Lebanon state media says 2 killed in Israeli strike on car on highway
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said an Israeli strike targeting a car on a highway leading to the capital Beirut killed two people on Thursday.
“An enemy drone targeted a car on the Kahale road,” the NNA said, referring to a mountain area on the main highway between Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley.
It later said two people were killed in the strike, which took place outside traditional Hezbollah strongholds that have come under heavy Israeli bombardment since war began last month.
EU will give Lebanese army 60 million euros over next two years, Borrell says
The European Union will give the Lebanese army 20 million euros ($21.59 million) this year and 40 million euros ($43.18 million) next year, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters on Thursday during a conference held in Paris aimed to raise humanitarian aid for Lebanon.
Gaza rescuers say 17 killed, dozens wounded in Israel strike on school
Gaza’s civil defence agency said an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter killed at least 17 people on Thursday in the Palestinian territory’s central Nuseirat area.
The Israeli military hit Al-Shuhada school in Nuseirat camp, killing 17 people and wounding dozens more, Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the agency, told AFP. The toll was confirmed by Al-Awda hospital, which said the school had been hit by an air strike.
The death toll earlier Thursday stood at 16.
UN chief calls for peace in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine and Sudan
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told BRICS leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday that the world needed peace in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine and Sudan.
“Across the board, we need peace,” Guterres said at the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan.
“We need peace in Ukraine. A just peace in line with the UN Charter, international law and UN General Assembly resolutions.”
Palestinian president Abbas says Israel plans to ’empty’ Gaza Strip of its people
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday that Israel aims to “empty” the Gaza Strip of Palestinians, especially in the northern part where it launched a sweeping assault this month.
“It has been a full year since the greatest catastrophe that the Palestinian people experienced after the Nakba of 1948, which is the Israeli war in which crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing are being committed in the Gaza Strip,” Abbas said in a speech to members of the BRICS group.
“This is part of a plan to empty the territory of its people, especially now in northern Gaza where the occupation forces are resorting to starving the population there.”
Sixteen Palestinians killed in Israeli strike on school in Gaza’s Nuseirat camp, hospital says
At least 16 Palestinians were killed, including children, in an Israeli strike on a school in Gaza’s Nuseirat camp on Thursday, Nuseirat’s Al-Awda hospital said. It said 32 people were wounded.
War monitor says two dead in Israeli strikes on Syria
A Syria war monitor said Israeli strikes in the capital and in central Homs province on Thursday killed two people, including a soldier.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes in Damascus’s Kafr Sousa district targeted “the courtyard of a government building near a military fuel station”.
“One person whose identity is unknown” was killed and three others wounded, the Britain-based war monitor said.
In Homs province, which borders Lebanon where Israeli troops are fighting Hezbollah, the Israeli strikes “targeted a truck near a regime forces checkpoint on the road on the outskirts of Qusayr”.
That attack killed a soldier and wounded four others, the Observatory said.
Syrian state news agency SANA said the Israeli army “launched an air attack… targeting two sites” in the Kafr Sousa district of Damascus and a military site near Homs. It reported one soldier killed and seven others wounded.
Hezbollah says clashing with Israeli troops in Lebanon border village
Hezbollah said it was clashing at close range on Thursday with Israeli troops in a southern Lebanon border village, claiming it had hit two tanks.
Hezbollah fighters were engaged in “heavy clashes in the village of Aita al-Shaab” at close range, the group said in a statement, adding that they hit a Merkava tank that came to assist the troops after earlier saying it has “destroyed” another tank.
Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll at 42,847
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Thursday that at least 42,847 people have been killed in the year-long war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes 55 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 100,544 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
Germany pledges 96 million euros in aid for crisis-hit Lebanon
Germany pledged 96 million euros ($103 million) in additional aid to crisis-hit Lebanon at a Paris aid conference Thursday as conflict rages between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah.
“At today’s Lebanon Support Conference, Germany is pledging a total of 96 million euros in additional funds to help deal with the crisis in Lebanon,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Iran’s Pezeshkian slams UN ineffectiveness to ‘extinguish’ regional crisis
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday slammed the United Nations Security Council for failing to tackle the Middle East conflict.
