Middle East latest: Israeli strikes on Lebanon and Gaza leave dozens dead

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said an Israeli airstrike hit guesthouses where journalists were staying in southeast Lebanon, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies Friday. In the southern Gaza Strip, an Israeli attack left 38 people dead.

Several journalists have been killed since a near-daily exchange of fire began along the Lebanon-Israel border on Oct. 8, 2023.

Lebanon's health ministry says the total toll over the past year is over 2,600 killed and 12,200 wounded. The fighting in Lebanon has driven 1.2 million people from their homes, including more than 400,000 children, according to the United Nations children's agency. Israeli strikes have killed much of Hezbollah's top leadership since fighting ramped up in September.

Israel's offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not differentiate between militants and civilians. The Israel-Hamas war began after Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023, blew holes in Israel's security fence and stormed in, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others.

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Jordan's Foreign Minister, Ayman Safadi, on Friday in London, where the Arab leader accused Israel of engaging in ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Safadi did not mince words when describing Israel's role in the conflicts, saying cease-fire negotiation mediators are trying to "get through the nightmare that the region continues to live in."

___

Here's the latest:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s military said early Saturday that Israeli strikes on the country targeted military bases in Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran provinces, causing “limited damage.”

The statement from Iran’s armed forces was read aloud on state television, which showed no images of the damage described. Iran’s military claimed its air defenses limited the damage done by the strikes, without providing additional evidence.

Israel said it launched attacks targeting missile manufacturing plants and other sites in the country.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Israel said early Saturday it had completed its strikes targeting Iran. The Israeli military issued a statement saying its planes “have safely returned home.”

Its aircraft “struck missile manufacturing facilities used to produce the missiles that Iran fired at the state of Israel over the last year,” the military said. “These missiles posed a direct and immediate threat to the citizens of the state of Israel.”

It added that it also “struck surface-to-air missile arrays and additional Iranian aerial capabilities, that were intended to restrict Israel’s aerial freedom of operation in Iran.” It offered no damage assessment.

Iran acknowledged only “limited damage” to military facilities.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Israel launched airstrikes early Saturday on what it described as military targets in Iran in retaliation for a ballistic missile assault Oct. 1, officials said. There was no immediate information on damage in the Islamic Republic.

The attack, threatened for weeks by Israel, comes as the Middle East sits on the precipice of a regional war more than a year after an initial attack by the militant group Hamas on Israel. In the time since, Israel has launched a devastating ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and an invasion of neighboring Lebanon, targeting militants long armed and aided by Tehran.

Israel’s military described the attack Saturday as “precise strikes on military targets in Iran,” without immediately elaborating.

“The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since Oct. 7 ... including direct attacks from Iranian soil,” Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a prerecorded video statement.

In Tehran, the Iranian capital, the sound of explosions could be heard, with state-run media there initially acknowledging the blasts and saying some of the sounds came from air defense systems around the city.

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations says it's alarmed at reports of an Israeli military raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, one of the last functioning medical facilities in an area under a tightening Israeli siege.

U.N. deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said that since Friday morning’s reported raid, the World Health Organization said it has lost touch with hospital staff.

The Israeli military said only that it was “operating in the area” of the hospital based on intelligence that indicated the presence of militants and militant infrastructure.

The Gaza-based Ministry of Health reported that Israeli troops rounded up medical staff and displaced people sheltering at the hospital and forced the men to strip, a common practice that Israel says is meant to ensure detainees do not conceal weapons. The ministry said some Palestinians were detained, without specifying how many.

A U.N. team from WHO, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the U.N. Mine Action Service along with partners reached Kamal Adwan Hospital on Thursday, Haq said. The mission delivered 10,000 liters of fuel, 180 units of blood, enough trauma and surgical supplies for 1,600 interventions, and a range of medicines sufficient for about 5,000 patients to Kamal Adwan, he said.

They also took 23 patients and more than two dozen caregivers to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, he said.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s health ministry said Friday that 41 people were killed and 133 wounded in the past 24 hours, raising the total toll over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah to 2,634 killed and 12,252 wounded.

Lebanon’s crisis response unit recorded 125 airstrikes and incidents of shelling in the past day, mostly concentrated in southern Lebanon and the Nabatiyeh province.

Several intense airstrikes targeted Khiam village in southern Lebanon, killing four people and wounding four others, Lebanon’s state media said.

Some 1,097 centers are sheltering 190,975 people, including 43,712 families, displaced by the Israeli offensive in Lebanon, the health ministry's report said.

