Middle East crisis live: Israeli airstrike kills 12 in Gaza City school; Ireland joins genocide case against Israel

Key events

Show key events only

Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, plans to keep working to end the wars in Gaza and Lebanon in his time remaining before handing over to whoever Donald Trump appoints when he reenters the White House in January, the US State Department said.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters.

We will continue to pursue an end to the war in Gaza, an end to the war in Lebanon, a surge of humanitarian assistance (to Gaza), and that is our duty to pursue those policies right up until noon on January 20 when the president-elect takes office.

Israeli forces have detained at least 18 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank since last night, the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said in a joint statement.

According to Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, the detentions were carried out in Hebron, Ramallah, Qalqilya and Tubas.

It is estimated that at least 11,600 Palestinians have been arrested in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since last October.

Human rights groups and international organisations have alleged widespread abuse of inmates detained by Israel in raids in the West Bank.

They have described alleged abusive and humiliating treatment, including holding blindfolded and handcuffed detainees in cramped cages as well as beatings, intimidation and harassment.

A renewed Israeli assault was launched on the northern part of the Gaza Strip last month, with the Israeli military claiming it was to stop Hamas fighters regrouping there.

The blockage of aid and food deliveries and the targeting of civilian infrastructure, however, have led to accusations that Israel is committing the war crime of seeking to forcibly displace the remaining population.

The entirety of northern Gaza is under Israeli evacuation orders but it is unclear how many people remain. Last month, the UN estimated there were about 400,000 civilians unable or unwilling to follow Israeli evacuation orders to the south.

Our video team has put together this video showing the scale of devastation caused by Israel’s assault on northern Gaza, which has been most intense in Jabalia in recent weeks.

Israeli airstrike kills 12 people in school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City – civil defence agency

Gaza’s civil defence agency said that 12 people were killed in the Israeli airstrike on a school housing displaced people in the al-Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City, according to Al Jazeera. Medics said earlier that 10 Palestinian people had been killed in the airstrike.

Ireland to join South Africa's genocide case against Israel

Ireland intends to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ) before the end of the year, its foreign minister, Michael Martin, has said.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) has the following report:

South Africa in December brought a case before the ICJ, arguing that the war in Gaza breached the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention, an accusation Israel has strongly denied.

Several nations have added their weight to the proceedings, including Spain, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Turkey, Chile and Libya.

Ireland had said it would file a submission to the court once South Africa had submitted a document supporting its claims, which it did on Monday.

“The government’s decision to intervene in the South African case was based on detailed and rigorous legal analysis,” Martin told lawmakers in the Irish parliament, the Dail.

“Ireland is a strong supporter of the work of the court and is deeply committed to international law and accountability.”

South Africa announced on Monday that it had filed a so-called memorial with the ICJ claiming “evidence” of a “genocide” committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip.

The document cannot be made public but was “over 750 pages of text, supported by exhibits and annexes of over 4,000 pages”, said the office of President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Two French officials deployed to a historic site under the country’s administration in Jerusalem were briefly arrested by Israeli police on Thursday, France’s foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said (see post at 12.21 for comments he gave during a press conference alongside outgoing Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz earlier today).

The incident occurred when Barrot was due to visit the compound of the Church of the Pater Noster, located on the Mount of Olives in the city’s historic east, Reuters reported.

Barrot told journalists Israel’s action action was “unacceptable”, adding that he refused to enter the site in protest over Israeli police presence. His ministry said the Israeli ambassador to Paris will be summoned in coming days.

Israeli attacks on Lebanon kill over 3,100 people since October 2023 – health ministry

Israeli attacks on Lebanon killed at least 53 people and injured 161 during the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 3,103 deaths and 13,856 injuries since October 2023, the Lebanese health ministry has said in an update.

Hezbollah, the Iranian backed Lebanese militant group, began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Palestinians on 7 October 2023, the day after its ally Hamas’s attack on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.

The Israeli military unleashed its assault on Lebanon in October, claiming its aim was to return tens of thousands of people evacuated from homes in northern Israel due to the cross-border hostilities.

Hezbollah says it targeted the “strategic Stella Maris naval base for monitoring and surveillance” in northern Israel with missiles. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Unesco to convene meeting to consider 'enhanced protection' of Lebanon cultural sites amid Israeli bombing

The UN’s cultural agency, Unesco, has said it will hold a meeting later this month to consider enhanced protection of cultural sites in Lebanon as the deadly Israeli bombing campaign across the country continues.

A session of a Unesco committee will be held at the body’s Paris base on 18 November to consider the inscription of Lebanese cultural properties on Unesco’s international list of sites under “enhanced protection” as well as more funding, the UN body said.

It comes after more than 100 Lebanese lawmakers issued an appeal to the UN earlier today, demanding the preservation of heritage sites in areas heavily bombed by the Israeli military in recent weeks.

“During the devastating war on Lebanon, Israel has caused grave human rights violations and atrocities,” a letter addressed to Unesco’s chief said, demanding “the protection of Lebanon’s historic sites in Baalbek, Tyre, Sidon, and other invaluable landmarks currently at risk due to the escalation of the atrocities”.

