Netanyahu mulls plan to empty northern Gaza of civilians and cut off aid
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is examining a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza in an attempt to starve out Hamas militants, a plan that, if implemented, could trap without food or water hundreds of thousands of Palestinians unwilling or unable to leave their homes.
The plan proposed to Netanyahu and the Israeli parliament by a group of retired generals would escalate the pressure, giving Palestinians a week to leave the northern third of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, before declaring it a closed military zone.
The plan calls for Israel to maintain control over the north for an indefinite period to attempt to create a new administration without Hamas, splitting the Gaza Strip in two.
FRANCE 24’s International Affairs Commentator Douglas Herbert tells us more.
UN decries ‘worst restrictions ever seen’ on Gaza aid since start of war
Gaza appears to be facing the “worst restrictions on humanitarian aid” since the Israel-Hamas war began over a year ago, said James Elder, spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, on Tuesday, lamenting the especially devastating impact on children.
“Day after day, the situation for children becomes worse than the day before,” said Elder.
Despite a desperate need to increase the amount of aid going in, Elder said that aid access was worsening, with “no commercial trucks whatsoever allowed to come in” for several days last week.
Northern Gaza “hasn’t had food, any food aid at all coming in all of October”, he added.
The dire lack of aid, coupled with the relentless strikes and the fact that around 85 percent of the Gaza Strip has been hit with some form of evacuation order, has made the territory “essentially unlivable”, Elder said.
Lebanon PM says ready to bolster army in south after any ceasefire
Lebanon is ready to bolster the army’s presence in the south after any ceasefire, adding that Israeli troops were making brief cross-border incursions, Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Tuesday.
“Currently we have 4,500 soldiers in south Lebanon, and we wish to increase them to between 7,000 and 11,000,” Mikati told AFP in an interview, adding that as soon as a ceasefire is reached, “we can move soldiers” from other parts of the country to the south.
“The information we have is that there are brief (Israeli) incursions” into south Lebanon, he added.
Beirut airport security tightened to ‘remove pretexts’ for Israel to attack, Lebanon PM says
Security has been tightened in Lebanon’s only airport in Beirut to remove any pretexts for an Israeli attack, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati told AFP in an interview Tuesday.
“The government is doing everything in its power to remove any pretexts from the Israelis’ hands,” he said, adding that “tightened security has been in place for a week at the airport”, which is located near Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold that has seen intense Israeli bombardment.
Gunman fatally wounds Israeli policeman near southern city of Ashdod in ‘terrorist’ attack, police say
An assailant shot dead an Israeli policeman and wounded five other people near the southern city of Ashdod on Tuesday in what police called a “terrorist” attack.
The gunman was killed during the attack at the Yavne interchange along the highway connecting Ashdod to Tel Aviv, the authorities said.
“A terrorist wounded five people, including a policeman who was critically injured and then died later,” a police spokesman said.
The attacker had approached the main road on foot, fatally wounding the policeman before going on a shooting rampage and wounding others.
An Israeli paramedic at the scene “shot the terrorist and neutralised him”, said Zaki Heller, a spokesman with emergency service provider Magen David Adom.
Hezbollah says it downed an Israeli drone
Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement said it downed an Israeli drone on Tuesday, without saying where, as the Iran-backed group battles Israeli troops near the border and as Israel bombs south and east Lebanon.
Hezbollah fighters from the group’s “air defence units … downed an Israeli Hermes 450 drone” just after midnight, the armed movement said in a statement.
UN says it has ‘received reports’ that children and women comprised the majority of victims in Israeli air strike in north Lebanon
The UN human rights office said on Tuesday it had received reports that most of the 22 victims of an Israeli air strike on a building in northern Lebanon were women and children.
“What we are hearing is that amongst the 22 people killed were 12 women and two children,” UN human rights office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence told a Geneva press briefing in response to a question about a strike on the village of Aitou on Monday.
“We understand it was a four-story residential building that was struck. With these factors in mind, we have real concerns with respect to IHL (International Humanitarian Law), so the laws of war, and the principles of distinction, proportion and proportionality,” he said, calling for an investigation into the incident.
Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll at 42,344
At least 42,344 people in Gaza have been killed in the war between Israel and Palestinian militants, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Tuesday.
