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ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
🔴 Live: Israeli strike kills high-level Hezbollah commander in Lebanon
Israel on Monday killed a top commander of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in a strike on southern Lebanon, adding to fears of a spillover of the conflict in Gaza. The news came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday held his third day of meetings on an urgent Middle East diplomatic mission on his fourth tour of the region since Israel’s war on Hamas began. Follow our liveblog for all the latest developments.
Issued on: 08/01/2024 – 05:07
2 min
Un bombardement israélien à la périphérie du village frontalier de Khiam au sud du Liban, le 7 janvier 2024.
An Israeli bombardment on the outskirts of the border village of Khiam in southern Lebanon, on January 7, 2024. © Rabih Daher, AFP (Archive)
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NEWS WIRES
Summary:
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Abu Dhabi’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, in the United Arab Emirates and was due later on Monday to hold talks in Saudi Arabia with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the oasis town of Al Ula before heading on to Israel on his fourth tour of the region since the war began.
Israel killed a top commander of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in a strike on south Lebanon, adding to fears the conflict in Gaza could spill over into the wider region.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said it had been compelled to cancel a mission to bring medical supplies to northern Gaza on Sunday after failing to receive security guarantees.
Some 249 Palestinians were killed and 510 were injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza in the past 24 hours, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.
Israeli officials say 1,139 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks in southern Israel, among them 695 Israeli civilians including 36 children. At least 23,084 people have been killed and 58,926 wounded in Israel’s ensuing assault on the Gaza Strip, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave.
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Last Update: 31 minutes ago
32 minutes ago
UN ‘very concerned’ by high journalist death toll in Gaza, demands probe
The UN voiced alarm Monday at the many journalists killed in the war raging in Gaza, a day after two Al Jazeera reporters were killed in an alleged Israeli strike on their car.
“Very concerned by high death toll of media workers in Gaza,” the UN rights office said on X, formerly Twitter, demanding that all such cases be “thoroughly, independently investigated to ensure strict compliance with international law, and violations prosecuted”.
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an hour ago
Blinken meets UAE, Saudi leaders in latest round of Mideast shuttle diplomacy
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi on Monday before heading to Saudi Arabia, where he met EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, also on a visit to the Middle East. Blinken’s latest Middle East diplomatic shuttle, his fourth since Israel’s war on Hamas began, comes amid fears of a regional spillover of the Gaza war.
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3 hours ago
Israel’s ‘brutal’ war creating a ‘generation of orphans’ in Gaza, says Jordan’s King Abdullah
Jordan’s King Abdullah said on Monday that Israel had created a whole generation of orphans by a “brutal” war in Gaza where he said around over 30,000 people, mostly women and children, had been killed or were missing as a result of the conflict.
In remarks at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda, where the monarch spoke of “unspeakable crimes” during that African conflict, Abdullah said a lesson to be drawn was that Israel’s “indiscriminate aggression” in Gaza would never guarantee its security.
His remarks were carried on state media following a statement by the royal palace.
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3 hours ago
‘There is no safe place for a child in Gaza right now,’ says UNICEF
Three months on from the October 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza, the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave is increasingly dire. The death toll continues to climb and the injured are struggling to receive adequate treatment in hospitals on the brink of collapse.
While aid trucks are now regularly entering the enclave, aid agencies warn they don’t come close to covering the diverse needs of desperate Gazans, with children disproportionately affected. Ricardo Pires, a spokesperson for UNICEF – the UN Children’s Fund – told us more in Perspective.
FRANCE 24
Perspective – UNICEF: ‘There is no safe place for a child in Gaza right now’
Three months on from the October 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza, the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave is increasingly dire. The death toll continues to climb and…
Read the article on https://www.france24.com
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3 hours ago
Pope says civilians killed in war aren’t ‘collateral damage’
Pope Francis on Monday condemned “war crimes” perpetrated against civilians in conflicts such as in Gaza and Ukraine, and said those killed should not be considered “collateral damage”.
“The distinction between military and civil objectives is no longer respected,” the 87-year-old pontiff said in his New Year’s address to diplomats at the Vatican.
“There is no conflict that does not end up in some way indiscriminately striking the civilian population. The events in Ukraine and Gaza are clear proof of this,” he added.
