Dozens of bodies on northern Gaza streets during Israeli siege
Hospital in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley closes over Israeli attacks
Israel has expanded its bombing campaign in Lebanon by hitting at least three areas outside traditional Hezbollah strongholds.
Many people fled to northern Lebanon to escape Israeli air raids. The local hospital in the village of Tamnine el-Tahta, in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, was forced to close after repeated air attacks nearby.
US ‘putting troops at risk’ by sending them to Israel: Iran
Washington is “putting lives of its troops at risk” by deploying them to Israel in order to operate US missile systems, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned.
“While we have made tremendous efforts in recent days to contain an all-out war in our region, I say it clearly that we have no red lines in defending our people and interests,” he wrote in a post on X.
Araghchi noted the United States has sent record volumes of arms to Israel during its war on Gaza.
The comments come amid news reports that the US is considering sending its advanced THAAD missile defence system to Israel in order to defend it against a potential Iranian response to a looming Israeli attack on Iran. The system requires US personnel on the ground to operate it.
Australian police threaten students with arrest for pro-Palestine posters
A pro-Palestine activist in the Australian city of Sydney documented police threatening to arrest students who placed pro-Palestine posters in the public Hyde Park.
The video clip below, verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad agency, shows police officers stopping the students and confiscating the posters.
The student who filmed the incident commented: “We are protesting a genocide and we are being targeted as criminals. How outrageous!”
Iran’s foreign minister arrives in Baghdad during war-focused tour
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has arrived in the Iraqi capital as part of a regional tour focused on Israel’s war on Gaza that has also taken him to Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia so far.
Araghchi is to continue “consultations with Muslim countries on critical situations in our region as the result of the Israeli regime’s genocidal attacks and aggressions in Gaza and Lebanon”, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said in a post on X.
The top Iranian diplomat will next travel to Oman, according to Iranian media.
Mapping cross-border attacks between Israel and Lebanon
The exchange of strikes between Israel and Hezbollah has been going on since October 8, 2023, when Hezbollah first launched attacks on Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as Israel waged war on the enclave.
Since then, Israel has launched more than four times as many attacks on Lebanon as Hezbollah has on Israel with at least 9,891 strikes.
Israeli military claims to capture Hezbollah fighter in south Lebanon
Israeli troops seized a Hezbollah fighter from an underground bunker and took him back to Israel for interrogation, the army says.
It released a video purporting to show the operative surrendering and getting out of a tunnel in an unspecified location in southern Lebanon. The man, whose face was blurred out, was told to strip before coming out.
The army said he was found in a space 7 metres (23 feet) underground and had weapons and supplies. Hezbollah has not commented on the claim.
42,227 Palestinians killed in Israel’s war on Gaza
At least 42,227 Palestinians have been killed and 98,464 wounded in Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip since October 2023, the Health Ministry says.
Israeli attacks killed at least 52 people and injured 128 others over the past 24 hours, the ministry added.
The death toll from Israel’s yearlong war on Gaza is likely far higher with thousands of bodies buried in the rubble of the vast destruction throughout the Palestinian enclave.
Israeli army confirms 2 soldiers seriously wounded in Lebanon fighting
The Israeli military says two soldiers with its Etzioni Brigade were seriously wounded in separate firefights in southern Lebanon. Additional soldiers suffered light to moderate injuries.
It didn’t provide further details as news reports said wounded troops were transferred to the Rambam hospital, in Israel’s northern Haifa city, during its ground invasion of southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah earlier said it inflicted casualties on Israeli troops after fighters detonated an explosive device and engaged in a gun battle with soldiers trying to infiltrate the Ramyah village.
In the past hour, the group said its operatives clashed with Israeli soldiers trying to enter another village, inflicting casualties in close-quarters combat.
Israeli envoy criticises Japan’s atomic bomb survivor’s Gaza comparison
Israel’s ambassador to Japan has criticised a leader of an atomic bomb survivors’ group awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for comparing their experiences with the children of Gaza.
Ambassador Gilad Cohen congratulated the group Nihon Hidankyo for winning this year’s prize, but said in a post on X the comparison drawn by the group’s co-chair Toshiyuki Mimaki “is outrageous and baseless”.
Mimaki said after the prize was announced on Friday the plight of children in Gaza is similar to what Japan faced at the end of World War II. “In Gaza, bleeding children are being held [by their parents]. It’s like in Japan 80 years ago,” Mimaki said.
Iran blasts new US oil sanctions as ‘ransom’ to Israel
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman denounced as “illegal and unjustified” new US sanctions on Iran’s oil sector in response to the Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel.
Esmail Baghaei said in a statement the sanctions are devoid of any legal or logical basis and referred to them as a form of “ransom payment” to a rogue Israeli state.
“The US, as the most important political backer and top provider of arms used by the Zionist regime in the genocide of Gaza and its aggression against Lebanon, is an accomplice of the regime in the commission of the most severe international crimes,” he said.
Baghaei added Washington is emboldening Israel to continue massacring civilians and endangering regional and global peace and security. US sanctions will not undermine Iran’s “will to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity, national interests or nationals”, he said.
One year of Israel’s war on Gaza – resilience and identity
After a yearlong campaign of destruction, forced displacement and genocide by Israel, Palestinians in Gaza have persevered and shown the world the true meaning of the word resilience.
Many continue to live with dignity and use creativity and innovation under the most testing circumstances.
People in Jabalia killed with ‘unspeakable cruelty and sadism’
Israeli forces are committing “another massacre” in northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory says.
Francesca Albanese said Palestinian civilians in Jabalia “are killed – both in groups and one by one – amid unspeakable cruelty and sadism” by Israeli troops “who have accepted to be ‘willing executioners’ of a genocidal plan”.
The Israeli attacks are being conducted with Western support and weapons, Albanese noted.
“It blows my mind to think that WE KNOW what Israel is doing and altogether we cannot stop it. Looking at where we were 100 years ago, no much progress has been achieved,” she said in a post on X.
The Israeli army has been carrying out a large-scale military incursion for nine days in northern Gaza, where the Jabalia camp is located.
Saudi Arabia condemns Israeli decision to seize UNRWA headquarters
The Saudi Foreign Ministry has expressed “condemnation and strong denunciation” of the Israeli authorities’ decision to confiscate the land of the headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in occupied East Jerusalem and turn it into a settlement.
“The ministry reaffirms the kingdom’s rejection of Israel’s continued violations, which blatantly contravene international laws and resolutions, and its ongoing political and military targeting of United Nations agencies and humanitarian organisations,” it said in a statement on X.
“These actions also place the lives of those working in these organisations, particularly UNRWA staff, at risk as they continue their vital humanitarian mission to aid Palestinian refugees.”
Palestinians in northern Gaza, about 400,000 people, are trapped, with the Israeli military not allowing anyone to leave the area despite issuing an evacuation order.
People are stuck in their homes and not getting any food, water supplies or other essentials. They’ve been cut off from the outside world and constantly bombarded.
This is a systematic mass slaughter. At least 200 people have been killed since the beginning of this ground offensive earlier this month. More than 70 bodies are still on the streets of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoon as civil defence workers say they’re unable to retrieve them because of Israeli attacks.
What’s happening now is a continuation of the genocidal acts that began a year ago.
