William Christou reports from Beirut for the Guardian
Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for a UN inquiry into Israeli attacks on peacekeepers belonging to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) on Friday, after three separate attacks on Unifil personnel in south Lebanon.
HRW said that Israel’s attacks on UN peacekeepers could be a violation of the laws of war, as peacekeepers, including armed members, are civilians. It further called for the UN to “urgently establish” an international investigation in Lebanon and Israel and that their results are made public.
On Friday morning, a Unifil outpost in south Lebanon came under fire. On Thursday, its headquarters in Naqoura had been repeatedly hit, injuring two peacekeepers after an Israeli tank fired at an observation tower on the base. The Israeli military shot at a Unifil position where peacekeepers were sheltering on Wednesday and an Israeli drone flew up to the entrance of the bunker where they were sheltering, Unifil said.
Unifil said its more than 10,400 peacekeepers would remain in south Lebanon until the situation becomes impossible for them to operate. Peacekeepers are already severely restricted in their movements due to Israeli troop presence in south Lebanon.
The peacekeeping force has been present in south Lebanon since 1978, originally designed to confirm Israel’s withdrawal and ensure that armed groups could not use the area as a launching pad for attacks against Israel. Since 2006, it has been tasked with an observation mission to ensure that armed groups do not operate in the area, in line with UN Resolution 1701 which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Unifil has also had a focus on facilitating humanitarian access and aid to south Lebanon, a mission it continues to this day.
“With over 2,000 people killed and over one million people displaced in Lebanon since mid-September, it is crucial for Unifil to be allowed to fulfil its civilian protection and humanitarian functions”, Lama Fakih, Middle East and north Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said.
France has summoned Israel’s ambassador over an incident where Israeli troops opened fire at three positions held by UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, including at Unifil’s main base at Naqoura, the French foreign ministry said on Friday.
Dozens of Palestinians have been injured by Israeli quadcopter fire at a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, the civil defence said on Friday.
Reuters reports that the civil defence said its crews were transferring the injured to a nearby hospital.
UN interim forces in Lebanon (Unifil) said on Friday that an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bulldozer knocked over barriers at UN position 1-31 near the blue line in Labbouneh, reports Reuters.
Unifil said IDF tanks had also moved into the proximity of the UN position.
The EU will designate individuals or organisations for sanctions over Iranian transfer of ballistic missiles to Russia, a high-ranking EU official said on Friday, reports Reuters.
“We also expect … on Monday a first package of designations in the context of Iran’s transfer of ballistic missiles to Russia,” the official told reporters. He did not immediately provide further details.
The Guardian graphics team have shared this updated map of geolocated strikes in Beirut, Lebanon, which also includes the buildings identified as targets by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF):
The 10 October strikes refer to the most recent two strikes in central Beirut.
UN secretary general António Guterres, who condemned an attack by Israeli forces on a watchtower that injured two UN peacemakers from Indonesia (see 1pm BST), said the incident violated international law and must not be repeated.
He said any spread of fighting in the Middle East would have dramatically negative impacts on the whole world and called for maximum restraint from all sides.
He told a press conference on Friday:
I have never seen in my time as secretary general any example of death and destruction as dramatic as what we are witnessing here.
We are seeing escalation after escalation, a regionalisation of the conflict that is becoming a threat to global peace and security.
We see an enormous tragedy in Lebanon. And we must do everything to avoid an all-out war.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken said on Friday there was deep concern in Asia about the prospect of conflict spreading in the Middle East, as the U.N. chief called for everything possible to be done to avoid “all-out war” in Lebanon.
Reuters reports that the conflict in the Middle East was a central issue during Friday’s east Asia summit in Laos, where Blinken said Washington was dedicated to using diplomacy to try to control the situation in the face of what he called an Iranian-led axis of resistance.
“The intense focus of the United States, which has been the case going back a year … (is) preventing these conflicts from spreading. And we’re working on that every day,” Blinken told a press conference.
He added:
We’re working very hard through deterrence and through diplomacy to prevent that from happening. There’s also obviously deep concern that we share about the plight of children, women, and men in Gaza.”
The US has stressed to Israel the importance of meeting the humanitarian needs of people in Gaza, Blinken said, adding it was in Israel’s interest that people forced from their homes by hostilities in Lebanon are able to return.
The annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) also included meetings with leaders and top diplomats from India, China, Japan, the US, Russia, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, as well as UN secretary general António Guterres.
The UN secretary general António Guterres has condemned the Israeli attacks that injured two UN peacekeepers.
Speaking at a press conference on the sidelines of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) summit in Laos, Guterres said everything must be done to prevent all-out war in Lebanon.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz will visit Turkey next week to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan with the escalating conflict in the Middle East and migration on the agenda, German officials said on Friday.
Scholz will hold talks with Erdogan on 19 October in Istanbul, followed by a press conference, government spokesperson Wolfgang Buechner told a media briefing in Berlin.
“The war in Ukraine will be the subject of the talks, as will the situation in the Middle East. Migration and bilateral and economic policy issues will also be on the agenda,” Buechner said.
The UN said it was “appalled” by inflammatory language surrounding the war between Israel and Hezbollah and asked leaders to end their “bellicose posturing”.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week urged the Lebanese people to rise up against Hezbollah, or risk a similar fate to Hamas-run Gaza, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
“We are appalled by sweeping inflammatory language on multiple sides,” UN human rights office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a media briefing in Geneva on Friday.
Shamdasani said:
Recent language threatening Lebanese people as a whole and calling on them to either rise up against Hezbollah or face destruction like Gaza, risks being understood as encouraging or accepting violence directed against civilians and civilian objects, in violation of international law.”
She also decried as “unacceptable” the “ongoing denigration of the UN, in particular Unrwa”, the UN agency supporting nearly six million Palestinian refugees spread across Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
“This kind of toxic rhetoric, from any source, must stop,” she said.
Israel’s ground forces crossed into Lebanon on 30 September with the aim of stopping Hezbollah’s cross-border fire in support of Palestinian militant group Hamas, after its 7 October attack, the worst in Israel’s history.
“The killing, destruction, as well as bellicose posturing by those in positions of power, must end,” Shamdasani said.
The displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon is “devastating”, a UN migration official has said, warning international support was falling short of the needs, amid intense Israeli bombing.
After a year of cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah, which launched attacks on Israel in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza, Israel last month escalated attacks on what it says are Hezbollah targets in Lebanon’s south, east and south Beirut, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
The violence has killed hundreds of people in Lebanon and displaced more than one million others, most of them since 23 September, according to Lebanese authorities.
“With this wave of displacement, we see huge needs … the situation is devastating,” said Othman Belbeisi, the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Middle East and north Africa director.
“Lebanon needs more support. What has been offered so far is minimal and does not match the needs,” he told AFP on Thursday during a visit to Beirut.
The IOM has “verified and tracked” 690,000 internally displaced people in Lebanon, Belbeisi said, noting about 400,000 others had reportedly fled the country, many of them for neighbouring Syria.
The UN has appealed for $426m to address the humanitarian crisis in the country over the next three months, including $32m for the IOM to assist 400,000 people, Belbeisi said.
UN officials voiced concerns on Friday that an Israeli offensive and evacuation orders in northern Gaza might affect the second phase of its polio vaccination campaign scheduled to start next week, Reuters reports.
Aid groups carried out an initial round of vaccinations last month, after a baby was partially paralysed by the type 2 polio virus in August, in the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
As in the first phase, humanitarian pauses in the fighting in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas are planned in order to reach hundreds of thousands of children.
In Gaza’s north, the Israeli military has been pursuing an offensive in recent days, sending its troops into Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.
“I am of course, concerned about the developments in the north, and specifically with these evacuation orders,” Rik Peeperkorn, World Health Organization (WHO) representative for the occupied Palestinian territory, told reporters in Geneva, saying dozens of healthcare facilities across the Gaza Strip were under such orders by the Israeli military.
Jean Gough, a Unicef special representative also voiced concern and described conditions as “more complicated” than in the first phase of the vaccination campaign last month. The first vaccinations are set to start in central Gaza on Monday, before moving to the south and then the north, she added.
Israel’s military chief and the head of its Shin Ben security agency held a security assessment inside southern Lebanon on Thursday, the military said on Friday.
“We continue to operate against the enemy and will not stop until we ensure that we can safely return the residents (evacuated from the north), not just now, but with a future outlook,” said Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, chief of the general staff, in a video of the gathering released by the military, according to Reuters.