“The fire of war is still raging in the Palestinian Gaza Strip and Lebanese cities, and international institutions and assemblies, and at the top of it the United Nations Security Council, as drivers of international peace and security, lack the necessary efficiency to extinguish the fire of this crisis,” Pezeshkian told leaders from emerging economies at a summit in Russia.
Lebanon needs help to expand army and rebuild, caretaker PM tells Paris summit
International support will be needed to shore up and expand Lebanon’s army and rebuild the country’s destroyed infrastructure, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati told a Paris conference convened amid Israel’s assault on Hezbollah.
Mikati said the Lebanese government had decided to recruit more troops and could deploy 8,000 soldiers as part of a plan to implement a ceasefire and UN Security Council resolution, which calls for the army to be deployed in southern Lebanon.
Lebanese state media say Israeli strike targets car on highway outside Beirut
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said an Israeli strike targeted a car on a highway leading to the capital Beirut, as Israel and Hezbollah fight a month-old war.
“An enemy drone targeted a car on the Kahale road,” the NNA said, referring to a mountain area on the main highway between Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley.
Rescuers say halting work in northern Gaza after Israel threats
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Thursday it could no longer provide first responder services in the north of the territory, accusing Israeli forces of threatening to “bomb and kill” its crews.
“We are unable to provide humanitarian services to citizens in the northern governorate of the Gaza Strip due to threats from Israeli occupation forces, who have threatened to kill and bomb our teams if they remain inside Jabalia camp”, the agency’s spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
Bassal said that its first responders “have been targeted” on several occasions, leaving “several members injured, and others are left bleeding on the streets with no one able to rescue them”.
The Israeli army said Thursday that it was continuing operations in the Jabalia area and had “eliminated dozens of terrorists”.
China’s Xi urges Gaza ceasefire, stop to ‘spread of war in Lebanon’
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday called for a ceasefire in Gaza and the prevention of further conflict in Lebanon, as he addressed leaders of the BRICS emerging economies.
“We need to continue to push for a ceasefire in Gaza, relaunch the two-State solution and stop the spread of war in Lebanon. There should be no more suffering and destruction in Palestine and Lebanon,” Xi told a summit in Russia.
Hezbollah says it launches ‘large rocket salvo’ at north Israeli town
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group said it launched a “large rocket salvo” at the northern Israeli town of Safed on Thursday.
Hezbollah fighters bombed “the town of Safed… with a large rocket salvo”, the group said in a statement, adding the launch came “in response to Israeli enemy attacks” on Lebanon.
Macron reiterates his call for a ceasefire in Lebanon
French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated his call for a ceasefire in Lebanon on Thursday, adding he regretted that Iran had engaged Hezbollah against Israel but also criticising Israel’s operations in the southern part of the country.
Putin says Middle East is on the brink of full-scale war
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the Middle East was on the brink of a full-scale war as tensions rose sharply between Israel and Iran.
“The fighting that began a year ago in Gaza has now spread to Lebanon,” Putin, sitting beside Chinese President Xi Jinping, told a meeting of the BRICS+ group in the city of Kazan on the Volga.
“Other countries in the region were also affected. The degree of confrontation between Israel and Iran has sharply increased. All this resembles a chain reaction and puts the entire Middle East on the brink of a full-scale war.”
France to contribute 100 million euros in humanitarian aid to Lebanon, says Macron
France will provide a 100-million euro aid package to support Lebanon, French President Emmanuel Macron told an international conference Thursday in Paris.
“In the immediate term, massive aid is needed for the Lebanese population, both for the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the war and for the communities hosting them,” said Macron.
The war between Hezbollah militants and Israel has displaced a million people in the country, killed over 2,500 and deepened an economic crisis.
French organisers hope participants’ financial pledges of humanitarian aid will meet the $426 million the United Nations says is urgently needed.
Paris also seeks to help restore Lebanon’s sovereignty and strengthen its institutions.
Hezbollah says targeted Israeli military base near Haifa
Hezbollah said Thursday it targeted an Israeli military base near Haifa, the second time within 24 hours it has said it targeted the facility.
Hezbollah fighters “bombed” the “defence industry” base “north of the city of Haifa with a salvo of rockets”, a statement said, after claiming an attack Wednesday on the same site.
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