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Unifil says it refused a request by Israel to leave its positions in south Lebanon
A spokesperson for UN peacekeepers in Lebanon on Saturday said that Israel had requested it leave its positions in south Lebanon where Israel is clashing with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, but they had refused.
They asked us to withdraw “from the positions along the blue line … or up to five kilometers (three miles) from the blue line,” UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told Agence France-Presse (AFP), using the term for the demarcation line between both countries. “But there was a unanimous decision to stay,” he said.
It comes after two Sri Lankan members of the Unifil were injured when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) opened fire on Friday near the peacekeeper’s base in Naqoura. The Israeli army said that its soldiers had targeted what they believed to be a threat 50 metres from the base, adding that it would continue to “examine the circumstances of the incident”.
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The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon has released the following statement on Saturday regarding one of its peacekeepers:
Last night, a peacekeeper at UNIFIL’s headquarters in Naqoura was hit by gunfire due to ongoing military activity nearby. He underwent surgery at our Naqoura hospital to remove the bullet and is currently stable. We do not yet know the origin of the fire.”
Statement:
Last night, a peacekeeper at UNIFIL’s headquarters in Naqoura was hit by gunfire due to ongoing military activity nearby. He underwent surgery at our Naqoura hospital to remove the bullet and is currently stable. We do not yet know the origin of the fire.
It added that one of its buildings in Ramyah “sustained significant damage due to explosions from nearby shelling”.
Israeli airstrikes have forced 40% of students from their homes in Lebanon, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on Friday.
Additionally, more than 60% of public schools in the country are now being used as shelters.
The conflict in #Lebanon has pushed many children out of school, adding to the challenges they’ve faced for years in successive crises.
Children urgently need access to safe spaces &psychosocial support, as the conflict severely affects their well-being &future.
Latest Update⤵️
Lebanese health ministry: 2,255 people killed by Israeli raids since Israel's attacks on Lebanon
Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed 2,255 people while wounding 10,524 more since Israel launched its attacks on the country several weeks ago, the Lebanese health ministry reported on Saturday.
بذلك ترتفع الحصيلة الإجمالية للشهداء منذ بدء العدوان حتى يوم أمس إلى 2255، والجرحى إلى 10524.
— Ministry of Public Health - Lebanon (@mophleb) October 12, 2024The rising death toll also comes amid Israel’s forced displacement of 1.2 million people in Lebanon, approximately a quarter of the country’s population.
In addition to civilians, at least 28 healthcare workers have been killed in Lebanon, the World Health Organization said last week.
Israeli forces have also targeted UN peacekeepers in Lebanon this week, prompting the UN to release a statement saying:
“We remind the IDF and all actors of their obligations to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and property and to respect the inviolability of UN premises at all times.”
Since Israel launched its war on Gaza last October and most recently Lebanon, nearly 300 humanitarian aid workers, including over two-thirds being UN staff, have been killed during the conflict.
In May, the Human Rights Watch released a report in which it stated that Israeli forces are attacking known aid worker locations in the region.
“This pattern of attacks despite proper notification of Israeli authorities raises serious questions about Israel’s commitment and capacity to comply with international humanitarian law, which some countries, including the UK, rely on to continue to license arms exports that end up in Israel,” the HRW added.
Summary of the day so far
It has just gone 6pm in Gaza, Tel Aviv and Beirut. Here are the latest developments so far today:
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) said on Saturday that unknown gunfire a day earlier hit a peacekeeper, the fifth wounded in south Lebanon near the Israeli border in just two days. “Last night, a peacekeeper at Unifil’s headquarters” in Naqura “was hit by gunfire due to ongoing military activity nearby … We do not yet know the origin of the fire,” a statement said, adding that the peacekeeper was “stable”.
A spokesperson for UN peacekeepers in Lebanon on Saturday said that Israel had requested it leave its positions in south Lebanon where Israel is clashing with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, but they had refused. They asked us to withdraw “from the positions along the blue line … or up to five kilometers (three miles) from the blue line,” UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told Agence France-Presse (AFP), using the term for the demarcation line between both countries. “But there was a unanimous decision to stay,” he said.