Among these shelters, 929 have reached full capacity. The fighting in Lebanon has driven 1.2 million people from their homes, including more than 400,000 children, according to the U.N. children’s agency.

People are also flowing across the border to Syria. Between Sept. 23 and Oct. 25, Lebanese General Security recorded nearly half a million people crossing into Syria, including 348,237 Syrian and 156,505 Lebanese citizens, the report said.

JERUSALEM — The Committee to Protect Journalists said it was appalled by the killing of the three journalists by an Israeli strike in Lebanon. The group on Friday called for an independent investigation into why the guesthouse where they were sleeping was targeted.

“CPJ is deeply outraged by yet another deadly Israeli airstrike on journalists, this time hitting a compound hosting 18 members of the press in south Lebanon,” said the organization’s program director, Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “Deliberately targeting journalists is a war crime under international law. This attack must be independently investigated and the perpetrators must be held to account.”

The Israeli army did not issue a warning prior to the strike, and later said it was looking into it.

JERUSALEM — Two people in Israel died of their wounds after a rocket attack from Lebanon on Friday, the country’s rescue services said.

A 35-year-old woman and a 21-year-old man died after sustaining critical injuries from rocket shrapnel in the predominantly Arab town of Majd Al-Krum in northern Israel, rescue services said. Rocket shrapnel hit the town’s “industrial center,” injuring seven others.

The Israeli military said that militants in Lebanon fired 45 rockets into Israel on Friday, with some escaping interception.

GENEVA — The United Nations’ human rights chief says the Israeli government’s actions in northern Gaza “risk emptying the area of all Palestinians” and argues that “we are facing what could amount to atrocity crimes.”

Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, decried “nonstop” bombing in northern Gaza in a statement Friday and said that “the Israeli military has ordered hundreds of thousands to move, with no guarantees of return. But there is no safe way to leave.”

Israel has been carrying out a major offensive in northern Gaza for more than two weeks. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands have fled their homes. The military says it is battling Hamas fighters who regrouped in the north, one of the first targets of the ground offensive at the start of the war.

Türk said that “the Israeli government’s policies and practices in northern Gaza risk emptying the area of all Palestinians. We are facing what could amount to atrocity crimes, including potentially extending to crimes against humanity.”

He said Palestinian armed groups also reportedly continue to operate amongst civilians and put them in harm’s way.

Türk called on world leaders to act, pointing to a duty under the Geneva Conventions to ensure respect for international humanitarian law.

JERUSALEM — Israel’s military announced Friday that three more soldiers were killed in Gaza. All three died on Wednesday, the military said, without specifying if they were all killed in the same incident or providing any details.

In all, 359 Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting in Gaza since the start of the ground operation, following Hamas militants’ attack on Israel Oct. 7.

JERUSALEM — Shrapnel from a rocket attack from Lebanon critically injured three people in Israel Friday, Israeli rescue services said.

The three — two 21-year-old men and a 35-year-old woman — were injured in Majd Al-Krum, a predominantly Arab town in the country’s north, rescue services said. It said six others were injured, including an 80-year-old man in serious condition.

Israel’s military said the rocket barrage hit a gym in the town.

Militants in Lebanon fired 45 projectiles into Israel Friday, including some which were intercepted by Israel’s air defenses and others that fell in open areas, the military said.

JERUSALEM — Israel’s military confirmed Friday that its troops were operating around Kamal Adwan hospital in north Gaza. The hospital’s director had said the facility was facing a catastrophic situation with bombardment, Israeli troops preventing the entry of crucial aid and patients dying for lack of medical supplies.

In a social media video posted late Thursday, the hospital’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, said the hospital had been directly shelled by a tank, a claim the Israeli military did not immediately respond to.

“We’re a few hours away from the death of all these people,” he said. “Until when will this continue? Instead of receiving aid, we receive tanks."

Israel said troops were operating in the area because it had intelligence that militants and militant infrastructure were there, and said it had evacuated some patients from the hospital the night before and delivered fuel and supplies to the facility. The Associated Press was not immediately able to verify the claims.

The hospital is in the Jabaliya refugee camp in north Gaza, where Israel is staging a renewed offensive against Hamas fighters it says have regrouped there. It has called for the evacuation of all civilians in the north.

In a voice recording obtained by AP from Thursday, Abu Safiya said the hospital has 14 patients in pediatric and neonatal intensive care, and several patients had died due to a lack of supplies and medicine like antibiotics. He said that one doctor at the hospital was killed Wednesday, as bombing could be heard in the background.

