Key events
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.
The UN security council has expressed “strong concern” after several UN peacekeepers were wounded when they came under fire in southern Lebanon amid clashes between the Israeli military and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants. The council reiterated its support for the peacekeeping mission’s role in supporting regional security.
The council’s statement on Monday was its first reaction to the escalating attacks across the UN-drawn boundary between Israel and Lebanon, and the firing at frontline positions of the peacekeeping force known as Unifil.
“UN peacekeepers and UN premises must never be the target of an attack,” the 15-member council said in a statement adopted by consensus. It also urged all parties – without naming them – “to respect the safety and security of Unifil personnel and UN premises”.
Despite facing mounting criticism over the attacks, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected accusations that Israeli troops had deliberately harmed Unifil peacekeepers as “completely false” and repeated a call for them to withdraw from combat zones close to the border with Israel. He said Hezbollah used Unifil positions as cover for attacks that have killed Israelis, including on Sunday, when a drone attack on a military base killed four soldiers.
“Israel has every right to defend itself against Hezbollah and will continue to do so,” Netanyahu said, adding that the best way to ensure Unifil personnel’s safety was “to heed Israel’s request and to temporarily get out of harm’s way”. The UN’s peacekeeping chief, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, said peacekeepers would remain in all positions in Lebanon.
Israel is still expected to retaliate against Iran over its missile barrage launched on 1 October, but, according to the Washington Post, Netanyahu has told the Biden administration he is willing to strike military rather than oil or nuclear facilities there.
Citing sources, the Post writes that this suggests that Netanyahu is considering a more limited counterstrike than previously thought.
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Italy, Britain, France and Germany released a joint statement on Monday condemning Israel for repeatedly attacking UN peacekeepers. “These attacks must stop immediately,” they said, adding deliberate attacks were against international law. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said there would be “no withdrawal” of the UN peacekeeping force from southern Lebanon after Israeli attacks and calls to leave. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Unifil’s work “is very important. It’s completely unacceptable attacking United Nations troops.”
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More than 20 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Christian town in northern Lebanon on Monday, far from Hezbollah’s power centres in Beirut and the south and east of the country. The bombing struck Aitou, a Maronite village near the northern city of Tripoli, hit a small apartment building, killing 21 people according to the Lebanese Red Cross. The village’s mayor told Reuters that the building had been rented to families displaced by the war.
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It was also a particularly bloody 24 hours in the Gaza Strip. Four people were killed in an Israeli bombing of a hospital courtyard in central Gaza, another strike on a nearby school used as a shelter killed at least 20 people, and a drone strike killed five children playing on the street in al-Shati camp in Gaza City, according to local health authorities. The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports of civilian casualties in the three incidents on Sunday and Monday.
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At least 42,289 Palestinians have been killed and 98,684 wounded in Israeli strikes since 7 October 2023, the Palestinian health ministry said on Monday.
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Netanyahu is examining a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza in an attempt to starve out Hamas, according to a report. The plan, proposed by a group of retired generals, would give Palestinians a week to leave the northern third of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, before declaring it a closed military zone. Those who remain would be considered combatants – meaning military regulations would allow troops to kill them – and denied food, water, medicine and fuel, according to a copy of the plan given to the Associated Press.
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The UN’s secretary-general, António Guterres, condemned the “large number of civilian casualties in the intensifying Israeli campaign in northern Gaza”, his spokesperson said on Monday. The UN chief “strongly urges all parties to the conflict to comply with international humanitarian law and emphasises that civilians must be respected and protected at all times,” spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said.
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Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians in the northern West Bank city of Jenin on Monday, the Palestinian health ministry said. According to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, one of the men was 17 years old. Four others were injured by Israeli fire during the raid, it said.
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Ireland’s foreign minister, Micheál Martin, accused Israel of trying to prevent the world from seeing what its troops are doing in Lebanon and Gaza, and of working to undermine the UN. Asked what Israel’s aim might be in demanding that UN peacekeepers leave their bases in Lebanon after a series of attacks, Martin said: “essentially to drive the eyes and ears out of south Lebanon and to give itself free rein”.
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Officials from the US’s main humanitarian agency attend daily meetings on an Israeli military base that also hosts a notorious prison for Palestinian detainees where torture reportedly runs rampant, the Guardian has learned.
