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Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on the UN to immediately pull its international peacekeeping force from southern Lebanon, saying that Hezbollah is using them as 'human shields'
Israel and the United Nations have been trading accusations over the peacekeepers in south Lebanon
An Israeli airstrike on a hospital courtyard in the Gaza Strip early Monday killed at least four people and sent flames sweeping through a packed tent camp for people displaced by the war, leaving more than two dozen with severe burns, according to Palestinian medics. The Israeli military said it targeted militants hiding out among civilians, without providing evidence. In recent months it has repeatedly struck crowded shelters and tent camps, alleging that Hamas fighters were using them as staging grounds for attacks. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded people from an earlier strike on a school-turned-shelter nearby that killed at least 20 people when the early morning airstrike hit and fire engulfed many of the tents. Associated Press footage showed children among the wounded. A man sobbed as he carried a toddler with a bandaged head in his arms. Another small child with a bandaged leg was give
Meanwhile, in northern Gaza, five children were killed in an Israeli airstrike while playing marbles in Al Shati camp
Israeli rescue services said almost 40 people were wounded on Sunday in a drone strike in the central city of Binyamina, three of them critically. The Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group claimed responsibility for one of the most serious strikes to land in Israel in a year of war. Israel's advanced air-defence systems mean that it's rare for so many people to be hurt by drones or missiles. Israeli media reported that two drones were launched from Lebanon, and the military said one was intercepted. It was not immediately clear who was hurt, military members or civilians, or what was hit. Hezbollah said in a statement that it targeted an Israeli military training camp in retaliation for two Israeli strikes in Beirut on Thursday that killed 22 people. It was the second time in two days that a drone has struck in Israel. On Saturday, during the Israeli holiday of Yom Kippur, a drone struck in a suburb of Tel Aviv, causing damage but no injuries. The latest strike came on the same d
An Israeli strike on the central Gaza Strip has killed a family of eight, Palestinian medical officials said Sunday, as Israeli forces battled Palestinian militants and pushed for the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people from the territory's north. Israel is also waging an air and ground campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and is expected to strike Iran in retaliation for a missile attack earlier this month, though it has not said how or when. The strike in Gaza late Saturday hit a home in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing parents and their six children, who ranged in age from 8 to 23, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah, where the bodies were taken. It said another seven people were wounded, including two women and a child in critical condition. An Associated Press reporter counted the bodies and filmed funeral prayers held at the hospital. More than a year into the war with Hamas, Israel continues to strike what it says are militant targ
Palestinians in northern Gaza described heavy Israeli bombardment Saturday in the hours after airstrikes killed at least 22 people, as Israel continued to tell people there and in southern Lebanon to get out of the way of its offensives against the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups. In Lebanon, the United Nations peacekeeping force said its headquarters in Naqoura had again been hit, with a peacekeeper struck by gunfire late Friday and in stable condition. It wasn't clear who fired. The shooting occurred a day after Israel's military fired on the headquarters for the second straight day. Israel, which has warned the peacekeepers to leave their positions, didn't immediately respond to questions. Hunger warnings emerged again as residents in northern Gaza said they hadn't received aid since the beginning of the month. The UN World Food Programme said no food aid had entered the north since October 1. An estimated 4,00,000 people remain there. Israel's military renewed its offensive
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. Most of the fighting in the past week was centred in and around Jabaliya that was pounded by Israeli war jets and artillery. Residents said they have been trapped inside their homes and shelters. In Lebanon, authorities said Friday that 60 people were killed and 168 wounded in the past 24 hours, raising the total toll over the past year of conflict between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah to 2,229 dead and 10,380 wounded. Israel has been escalating its campaign against Hezbollah with waves of heavy airstrikes across Lebanon and a ground invasion at the border, after a year of exchanges of fire. Israel is now at war with Hamas in Gaza and Hamas' ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel's offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how
The Israeli military issued evacuation orders for residents in northern Gaza, particularly those near the Jabalia refugee camp, as the death toll continues to rise
Since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon, Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have clashed along the border while the Lebanese army has largely stood on the sidelines. It's not the first time the national army has found itself watching war at home from the discomfiting position of bystander. Lebanon's widely beloved army is one of the few institutions that bridge the country's sectarian and political divides. Several army commanders have become president, and the current commander, Gen. Joseph Aoun, is widely regarded as one of the front-runners to step in when the deadlocked parliament fills a two-year vacuum and names a president. But with an aging arsenal and no air defenses, and battered by five years of economic crisis, the national army is ill-prepared to defend Lebanon against either aerial bombardment or a ground offensive by a well-equipped modern army like Israel's. The army is militarily overshadowed by Hezbollah. The Lebanese army has about 80,000 troops,
With Israel's sabotage and military operations in Lebanon taking out many of Hezbollah's senior leaders, some in Washington and elsewhere believe there may be a window for a new push to break the political deadlock in Lebanon to try to ease escalating war. To that end, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by phone separately Friday with acting Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and parliament speaker Nabhi Berri about the need to resolve the situation, the State Department said. Earlier in the week, Blinken talked with his Saudi, Qatari and French counterparts about how a resolution particularly the election of a new Lebanese president might reduce tensions in the Middle East by getting Hezbollah to move its forces away from Israel's northern border to the line set out in a U.N. Security Council resolution ending the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. It's clear that the people of Lebanon have an interest, a strong interest, in the state asserting itself and taking ...
Here is the best of Business Standard's opinion pieces for today
We must avoid the temptation to see Indian indifference to Palestine as usual "enemy's (Muslim) enemy (Jew) is my friend". Reason is the changed reality of Islamic world & India's equation with it
UN inquiry's statement also accused Israeli forces of deliberately killing and torturing medical personnel, targeting medical vehicles and restricting permits for patients to leave besieged Gaza Strip
Israeli airstrikes hit central Beirut on Thursday evening, killing at least 22 people and wounding dozens, Lebanon's health ministry said, leaving two neighbourhoods smoldering and further escalating Israel's bloody conflict with Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. The strikes apparently targeted two residential buildings in separate neighbourhoods of western Beirut, according to an AP photographer at the scene, bringing down one multi-story building and wiping out the lower floors of another. The Israeli military said it was looking into the reported strikes on the Lebanese capital. Israeli airstrikes have been far more common in Beirut's tightly packed southern suburbs, where Hezbollah bases many of its operations. Thursday's strikes followed a year of tit-for-tat exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel that boiled over into all-out war in recent weeks, with Israel carrying out waves of heavy strikes across Lebanon and launching a ground invasion. Hezbollah has expanded its
Latest news updates: Catch all the latest news developments from across the world here
282nd Artillery Brigade provide covering fire for the forces maneuvering in Lebanese territory and in close cooperation with Air Force, dozens of Hezbollah infrastructure and launchers were destroyed
Israel's ground invasion in Lebanon stretched into its second week as the Hezbollah militant group fired hundreds of rockets deep into Israel with no end in sight to the escalating conflict. More than 1,400 people have been killed in Lebanon - mostly in airstrikes - and over a million displaced since the fighting intensified in mid-September. At least 15 Israeli soldiers and two civilians have been killed since the ground operation began, and more than 60,000 people have been displaced from towns along the border for more than a year. Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on October 8, 2023, a day after Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, attacked southern Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza. Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire almost every day since, coming close to a full-fledged war on several occasions but stepping back from the brink until this month. Here's what to know about the current ground incursion in southern Lebanon: What is the aim of Israeli military
While Israel, with US and UK help, knocked down almost all incoming missiles and drones in an attack in April, this time many of Iran's ballistic missiles hit close to their targets