He added:
If anyone considers rebuilding these villages again, they will know that it’s not worth constructing terrorist infrastructure because the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) will neutralise them again.”
UK prime minister Keir Starmer was “appalled” to hear reports that Israel deliberately fired on peacekeepers in Lebanon, reports the PA news agency.
Asked about reports that Israeli forces fired at the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), a Downing Street spokesperson said:
We were appalled to hear those reports and it is vital that peacekeepers and civilians are protected.
As you know, we continue to call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to suffering and bloodshed. This is a reminder of the importance of us all renewing our diplomatic efforts.”
Asked if the prime minister agrees with Irish leaders that this is a breach of international law, the spokesperson said:
All parties must always do everything possible to protect civilians and comply with international law. But we continue to reiterate that and call for an immediate ceasefire.”
More than 42,126 Palestinians have been killed and 98,117 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
The ministry does not distinguished not distinguish between militant and civilian deaths.
A Thai migrant worker was killed this morning by an anti-tank missile in Yir’on, Israel, near the border with Lebanon, the Thai embassy in Tel Aviv has said.
Before the war, Israel was a common destination for Thai workers, with about 30,000 Thai nationals working there, mostly in agricultural jobs.
The Israeli government has previously said that Thai nationals made up the largest single group of foreign dead and missing in the Hamas attacks on 7 October. So far 23 Thai hostages have been released, while a further six remain in Gaza.
The death toll for Thai nationals in the conflict is now 42.
The UN human rights office said on Friday that more than 100 medics and emergency workers had been killed in Lebanon since a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah began a year ago, reports Reuters.
The conflict erupted when the Iran-backed group opened fire in support of Palestinian militant group Hamas at the start of the Gaza war. It has intensified dramatically in recent weeks, with Israel bombing parts of Beirut.
“In all, over 100 medical and emergency workers have been killed across Lebanon since October last year,” spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a UN briefing, citing figures she said were compiled by the United Nations humanitarian office.
“We’ve had several reports also of airstrikes targeting other medical centres and of paramedics as well as firefighters being killed,” she said.
World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said that since 17 September, there had been 18 attacks on health facilities in Lebanon, killing 72 health workers.
Israel says it targets military capabilities in Lebanon and Gaza and takes steps to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians. It accuses Hezbollah, like Hamas, of hiding among civilians, which they deny.
From sundown on Friday until nightfall on Saturday, Israeli markets will close, flights will stop and public transport will halt as most Jews fast and pray on the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur.
But Israeli forces will continue operations against Hamas and Hezbollah, even as Israel’s top ally the US calls for de-escalation, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
US secretary of state Antony Blinken voiced hope on Friday for a diplomatic solution in Lebanon and averting a broader conflict, as he backed efforts by the fragile state to assert itself against Hezbollah.
“We continue to engage intensely to prevent broader conflict in the region,” Blinken said. He added:
It’s clear that the people of Lebanon have an interest – a strong interest – in the state asserting itself and taking responsibility for the country and its future.”
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week urged Lebanese people to rise up against Hezbollah, or risk a similar fate to the people of Hamas-run Gaza.
“You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza,” he said. “Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.”
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez on Friday urged the international community to stop selling weapons to Israel as he condemned attacks by Israel’s armed forces against the United Nations’ peacekeeping force in Lebanon, reports Reuters.
Israeli forces fired at an observation post used by UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Friday, injuring two, a UN source said, the third day in a row peacekeepers have reported Israeli fire at their positions as Israel wages war on Hezbollah.
None of the Spanish soldiers who were part of the mission were hit, the Spanish defence ministry said on Friday, according to Reuters.
Spain has deployed 650 peacekeepers in Lebanon and a Spanish general leads the mission.
“Let me at this point criticise and condemn the attacks that the Israeli armed forces are carrying out on the United Nations mission in Lebanon,” Sánchez, whose country has been critical of Israel in the recent escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, said after meeting Pope Francis at the Vatican.
Sánchez said Spain stopped selling weapons to Israel in October 2023 and urged the rest of the world to do the same to prevent further escalation in the region.
“I think it is urgent given what is happening in the Middle East that the international community stops exporting weapons to the Israeli government,” he said.