“We must not forget that grave violations of international humanitarian law are war crimes”, he continued, in a speech dominated by calls for an end to conflicts around the world.
Francis said people “need to realise more clearly that civilian victims are not ‘collateral damage’ but men and woman, with names and surnames, who lose their lives.”
“Were we to be able to look each of them in the eye, call them by name, and learn something of their personal history, we would see war for what it is — nothing other than an immense tragedy,” he said.
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3 hours ago
More than 23,000 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 7, says health ministry
A total of 23,084 Palestinians have been killed and 58,926 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 7, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.
Some 249 Palestinians were killed and 510 were wounded in the previous 24 hours, the ministry added.
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3 hours ago
UN experts seek justice for Hamas ‘sexual torture’
Two United Nations rights experts called on Monday for justice for a multitude of alleged crimes, including sexual torture, during Hamas’s unprecedented attacks in Israel on October 7.
These may even amount to crimes against humanity, they said, pointing to individuals burnt alive and bodies found decapitated, mutilated or with trauma consistent with executions.
“The growing body of evidence about reported sexual violence is particularly harrowing,” the UN special rapporteur on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, and the special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Morris Tidball-Binz, said in a statement.
“These acts constitute gross violations of international law, amounting to war crimes which, given the number of victims and the extensive premeditation and planning of the attacks, may also qualify as crimes against humanity,”.
The UN has been criticised over its slow reaction to alleged sexual violence during that attack, which triggered the war raging in Gaza, and resulted in about 1,140 deaths in Israel, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
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5 hours ago
Israeli strike kills high-level Hezbollah commander in Lebanon, says security official
Israel killed a top commander of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in a strike on south Lebanon, a security source told AFP on Monday, adding to fears the conflict in Gaza could spill over into the wider region.
The commander “had a leading role in managing Hezbollah’s operations in the south,” the security official said requesting anonymity for security concerns, adding he “was killed in an Israeli raid targeting his car in the south”.
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5 hours ago
German Economy Minister Habeck to begin Middle East trip
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck, who also serves as vice chancellor, will depart on Monday for a three-day trip to the Middle East, a spokesperson for the economy ministry said.
Habeck will visit Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the West Bank, the spokesperson told reporters during a regular press conference in Berlin.
Habeck will discuss economic and energy relations between Germany and the countries as well as peace efforts in the region during the visit, the official said.
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6 hours ago
Israel has the duty to protect West Bank Palestinians, says German minister
Israel has the duty to protect Palestinians in the West Bank, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in Ramallah on Monday.
Her comments came after the Palestinian health ministry said Israeli forces had killed six Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Israeli officials said an Israeli police officer was killed in the violence.
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6 hours ago
Gaza conflict looms large in Pope Francis’s yearly ‘state of the world’ speech
Pope Francis, speaking about the Middle East conflict in his yearly address to diplomats, on Monday called for a “ceasefire on every front, including Lebanon”.
In the long address, sometimes called his “state of the world” speech, he also condemned the October 7 attack by Hamas as an “atrocious” act of “terrorism and extremism”, and renewed his call for the immediate liberation of those still being held hostage in Gaza.
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6 hours ago
Palestinians flee from central Gaza’s main hospital as fighting draws closer and aid groups withdraw
Medics, patients and displaced people are fleeing from the main hospital in central Gaza as the fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants draws closer, witnesses said Monday. Losing the facility would be another major blow to a health system shattered by three months of war.
Doctors Without Borders and other aid groups withdrew from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in recent days, saying it is too dangerous. That spread panic among people sheltering there, causing many to join the hundreds of thousands who have fled to the south of the besieged territory.
Israel says it has largely wrapped up major operations in northern Gaza and is now focusing on the central region and the southern city of Khan Younis. Israeli officials have said the fighting will continue for many more months as the army seeks to dismantle Hamas and return scores of hostages taken during the militant group’s October 7 attack that triggered the war.
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7 hours ago
WHO cancels delivery of medical supplies to north Gaza due to unsafe conditions
The World Health Organization (WHO) said it had been compelled to cancel a mission to bring medical supplies to northern Gaza on Sunday after failing to receive security guarantees.
It was the fourth time WHO had had to call off a planned mission to bring urgently needed medical supplies to Al-Awda Hospital and the central drug store in northern Gaza since December 26, it said.