The Israeli military on Saturday warned residents of south Lebanon “not to return” to their homes as troops continued fighting Hezbollah militants in the area. In a statement, 22 southern Lebanese villages were ordered to evacuate to areas north of the Awali River.
Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee reiterated an earlier call for health workers and medical teams in southern Lebanon to avoid using ambulances, claiming they are being used by Hezbollah fighters. “We call on medical teams to avoid contact with Hezbollah members and not to cooperate with them,” he said. “The IDF (Israeli military) affirms that the necessary actions will be taken against any vehicle transporting armed individuals, regardless of its type.”
Hezbollah said on Saturday it had launched a drone attack on a military base in north Israel’s Haifa a day earlier. Hezbollah fighters at 8pm local time (5pmGMT/6pm BST) on Friday launched “an air attack with a swarm of explosives-laden drones on an air defence base” in Haifa, a statement from the group said.
The United Nations food agency said on Saturday that no food aid had entered northern Gaza since 1 October. The World Food Programme (WFP) said that the primary border crossing into the war-ravaged area had been closed for about two weeks, warning that Israel’s ongoing ground operation has a disastrous impact on food security for thousands of Palestinian families there.
US forces have conducted airstrikes against multiple Islamic State (IS) group sites in Syria, the military said on Saturday. US forces “conducted a series of airstrikes against multiple known ISIS camps in Syria in the early morning of Oct. 11,” the US Central Command (Centcom) said in a statement on X, using an acronym for the Islamist militant group.
The Israeli military on Saturday renewed its orders for Palestinian in the northern Gaza Strip to leave their homes and shelters as troops press on a weeklong offensive against militants. Military spokesperson Avichay Adraee told people to leave parts of Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood and other areas in and around Jabaliya.
Israeli strikes on Gaza overnight killed at least 19 Palestinians, while forces continued to push deeper into the Jabalia area, where international relief agencies say thousands of people are trapped.
The EU said on Saturday that it was deeply concerned about draft Israeli legislation that would ban the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) from operating in Israel and probably scale back aid distribution across war-ravaged Gaza. “If adopted, (the bill) would have disastrous consequences, preventing the UN agency from continuing to provide its services and protection to Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza,” the EU said in an online statement
Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf on Saturday visited the site of the deadliest Israeli strike on central Beirut in recent weeks, accompanied by two Hezbollah lawmakers.
In northern Gaza, residents told the Associated Press (AP) many were trapped in their homes and shelters with dwindling supplies while seeing bodies uncollected in the streets as the bombing hampered emergency responders.
Those who rushed to the scene of the latest deadly airstrikes in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya found a hole 20 meters (65 feet) deep where a home once stood, reports the AP.
At least 20 bodies were recovered as of Saturday morning, while others likely were trapped under the rubble, emergency service officials said. Elsewhere in Jabaliya, a strike on a home killed two brothers and injured a woman and newborn baby, the officials said.
Israel’s military did not immediately respond to request for comment on the strikes, reports the AP.
Military spokesperson Avichay Adraee told people in parts of Jabaliya and Gaza City to evacuate south to an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone as Israel plans to use great force “and will continue to do so for a long time”.
Israel has repeatedly returned to parts of Gaza as Hamas and other militants regroup. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
“It’s like the first days of the war,” a Jabaliya resident, Ahmed Abu Goneim, told the AP. “The occupation is doing everything to uproot us. But we will not leave.”
The 24-year-old told the AP that Israeli warplanes and drones struck many neighboring houses in the past week, He counted 15 relatives and neighbors, including four women and five children as young as 3, killed in neighboring homes. He said there were dead in the streets and “no one is able to recover them because of the bombing.”
Hamza Sharif, who stays with his family in a school-turned shelter in Jabaliya, described “constant bombings day and night”.