The toll includes 55 deaths over the previous day, according to the ministry, which said 99,013 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants led a series of attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Israeli strikes kill at least 28 in Gaza, health and emergency officials say
Israeli military strikes killed at least 28 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, as Israeli forces tightened their squeeze around Jabalia in the north of the enclave amid fierce battles with Hamas-led fighters.
Palestinian health officials said at least 11 people were killed by Israeli fire near Al-Falouja in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, while 10 others were killed in Bani Suhaila in eastern Khan Younis in the south when an Israeli missile struck a house.
Earlier on Tuesday, an Israeli air strike destroyed three houses in the Sabra suburb of Gaza City. The local civil emergency service said they recovered two bodies from the site, while the search continued for 12 other people who were believed to have been in the houses at the time of the strike.
Five others were killed when a house was struck in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.
Jabalia has been the focus of an Israeli offensive for more than 10 days, with troops returning to areas of the north that came under heavy bombardment in the early months of the year-long war.
Qatari emir says Israel aiming to implement ‘pre-existing plans’ in the West Bank and Lebanon
Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on Tuesday accused Israel of choosing to expand the conflict in the Middle East to implement “pre-existing plans” for the occupied West Bank and Lebanon.
“The easiest and safest way to stop the escalation on the border with Lebanon would have been to stop the war of extermination on Gaza,” Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani told Qatar’s Shura Council.
“But Israel deliberately chose to expand the aggression to implement pre-existing plans in other locations such as the West Bank and Lebanon because it sees that the space is available for that,” he said in his annual address opening the Gulf emirate’s legislative body.
Qatar has played a key role in efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and has called for a truce in Lebanon, where Israel last month intensified military operations against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.
Israel launches air strikes in eastern Lebanon, putting hospital out of service, state media reports
Israel launched multiple air strikes early Tuesday in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, putting a hospital in Baalbek city out of service, Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported.
Iran’s Quds Force chief Qaani attends funeral of general who was killed alongside Hezbollah’s Nasrallah, state TV reports
Iranian commander Esmail Qaani on Tuesday attended the funeral in Tehran for slain general Abbas Nilforoushan who was killed last month alongside Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
The funeral procession for Nilforoushan, a general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, began at the Imam Hossein Square, according to a live broadcast on state television.
Qaani – who heads the Quds Force, the Revolutionary Guards’ foreign operations arm – had disappeared from public view and was rumoured in some media to have been targeted in an Israeli strike on Lebanon before reappearing.
Hezbollah says its fighters clashed with Israeli troops near Lebanese village
Hezbollah said its “fighters clashed with” Israeli troops Tuesday who were trying to infiltrate on the outskirts of Rab Tlatin village in southern Lebanon.
The group also said it launched missiles at soldiers and a barrage of rockets at northern Israel, while the Israeli military reported sirens blaring near the border.
Israel’s military said its “troops eliminated dozens of terrorists in close-quarters combat” and strikes over the past day.
Israel will listen to US but make its own decisions, Netanyahu’s office says
Israel will listen to the United States but will make its own decisions based on its national interest, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Tuesday.
The statement was attached to a Washington Post article that said Netanyahu had told US President Joe Biden’s administration that Israel would strike Iranian military, not nuclear or oil, targets.
White House says it has been tracking Iranian threats against Trump for years and warns Tehran
The United States has been closely tracking Iranian threats against former president Donald Trump for years, the White House said on Monday, and warned of “severe consequences” if Tehran was to attack any US citizen.
“We consider this a national and homeland security matter of the highest priority, and we strongly condemn Iran for these brazen threats. Should Iran attack any of our citizens, including those who continue to serve the United States or those who formerly served, Iran will face severe consequences,” said White House National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett.
UN Security Council voices ‘strong concerns’ over attacks that have wounded Lebanon peacekeepers
The United Nations Security Council voiced “strong concerns” Monday after incidents in which UN peacekeepers in Lebanon have been wounded as Israel presses its campaign against Hezbollah militants.
“Against the backdrop of ongoing hostilities along the Blue Line, the members of the Security Council expressed their strong concerns after several UNIFIL positions came under fire in the past days. Several peacekeepers have been wounded,” said the council’s rotating presidency, Switzerland’s UN ambassador Pascale Baeriswyl.
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