“It has now been 12 days since we were last able to reach northern Gaza,” the WHO office in the occupied Palestinian territories wrote on the X social media platform.
“Heavy bombardment, movement restrictions, and interrupted communications are making it nearly impossible to deliver medical supplies regularly and safely across Gaza, particularly in the north.”
The delivery planned on Sunday, WHO said, had been designed to sustain the operations of five hospitals in the northern part of the enclave.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “shocked by the scale of health needs and devastation in northern Gaza.”
“Further delays will lead to more death and suffering for far too many people,” he wrote on X.
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8 hours ago
‘A great tragedy’: Al Jazeera accuses Israel of deliberately targeting its journalists
Al Jazeera said on Sunday that two of its Palestinian journalists in the Gaza Strip were killed in an Israeli strike on their car, in what the Qatar-based media network claimed was a “targeted killing”. The Israeli army issued a statement on Sunday evening saying that they targeted this car because they claimed that it contained a terror operative with a drone.
Sixty journalists have been killed since the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas began, which is a record number in this short period of time, says FRANCE 24’s Jordana Miller, reporting from Jerusalem.
“It speaks to just how dangerous the situation is in the Gaza Strip. When we say that it is not safe for civilians in almost any place, that is certainly true for journalists and it’s really one of the reasons why we don’t see a lot of Western journalists in the Gaza Strip,” says Miller.
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9 hours ago
Israeli forces kill 10 fighters, bomb arms cache in Gaza, military says
Israeli forces killed at least 10 Palestinian fighters in the southern Gaza Strip and, in operations in central areas of the Hamas-governed territory, bombed an arms cache and unearthed a tunnel shaft, the military said on Monday.
The fighters were attacked in Gaza’s second largest city Khan Younis, where Israeli forces carried out strikes on 30 “significant terror targets”, added the statement summarising overnight military operations.
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9 hours ago
‘Shuttle diplomacy’: Blinken embarks on Middle East tour in hopes of preventing regional escalation
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken returned to the Middle East on Sunday for the fourth time since the start of the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Speaking in Qatar on Sunday, Blinken said that Palestinians displaced by the now four-month-old war must be allowed to “return home”, while warning that the violence could “easily metastasize” into a regional conflict.
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9 hours ago
Seventy-three Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, health ministry says
Seventy-three Palestinians were killed and 99 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza in the past 24 hours, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.
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12 hours ago
Israel says Hezbollah struck sensitive air traffic base in the north and warns of ‘another war’
Hezbollah has struck an air traffic control base in northern Israel, the Israeli military said Sunday, and warned of “another war” with the Iran-backed militant group.
The increase in fighting across the border with Lebanon as Israel battles Hamas militants in Gaza gave new urgency to US diplomatic efforts as Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepared to visit Israel on his latest Mideast tour.
“This is a conflict that could easily metastasize, causing even more insecurity and even more suffering,” Blinken told reporters after talks in Qatar, a key mediator.
The escalation of cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has complicated a US push to prevent a regional conflict.
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Yesterday’s key developments:
Israeli air strikes hit Khan Younis and Rafah in southern Gaza early Sunday, killing and wounding several dozen people as the Israel-Hamas war entered its fourth month.
Two Al Jazeera journalists, Mustafa Thuria – a video stringer who also worked for AFP and other media organisations – and Hamza Wael Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, were killed.
Nine Palestinians and two Israelis were killed Sunday in surging violence in the occupied West Bank, sources on both sides said. They included seven Palestinians targeted by an Israeli air strike in Jenin.
About casualty figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry:
Gaza’s health ministry collects data from the enclave’s hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The health ministry does not report how Palestinians were killed, whether from Israeli airstrikes and artillery barrages or errant Palestinian rocket fire. It describes all casualties as victims of “Israeli aggression”.
The ministry also does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Throughout four wars and numerous skirmishes between Israel and Hamas, UN agencies have cited the Hamas-run health ministry’s death tolls in regular reports. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Palestinian Red Crescent also use the numbers.
In the aftermath of war, the UN humanitarian office has published final death tolls based on its own research into medical records. The UN’s counts have largely been consistent with the Gaza health ministry’s, with small discrepancies.
For more on the Gaza health ministry’s tolls, click here.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