His video showed one woman knelt over the yellowed body of a child, who Abu Safiya said had died that morning. Another small child sat alone on a bed, face bloodied and both arms bandaged, crying as flies swarmed around the open wounds on his head.

LONDON — United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Jordan's Foreign Minister, Ayman Safadi, on Friday in London, where the Arab leader accused Israel of engaging in ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

“The only path to save the region from that is for Israel to stop the aggressions on Gaza, on Lebanon, stop unilateral illegal measures of the West Bank that is also pushing this situation,” Safadi said.

"We meet at a very, very critical moment, as you mentioned, the humanitarian situation is really difficult when we look at Northern Gaza, where we do see ethnic cleansing taking place, and that has got to stop," he said.

Safadi is one of many Arab leaders with whom Blinken has met with as he took negotiations over a cease-fire in Gaza and a post war plan on a tour of the Middle East.

Safadi did not mince words Friday when describing Israel’s role in the conflicts, saying mediators are trying to “get through the nightmare that the region continues to live in.”

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The Israeli military conducted operations overnight into Friday in Khan Younis, killing 38 people and injuring more than a dozen others, health officials said.

Palestinians who were killed or injured were taken to the European and Nasser Hospitals. Records from the European hospital obtained by the AP showed at least 15 members from al-Farra family were killed, including 13 children.

Gaza Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal posted a video Friday morning of rescuers recovering the bodies of 9 children from the Al-Farra family in Al Manara neighborhood.

The Israeli attack, which included airstrikes and shelling, according to health officials, targeted several residential buildings in neighborhoods east of Khan Younis Governorate. Six members of the Abdeen family were also killed, according to health officials.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Health Minister Firass Abiad said Friday that Israel has carried out attacks on 55 hospitals — 36 of which were directly hit — leaving 12 people dead and 60 wounded.

Abiad told reporters that eight hospitals have been closed while seven are still partially functioning.

He said that paramedic groups have been targeted in different areas, killing 151 people and wounding 212. Of the paramedics killed, eight remain in their ambulances in south Lebanon with Israel’s military preventing anyone from reaching them, he said.

“Attacks against the medical and paramedic sectors in Lebanon are direct and intentional aggressions,” Abiad said, adding that Israel’s military claims to have intelligence information on what is happening in Lebanon, thus cannot say that these attacks happened by mistake.

“This is a war crime,” Abiad said.

BEIRUT — An Israeli airstrike in northeast Lebanon has closed another border crossing with neighboring Syria, Lebanon’s state news agency said Friday.

The airstrike on the outskirts of the village of Qaa brings the number of border crossings between the two countries that have been struck by Israel’s military to three. That leaves three functioning border crossings.

An Israeli airstrike on Oct. 5 blocked a highway and left a giant crater near the Lebanese side of the crossing, known as Masnaa, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Beirut. Masnaa is the busiest border crossing between the two countries.

In late September, an Israeli airstrike struck the border crossing of Matraba in Lebanon’s northeast, forcing it to close.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Information Minister Ziad Makary alleged Friday that the attack on a compound housing journalists which killed three media staffers is an “assassination” and “a war crime.”

In a statement, Makary said there were 18 journalists representing seven media organizations at the compound in the town of Hasbaya in south Lebanon.

The Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV said two of its staffers — camera operator Ghassan Najar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida — were among the journalists killed early Friday. Al-Manar TV of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group said its camera operator Wissam Qassim was also killed in the airstrike.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike in Lebanon.

Ghassan bin Jiddo, the director of Al-Mayadeen, alleged in a social media post that the journalists were deliberately targeted.

“We hold the (Israeli) occupation fully responsible for this war crime, in which journalist crews, including the Al-Mayadeen team, were targeted,” he said.

BEIRUT — An Israeli airstrike on a compound housing journalists in southeast Lebanon has killed three media staffers, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Friday.

Local news station Al Jadeed aired footage from the scene showing collapsed buildings and cars marked “PRESS,” covered in dust and rubble. The Israeli army did not issue a warning prior to the strike, which hit a collection of chalets that had been rented by various media outlets.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike in Lebanon.

The Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV said two of its staffers were among the journalists killed early Friday. Al-Manar TV of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group said its camera operator was also killed. The airstrike hit early Friday in the Hasbaya region, which had been spared much of the fighting along the border so far.

Several journalists have been killed since a near-daily exchange of fire began along the Lebanon-Israel border on Oct. 8, 2023.

Israel has accused journalists working for Al Jazeera of being members of militant groups, citing documents it purportedly found in Gaza. The network has denied the claims as "a blatant attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the region."

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.