Lebanon

Israel's defence minister said Monday that Israel won't withdraw from land seized in Lebanon as the interim deal between Iran and the United States is pending. Israel Katz's remarks were the first official Israeli comments after the announcement of the interim deal. The two sides plan to meet Friday in Geneva to sign it, Pakistan has said. Katz said Israel plans to stay "indefinitely" in lands it holds in Lebanon, as well as Syria and the Gaza Strip. Iran has tied the interim deal over the war to halting Israel's attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Katz also threatened that if Iran attacks Israel over Israeli strikes in Lebanon, Israel will strike Iran with "great force." Over the past two and a half years, Israel has taken control of areas in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria amounting to 1,000 square kilometres of territory - an area that is slightly smaller than New York City.

The Israeli military said it launched strikes on Beirut on Sunday targeting Hezbollah infrastructure, despite ongoing efforts to negotiate an end to the US-Iran war. Smoke could be seen rising over the Lebanese capital. The strikes threatened to hamper negotiations over a deal, which in its current form is a deep disappointment to Israel's government. The last time Israel struck the Beirut suburbs a week ago, it set off the most serious escalation of fighting between Iran and Israel since the tenuous ceasefire took hold April 7. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strikes were in response to Hezbollah attacks on the north of the country. Israel's military said earlier in the day that Hezbollah had launched three projectiles into northern Israel, releasing footage where an audible boom was followed by a column of smoke rising above the tree line. An Associated Press photographer at the scene in Beirut said the building struck was a five-story apartment .

Iran launched missiles at Israel on Monday, marking the first Iranian missile attack since the April 8 ceasefire

Israel's strike on Beirut's outskirts and Iran's retaliation threat have raised fresh doubts over efforts to secure a broader US-Iran peace agreement

An Israeli airstrike on southern Lebanon Saturday killed several members of the Lebanese military, including a senior officer, the Lebanese army said, days after the two sides reached a new ceasefire deal. The airstrike on the road linking the city of Nabatiyeh with the town of Marjayoun occurred in the morning. The army did not give further details or release the names or ranks of the troops killed. Local TV stations reported that two members of the military were killed in the airstrike, including a brigadier general. The latest declared ceasefire came about through US-brokered talks between Israel and Lebanon's government, which accuses Hezbollah of dragging the country into war and had made efforts to disarm it before the latest hostilities. The Lebanese militant group has refused the truce. The war began on March 2 when Hezbollah fired rockets at northern Israel, two days after Israel and the US began their attacks on Iran. Israel has since launched a ground invasion of Lebanon

Tehran links any US-brokered peace deal to a Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, complicating regional truce efforts

India has condemned the attack on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon that killed a Serbian Blue Helmet and injured two others, and called for an immediate and thorough investigation to bring the perpetrators to justice. Sergeant Milovan Jovanovic, a Serbian peacekeeper serving with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), was killed when a mortar struck a UN position near Marji'yun in Sector East of the mission's area of operations on Wednesday. Two other peacekeepers from Spain and El Salvador were injured and are undergoing treatment at a UNIFIL medical facility in south Lebanon, the UN said. "Our sincere condolences to Serbia and to the family of the Serbian Blue Helmet of UNIFIL who was killed in this deplorable attack," India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Harish Parvathaneni said in a social media post on Thursday. Blue Helmets refers to military personnel, police officers, and civilian experts serving under the operational command of the Uni

Hezbollah on Thursday rejected the latest ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and the Lebanese government, demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal. The announcement came as Israeli strikes killed at least four people, according to local authorities, and a UN peacekeeper was killed in the crossfire. Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem, in a written statement read on TV, said the agreement's demand that Hezbollah fighters leave southern Lebanon under fire would mean "surrender, defeat and achieving the enemy's goals." "What we are concerned about is an end to the aggression, ceasefire and Israel's withdrawal," he said. "We did not make any commitment to any party to stop resisting as long as there is occupation," he added. The ongoing fighting in Lebanon, where Israeli forces have seized large swaths of the south, threatens efforts to end the Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a key transit point for oil and gas whose closure has jolted the world economy. Iran has demanded tha

Israel and Lebanon have agreed to renew their fragile ceasefire and create a number of "pilot" security zones inside Lebanon from which Hezbollah militants would be banned. In a joint statement released after a fourth round of US-mediated talks at the State Department, the two sides said the ceasefire "is contingent on a complete cessation of Hezbollah fire and the evacuation of all Hezbollah operatives" from areas south of the Litani River. It was not immediately clear how the security zones would be established but the agreement calls for the Lebanese army to take full control of those areas. "These steps will enable progress towards a comprehensive peace and security agreement," the statement said. "All countries reaffirmed that the future of the relationship between Israel and Lebanon must be decided by the two sovereign governments. They rejected any attempt, by any state or non-state actor, to hold Lebanon's future hostage." The latter is a reference to Iran, which supports

US President also indicated his preference to keep the issue of reopening the strait separate from the continuing conflict in Lebanon, which has seen intensive Israeli strikes in the southern parts

Perched above the Litani gorge, the 12th-century fortress played a key role during the Crusades and has remained strategically important through successive conflicts in southern Lebanon

According to a US official cited by Axios, Trump expressed immense frustration over what he perceived as a disproportionate military response to Hezbollah's strikes on Israel

Early on Tuesday, the Israeli military said that it intercepted two projectiles that crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel, and that no injuries were reported

The precise parameters of the tentative truce publicised by Trump continue to be shrouded in ambiguity, driven by contrasting signals emerging from Washington, Jerusalem, Hezbollah, and Beirut

Negotiators will suspend "talks and the exchange of documents through mediators" the semi-official Tasnim new agency reported, citing a statement

In the latest advance, Israeli troops seized the 900-year-old Beaufort Castle and a strategic ridge in southern Lebanon, the military said earlier on Sunday

US crude futures rose $2.37 or 2.71 per cent to $89.73 a barrel as of 0028 GMT

United Kingdom intensified the Western diplomatic push for immediate restraint, explicitly calling for a halt to the widening theatre of war

Israeli forces are making their deepest incursion inside Lebanon since they withdrew from the country over a quarter-century ago, despite a nominal U.S.-brokered ceasefire and the first direct talks between the countries in decades. The Israeli advance presents a challenge in the emerging deal to extend the Iran war ceasefire as Tehran wants any agreement to end fighting in Lebanon, too. Qatar called it a "dangerous escalation." Germany's foreign minister said it was cause for serious concern, according to German press agency dpa. There was no comment by the United States. On Sunday, Israeli forces seized a symbolic fort in southern Lebanon that offers commanding views across Lebanon and into northern Israel. The last time they seized it, they held it for 18 years. Israel says it is targeting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group, which has a strong political presence in southern Lebanon and has launched thousands of missiles and drones at Israeli soldiers there and in norther

Israeli troops have captured a strategic mountain topped with a Crusader-built castle in southern Lebanon in their deepest incursion into the country in more than a quarter century, the military said Sunday. The capture of Beaufort castle near the city of Nabatiyeh came after days of intense fighting and airstrikes in nearby villages where Israeli troops fought Hezbollah members in the rugged area. It marks a major gain for Israel in the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, which began in early March. Israel and Lebanon have been at war since Israel was created in 1948, and are currently holding direct talks in Washington. The Israeli push came despite a nominal ceasefire that has been in place since April 17 and just days before the next round of talks are set to be held at the State Department on June 2 and 3. The Israeli army's Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted a photograph on X showing Israeli troops walking outside the castle, and Defence Minister Israel Katz wrote on X that t