its barrages into Israel. More than 3,400 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli fire — 80% of them in the past month — Lebanon’s Health Ministry says.

The current wave of conflict gripping the Middle East began when the Palestinian militant group Hamas stormed from Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Hezbollah began firing into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed over 43,800 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. The officials do not distinguish between militants and civilians but say most of those killed are women and children. The fighting has left some 76 people dead in Israel, including 31 soldiers.

BEIRUT — An Israeli airstrike targeted the main water facility in the southern port city of Tyre, killing two local officials and injuring two others, further compounding southern Lebanon’s worsening water crisis, Lebanon’s state media said.

The attack severely damaged the facility, prompting the Tyre Municipality to urge residents to ration water use until repairs can be made, the National News Agency said.

Those killed in the attack included Samer Shaghri, a local elected official called a mukhtar who handles residents’ administrative affairs, and Qassem Wehbi, the deputy mayor of Burj al-Shamali, a town east of Tyre.

This strike is part of a broader pattern of bombardments in the 13-month conflict between Hezbollah and Israel that, according to an October 22 UNICEF report, have damaged at least 28 water facilities, cutting off access to safe water for over 360,000 people, primarily in southern Lebanon.

UNICEF’s report quoted Lebanon’s Minister of Energy, Walid Fayyad, who said, “The ongoing hostilities have inflicted severe damage on Lebanon’s essential services, leaving hundreds of thousands without access to safe water and electricity.”

BEIRUT — An Israeli airstrike hit a densely populated residential area in central Beirut on Monday evening, close to major landmarks including the U.N. headquarters in Lebanon, the country’s parliament, the prime minister’s office and several embassies, including the EU delegation.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said two missiles hit the area of Zoqaq al-Blat. The strike follows reports that the U.S. envoy has delayed his visit for cease-fire talks.

Ambulance sirens echoed through the area, and the Health Ministry said at least four people were killed and 18 wounded. A reporter with The Associated Press at the scene described significant casualties on the street.

The target of the airstrike remains unclear, and the Israeli army did not issue a prior warning.

Many areas in central Beirut, including Zoqaq al-Blat, became a refuge for people displaced by the ongoing conflict in southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

This is the second consecutive day of Israeli airstrikes on central Beirut after more than a month-long pause on strikes in that part of the capital. On Sunday, a strike in the area of Ras el-Nabaa killed Hezbollah media spokesperson Mohammed Afif, along with six other people, including a woman. Later that day, four people were killed in a separate strike in the commercial district of Mar Elias. It remains unclear what the target of that strike was.

RIO DE JANEIRO ― President Joe Biden told fellow global leaders at a Group of 20 summit Monday that his soon-to-end administration would keep pushing to bring an equitable end to Israel’s devastating war against Hamas in Gaza.

Seated between leaders of France and India at a long oval table at the summit site in Rio de Janeiro, Biden cited U.S. efforts on hunger and poverty in his soon-to-end four years in office, saying he had put $160 billion into global development.

With fewer than three months left in his term, Biden also said his administration would keep pressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on its conduct of the war and the need to end it. “Israel has a right to defend itself after the worse massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. But how it defends itself … matters a great deal.”

“We’re going to keep pushing to accelerate a cease-fire deal that ensures Israel’s security and brings hostages home and ends the suffering of the Palestinian people and children,” he said.

Biden also said Hamas was still refusing a deal, adding, “I am asking everyone to increase the pressure on Hamas.”

TEL AVIV, Israel — United Nations aid organizations say a convoy carrying food supplies in Gaza was attacked over the weekend, further contributing to severe food shortages across the besieged territory.

UNRWA, the main U.N. agency responsible for distributing aid in Gaza, said gunmen stole aid from 97 of the convoy’s 109 trucks on Saturday.

The Israeli military has said that attacking and stealing aid is an ongoing problem, especially in southern Gaza. COGAT, the military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, said convoys are attacked by Hamas militants and known crime families. The military did not have an immediate response to Saturday’s attack.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Health Ministry said the toll from Sunday’s Israeli strike in central Beirut rose to seven killed, including a woman, and 26 wounded.

The Health Ministry also said Monday that three people were killed and 29 wounded in a separate strike Sunday in the Mar Elias area of central Beirut.

The Hezbollah militant group said five members were killed including its spokesperson Mohammad Afif in the strike in the Ras Al Nabaa area.

DAMASCUS — Nine members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group who were killed in Israeli airstrikes in Damascus were buried Monday in the Syrian capital.

Women in the crowd wept as the dead were transported to the Yarmouk cemetery in the Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. Some held images of slain Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.

Israeli strikes on Thursday targeted two buildings with the offices of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, killing 15 people, including Syrian civilians, and wounding 20 others, officials said.

The funeral on Monday was held for the nine Islamic Jihad members, including two high-ranking officials — commander Abdel Aziz Saeed Minawi and Rasmi Youssef Abu Issa, who was in charge of the group’s Arab affairs.

The wife of Ali Kabalan, a 44-year-old fighter who was killed Thursday, told The Associated Press that while the loss was unbearable, she and their five children were “proud” that he died “a martyr for the cause of Palestine’s liberation.”

The Israeli military claimed the strikes dealt significant damage to its group’s leadership. Israel has accused the Islamic Jihad, alongside Hamas, of coordinating the Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel that ignited the ongoing war.

Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria targeting members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and officials from Iranian-backed groups.

GENEVA — The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees says Israel would have the “responsibility” to respond to their needs if it goes through with plans to ban the agency.

Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of UNRWA, on Monday stepped up appeals to the international community to help convince Israeli authorities not to go through with the ban.

Measures passed by the Knesset, if carried out as anticipated in January, would ban UNRWA from operating and cut all ties between the agency and the Israeli government.

“The clock is ticking,” Lazzarini told reporters in Geneva.

Critics say the Knesset moves culminated a long-running campaign against UNRWA, which Israel contends has been infiltrated by Hamas. They say Israel’s real aim is to sideline the issue of Palestinian refugees.

Lazzarini all but suggested that the considerable work helping Palestinian refugees would otherwise fall to Israel under international humanitarian law.

“I keep being asked, Is there yes, or not, a Plan B? There is no plan B within the U.N. agency ― within the U.N. family because there is no other agency geared to provide the same activities,” he said.

“UNRWA is the response of the international community to the plight of the Palestinian refugees, through the mandate provided by the GA (United Nations General Assembly) resolution,” Lazzarini added. “So, if there is no U.N. or international community response, the responsibility will go back to the occupying power, being Israel.”

“And that’s where we have to ask: Where does a plan B sit today?” he said.

TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military said Monday it had delivered fuel and medical equipment to hospitals in a besieged part of northern Gaza, where troops have launched an intense operation since October.

COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza said, said they delivered 10,000 liters of fuel and 149 packages of medical equipment to two hospitals, and helped oversee the evacuation of 64 patients and their escorts, along with the U.N., from hard-hit hospitals in the north.

The hospitals that serve the area have been largely inaccessible because of the fighting, and a raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital last month left it barely functional.

Israel has faced international pressure to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, particularly in the war-ravaged north. Last week, the United States said it would not limit arms transfers to Israel as it had threatened to do in October if aid was not significantly stepped up.

In November, COGAT said they facilitated at least two aid deliveries to the far north, after a month in which virtually no supplies reached these areas. But international aid groups warned much more is needed, and famine is imminent in parts of northern Gaza.

BEIRUT — A funeral was held Monday in southern Lebanon for Mohammad Afif, Hezbollah’s head of media relations, a day after he was killed in an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut.

Afif’s coffin, draped in Hezbollah’s yellow flag, was carried through the streets of Sidon on the shoulders of mourners.

“Resistance is the response, and the convoys of martyrs create victory,” Afif’s brother, Sadiq al-Naboulsi, said at the funeral.

“Hajj Mohammad Afif was a big figure in the media, and therefore the Israelis and Americans were hurt by his voice. For that reason, they assassinated him. The killing of Hajj Mohammad Afif and all the martyrs and leaders will not turn (us) back at all,” he said.

The strike that hit central Beirut for the first time in over a month also killed three other people on Sunday, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

Afif had been a prominent spokesperson for Hezbollah, especially during the recent escalation of tensions with Israel. Days before his death, he held a press conference in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where he declared that Hezbollah was prepared for a prolonged war and denied claims that the group had lost its missile capabilities.

BEIRUT — A government minister close to Hezbollah says Lebanon will convey its “positive position” on a United States-backed cease-fire proposal this week.

The Biden administration is trying to halt the war between Israel and the militant group after months of sputtering cease-fire efforts.

Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally who is mediating for the militants, is expected to meet with U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein in the Lebanese capital on Tuesday.

Labor Minister Mostafa Bayram, who met with Berri on Monday, said Hezbollah’s function “is to make sure the (Israeli) aggression fails to achieve its goals, while negotiation is for the state and the government.”

A Western diplomat familiar with the talks told The Associated Press there is a sense of “cautious optimism.”

“Diplomatic efforts are converging towards a cease-fire, but it’s still in the hands and heads of key players to decide if it’s in their interest or not to stop things right now,” said the diplomat, who was not authorized to brief media and so spoke on condition of anonymity.

The efforts are aimed at reestablishing a U.N. buffer zone in southern Lebanon established after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. Israel is said to be pushing for guarantees it can continue to act militarily against Hezbollah if needed, a demand the Lebanese are unlikely to accept.

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey has denied Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s plane the right to use its airspace, preventing him from traveling to Azerbaijan, the Turkish state-run news agency reported.

The Anadolu Agency report late Sunday said Israeli authorities requested permission for the plane to access the Turkish airspace on its way to Baku, Azerbaijan, where Herzog was scheduled to attend the COP29 conference on climate change.

The agency based its report on unnamed Turkish officials. It did not say when the permission was denied. A statement from Herzog’s office said the decision to cancel the president’s trip to Baku was due to “the situation assessment and for security reasons.” It did not comment on the Turkish report.

Turkey has emerged as one of the strongest critics of Israel’s military actions in Gaza and Lebanon. It has suspended trade relations with Israel, accused the country of genocide and voiced support to Hamas.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip have killed eight people, including two children aged 7 and 9 and their parents, Palestinian officials said. A third child, 10 years old, was wounded in the same strike.

The Civil Defense, first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government, said Monday that the two children were killed in an overnight strike on a tent where displaced people were sheltering in the southern city of Khan Younis.

An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies at nearby Nasser Hospital. The two children were beheaded by the blast and their remains were placed in one body bag.

A separate strike early Monday killed four people, including a woman and a child, in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp, according to nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

The Israeli military blames civilian deaths on Hamas, accusing militants of hiding among civilians and fighting from residential areas. It rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.

The war began when Hamas stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 43,800 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. They do not distinguish between militants and civilians but say most of those killed are women and children.

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