At least 40 people were killed in Israeli air strikes in eastern Lebanon on Wednesday, which struck in the governorates of Baalbek and Bekaa, according to reports.

An Israeli airstrike hit nearby Baalbek’s Unesco-listed Roman ruins, a famous heritage site with some of the largest Roman temples outside of Rome, an official said yesterday.

Israel last month reportedly bombed between major heritage sites in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, including the Hippodrome, a Unesco world heritage site, and some seaside sites linked to the Phoenicians and the Crusaders.

Photos are emerging of the aftermath of an Israeli strike on a car at a Lebanese army checkpoint at the entrance to the southern city of Sidon, which killed three people and wounded three Lebanese soldiers and four members of a UN peacekeeping contingent, the Lebanese army said in a statement.

A Reuters reporter at the scene said a bus with United Nations markings that was part of a large convoy of UN peacekeepers had sustained damage in the strike. Unifil, the peacekeeping force, said in a statement that five newly-arrived peacekeepers were lightly injured in the Sidon drone strike and treated on the spot.

Hezbollah believes it will make little difference who is in the White House when it comes to a ceasefire, spokesperson Ibrahim al-Moussawi told the Reuters news agency.

“It might be a change in the party who is in power, but when it comes to Israel, they have more or less the same policy,” Moussawi said. “We want to see actions, we want to see decisions taken.”

US diplomatic efforts to halt fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which included a 60-day ceasefire proposal, faltered last week ahead of the US election on Tuesday in which former president Trump recaptured the White House.

Moussawi acknowledged the heavy toll of Israeli attacks that have blown apart thousands of buildings, mostly in Lebanon’s Shi’ite Muslim-dominated south and east and the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut. But he said the group’s military capabilities remained strong.

“Our hearts are broken - we are losing very dear lives. This feeling that [Israel] cannot be punished or brought to international justice is a result of US support which renders them immune to accountability,” he said. “America is a full partner in what’s happening because they can exercise influence to stop this destruction.”

Iran says result of US election 'does not matter to us at all'

The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has said the result of the US election did not matter to his country, according to reports on state media. Earlier Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson said the presidential election result in the US was a chance for a new administration to “review the wrong approaches of the past”.

“To us it does not matter at all who has won the American election, because our country and system relies on its inner strength and a great and honourable nation,” Pezeshkian said late on Wednesday, quoted by the state news agency IRNA and reported by Reuters.

“We will not be close-minded in developing our relations with other countries [while] we have made it our priority to develop relations with Islamic and neighbouring countries,” Pezeshkian said.

It was not immediately clear if Pezeshkian was also referring to the United States, with which Iran does not have diplomatic relations. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all matters of state, has banned holding any direct talks with the United States.

Julian Borger, the Guardian’s senior international correspondent, has been assessing the reaction to Donald Trump’s election success among Palestinians.

“It will not make a big difference,” said Eyad Barghouti, a retired university teacher, expressing a commonly held view as the Gaza war rages on. “What Biden was doing before with a low profile, Trump will be more vocal about.

“Biden would say in public: ‘We’re not trying to starve Gaza, we’re trying to give them food aid,’ all the while supporting Israel’s army. [Trump] will say it in a clear way, that we are trying to get rid of such-and-such people. He will not play the game of trying to make himself sound like a humanitarian.”

Read the full piece here:

Bethan McKernan is Jerusalem correspondent for the Guardian

The Israeli army has distanced itself from comments made by a brigadier general that ground forces are getting closer to “the complete evacuation” of the northern Gaza Strip and residents will not be allowed to return home.

In a media briefing on Tuesday night, the Israel Defense Forces’ Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that “there is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return”. He added that humanitarian aid would be allowed to “regularly” enter the south of the territory but there were “no more civilians left” in the north.

humanitarian law experts have said that such actions would amount to the war crimes of forcible transfer and the use of food as a weapon.

The IDF did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on Cohen’s remarks. But on Thursday, a spokesperson said the comments had been taken out of context during a discussion about Jabaliya, and did not “reflect the IDF’s objectives and values”.

The spokesperson said the briefing on Tuesday had been on background, and the brigadier general should not have been quoted in Hebrew media reports that emerged.

You can read the full story here:

Lebanon’s News Agency reported earlier that “an enemy drone targeted a car in Araya,” in Lebanon, adding that the airstrike left a route blocked to traffic.

Death toll from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza reaches 43,469, says health ministry

At least 43,469 Palestinian people have been killed and 102,561 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

Of those, 78 Palestinians were killed and 214 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry said.

Gaza’s health ministry has said in the past that thousands of other dead people are most likely lost in the rubble of the territory.

Here is a statement from Unifil about the Israeli airstrike on the outskirts of Sidon in Lebanon:

This afternoon, a Unifil convoy bringing newly-arrived peacekeepers to south Lebanon was passing Saida when a drone strike occurred nearby.

Five peacekeepers were lightly injured and treated by the Lebanese Red Cross on the spot. They will continue to their posts. The Lebanese army also confirmed three of its soldiers at the nearby checkpoint were injured.

We remind all actors of their obligation to avoid actions putting peacekeepers or civilians in danger. Differences should be resolved at the negotiating table, not through violence.

You can read more about Unifil’s function in this useful explainer.