He told the AP that the shelter has not received aid since the beginning of the month. “Families depend on what they have stored, but they will run out of supplies very soon,” he said.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said it was unclear how long the limited food supplies it distributed in northern Gaza earlier will last.
UN peacekeepers in Lebanon warn against ’catastrophic’ regional conflict
A spokesperson for UN peacekeepers in Lebanon on Saturday said he feared an Israeli escalation against Lebanese militants Hezbollah in the country’s south could soon spiral out of control.
This risks “turning very soon into a regional conflict with catastrophic impact for everyone,” Unifil spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told Agence France-Presse (AFP), calling for a diplomatic solution.
UN reports fifth peacekeeper wounded in Lebanon
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) said on Saturday that unknown gunfire a day earlier hit a peacekeeper, the fifth wounded in south Lebanon near the Israeli border in just two days, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“Last night, a peacekeeper at Unifil’s headquarters” in Naqura “was hit by gunfire due to ongoing military activity nearby … We do not yet know the origin of the fire,” a statement said, adding that the peacekeeper was “stable”.
Unifil says it refused a request by Israel to leave its positions in south Lebanon
A spokesperson for UN peacekeepers in Lebanon on Saturday said that Israel had requested it leave its positions in south Lebanon where Israel is clashing with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, but they had refused.
They asked us to withdraw “from the positions along the blue line … or up to five kilometers (three miles) from the blue line,” UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told Agence France-Presse (AFP), using the term for the demarcation line between both countries. “But there was a unanimous decision to stay,” he said.
It comes after two Sri Lankan members of the Unifil were injured when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) opened fire on Friday near the peacekeeper’s base in Naqoura. The Israeli army said that its soldiers had targeted what they believed to be a threat 50 metres from the base, adding that it would continue to “examine the circumstances of the incident”.
US forces have conducted airstrikes against multiple Islamic State (IS) group sites in Syria, the military said on Saturday, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
US forces “conducted a series of airstrikes against multiple known ISIS camps in Syria in the early morning of Oct. 11,” the US Central Command (Centcom) said in a statement on X, using an acronym for the Islamist militant group.
“The strikes will disrupt the ability of ISIS to plan, organise, and conduct attacks against the United States, its allies and partners, and civilians throughout the region and beyond.”
The US military has about 900 troops in Syria as part of the international coalition against the IS group. The coalition was established in 2014 to help combat the armed group, which had taken over vast swaths of Iraq and Syria.
US forces have carried out multiple retaliatory strikes against militant factions in both Iraq and Syria.
In September, US forces conducted two separate strikes in Syria, killing 37 “terrorist operatives” including members of IS and al-Qaida affiliate Hurras al-Din.
US Central Command said Saturday that its damage assessments were under way and “do not indicate civilian casualties”.
Iran’s highest court has overturned the death sentence of a woman labour rights activist who was accused of links to an outlawed Kurdish group, local media reported on Saturday, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“The supreme court … has overturned the verdict against my client, Ms Sharifeh Mohammadi,” her lawyer Amir Raisian was quoted as saying by the reformist Shargh daily. He added that the case was referred for a re-trial.
Iran carries out the highest number of executions annually after China, according to rights groups including Amnesty .
Mohammadi, 45, was sentenced to death in early July after her arrest in the northern city of Rasht, according to rights groups.
She has since been accused of being a member of the Komala party, an exiled Iraq-based Kurdish separatist group that Tehran considers to be a terrorist organisation.
The US has launched airstrikes targeting several camps run by the Islamic State group in Syria in an operation the US military said will disrupt the extremists from conducting attacks in the region and beyond, AP reports.
The US Central Command said the airstrikes were conducted yesterday, without specifying in which parts of Syria. About 900 US troops have been deployed in eastern Syria alongside the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that were instrumental in the fight against IS militants.
The US military said the strikes will disrupt the ability of the Islamic State group to plan, organise and conduct attacks against the United States, its allies and partners, and civilians throughout the region and beyond. Syria borders Israel via the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, as well as Lebanon.
The US said battle damage assessments were underway and there were no civilian casualties.
