Middle East crisis live: Israel to keep up Lebanon strikes ‘until we reach all our goals’, says Netanyahu, as US warns of ‘all-out war’

Hezbollah has confirmed the death of Mohammad Surur, who Israel Defense Forces earlier said had been killed in an airstrike on Beirut earlier on Thursday.

The Israeli military described Surur as in charge of Hezbollah’s drone operations. Hezbollah did not provide details on his role.

The leader of Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Abdul Malik al-Huthi, said in a televised address earlier Thursday the Iran-backed group “will not hesitate to support Lebanon and Hezbollah” as cross-border fire between the Lebanese group and Israel intensified.

Late on Thursday, the Israeli military said it had intercepted a missile fired from Yemen. Sirens went off in several areas of central Israel “as a result of a missile that was fired from Yemen”, the Israel Defense Forces said on messaging platform Telegram.

“The missile that was fired from Yemen was successfully intercepted by the ’Arrow’ Aerial Defense System. Sirens and explosions were heard after the interception and falling shrapnel,” it added.

Since November, the Houthis have targeted Red Sea shipping with drones and missiles, saying the actions are in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza war.

The United States appears to be continuing in its efforts to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

The White House said that US and Israeli officials, including US Middle East envoy Brett McGurk, would hold discussions on Thursday in New York, regarding the proposed temporary ceasefire.

Secretary of state Antony Blinken was due to meet with Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer as well.

Israel’s army has said that after the interception of the missile from Yemen “sirens and explosions were heard” and falling shrapnel.

The IDF has said that sirens were active across central Israel with “millions of Israelis” running to shelter.

Here’s a recap of the latest developments:

Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel “will not stop” its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon despite calls from the US, France and other allies for an immediate three-week ceasefire. The Israeli prime minister told reporters that his government’s policy was clear as he landed in New York on Thursday. “We are continuing to strike Hezbollah with full force, and we will not stop until we reach all our goals,” Netanyahu said.

The US and France called for a 21-day temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah to make way for broader negotiations. A joint statement calling for “a diplomatic settlement” of the crisis was also endorsed by the UK, Australia, Canada, the European Union, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. It called for an urgent cessation of hostilities, which presented “an unacceptable risk of a broader regional escalation”.

But Israel rejected the proposal for a ceasefire and demanded that the fight against Hezbollah continue. Netanyahu’s office distanced the Israeli government from the ceasefire plan, which it described as “an American-French proposal that the prime minister has not even responded to”. Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said “there will be no ceasefire in the north”. Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich insisted that continuing the war against Hezbollah was the only way forward. Interior security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir threatened that his party would quit Netanyahu’s coalition government if a permanent ceasefire were agreed to.

US officials hope to persuade Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire proposal by the time he addresses the UN general assembly on Friday. They argue that a pause in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah could also provide a breathing space in which to revive long-stalled negotiations with Israel and Hamas over the release of Israeli hostages in return for a truce in Gaza. Hezbollah has yet to respond to the call for a truce, although it and its backer, Iran, have previously insisted it would halt its strikes only if there is a ceasefire in Gaza.

Israeli airstrikes continued in Lebanon on Thursday, in which health authorities said 92 people had been killed. Two people were killed and 15 others wounded, including a woman in critical condition, after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Thursday, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Israel said it carried out a strike that it said killed one of the heads of the Hezbollah air force unit, Mohammad Surur. Hezbollah later confirmed his death.

Herzi Halevi, the chief of the general staff of the Israel Defense Forces, said the Israeli military will continue striking Hezbollah. Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said he had approved the “continued IDF offensive activity” against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The head of the Israeli air force, Tomer Bar, said its top priority now is to prevent all weapons transfers from Iran to Hezbollah.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement said it had targeted the northern Israeli town of Safed with dozens of rockets on Thursday in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Later on Thursday, air raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and across central Israel. The IDF said the sirens were triggered by a missile fired from Yemen, which it said was intercepted by Israel’s Arrow missile defence system.

More than 1,500 people have been killed in almost a year of cross-border violence between Hezbollah and the Israeli army, according to figures from the Lebanese government on Thursday. Lebanon’s health ministry said 19 Syrian refugees and a Lebanese citizen had been killed in one strike in north-east Lebanon on Thursday, bringing the death toll from several days of Israeli bombardment to more than 630 people, about a quarter of whom the ministry said were women or children.

Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, warned that a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah “could be devastating for both parties”. Austin urged both sides to accept proposals for a 21-day ceasefire, while he was on a trip to London to meet his British and Australian counterparts, John Healey and Richard Marles. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said countries around the world were united in wanting a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. Blinken is scheduled to meet with Israeli officials in New York on Thursday.

Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon to create space for diplomacy to resolve the conflict. “I call on Israel and Hezbollah to stop the violence, step back from the brink. We need to see an immediate ceasefire to provide space for a diplomatic settlement,” he said in his first speech at the UN general assembly in New York on Thursday.

Israel said it had secured an $8.7bn (£6.5bn) aid package from the US to support its ongoing military efforts and to maintain a qualitative military edge in the region. The announcement came after talks between Israel’s ministry of defense director general, Eyal Zamir, and the US acting under secretary for defence for policy, Amanda Dory, according to Israel’s defence ministry.

Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, warned that the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah could spark a “regional conflagration”. Scholz met on Thursday with the Israeli opposition politician, Benny Gantz, who quit Israel’s war cabinet in June, citing a lack of a postwar plan for Gaza. Germany was among the group of nations that called “for an immediate 21-day ceasefire across the Lebanon-Israel border”.

Mahmoud Abbas urged world leaders to stop the war in the Gaza Strip, saying Israel had almost entirely destroyed the Palestinian territory and it was no longer fit for life. The Palestinian Authority president, speaking at the UN general assembly on Thursday, urged leaders to “stop sending weapons to Israel”, adding that the Palestinian people “will not leave … Palestine is our homeland”.

At least 11 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a school sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians in northern Gaza on Thursday. The Israeli military confirmed it had struck the school, in the Jabalia refugee camp, but claimed the attack had been aimed at Hamas militants hiding there. Six people were killed when a missile struck a house in Khan Younis on Thursday, Gaza’s health ministry said.

Gaza’s health ministry has accused the Israeli army of treating exhumed Palestinian bodies in an “inhumane” manner. It said the Israeli army deposited a container containing 88 dead Palestinians “without any data or information that could help identify” them. Israel rejected the accusation, saying that it treated the bodies of the deceased “with dignity and respect”.

Police in Norway have put out an international search warrant for a Norwegian Indian man in connection with the sale of pagers to Hezbollah that exploded last week, killing dozens of people. Rinson Jose, 39, the founder of a Bulgarian company that is alleged to be part of the pager supply chain, went missing during a work trip to the US last week.

Air raid sirens were reported in Tel Aviv and across central Israel on Thursday.

According to a statement by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the sirens were triggered by a missile fired from Yemen.

The missile was intercepted by Israel’s Arrow missile defence system, it said.

Lebanon’s health ministry said 92 people have been killed by Israeli strikes around the country over the past 24 hours.

In a series of statements, it said Israeli raids killed 40 people in towns and villages in the south, 48 in two eastern regions and four in the east-of-central Mount Lebanon Governorate, AFP reported.

The health ministry said 153 people have been wounded in these attacks.

The White House said the Biden administration had believed that Israel was “on board” with a proposal for a 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah when the US, France and other allies announced the proposal on Wednesday night.

John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesperson, told reporters on Thursday:

We had every reason to believe that in the drafting of it and in the delivery of it, that the Israelis were fully informed and fully aware of every word in it. We wouldn’t have done it if we didn’t believe that it would be received with the seriousness with which it was composed.

Kirby said it was unclear why Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, appeared to dismiss the idea of a ceasefire and vowed to “continue to hit Hezbollah with all our might”. Kirby said:

I certainly can’t begin to speculate about what considerations went into that statement, whether they were political or operational or otherwise. Those are questions that he needs to be asked and should be given the opportunity to answer.

Hezbollah has confirmed the death of Mohammad Surur, who Israel Defense Forces earlier said had been killed in an airstrike on Beirut earlier on Thursday.

The Israeli military described Surur as in charge of Hezbollah’s drone operations. Hezbollah did not provide details on his role.

Starmer also calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and says it “shames us all that the suffering” in the Palestinian territory continues to grow.

The answer to that is diplomacy, he says, as well as the release of all the hostages and the unfettered flow of aid to those in need.

That is the only way to break this devastating cycle of violence and begin the journey towards a political solution for the long term, which delivers the long-promised Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure Israel.

He says world leaders must also work together for peace, adding that the world “cannot look away”.

Starmer says there are “positive, practical” things that world leaders can do together, starting with “addressing the rising tide of conflict and preventing a regional war in the Middle East”. He tells the UN general assembly:

I call on Israel and Hezbollah to stop the violence, step back from the brink.

The UK leader urges an immediate ceasefire to provide space for a diplomatic settlement, and says Britain is working with allies to that end.

“Because further escalation serves no one,” Starmer says, adding:

It offers nothing but more suffering for innocent people on all sides, and the prospect of a wider war that no one can control and with consequences that none of us can foresee.

Starmer says his Labour government was elected “to change Britain”, but that Britain’s success can never be separated from events beyond it.

He says the UK is “changing our approach on the global stage”, adding:

My message today is this: we are returning the UK to responsible global leadership, because I think the international system can be better. We need it to be better.

He says a sense of “fatalism” has taken hold, but urges world leaders to not accept “this slide into greater conflict, instability and injustice”.

The UK’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, is addressing the UN general assembly in New York.

Starmer begins his speech by describing himself as someone “with a deep belief” in the principles of the UN and the value of international cooperation.

He says that as a student, he read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that it had a “profound impact” on him. He says that as a lawyer, he worked to protect those rights and that the declaration still inspires him now as prime minister.

But the idea of “equal and inalienable” rights based on a foundation of “freedom, justice and peace” feel like a “distant hope” now, Starmer says:

Conflict touches more countries now than at any time in the history of this assembly. Around the world, more fires are breaking out and burning with a greater intensity, exacting a terrible toll in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, Yemen and beyond.

 

Updated: September 26, 2024 — 4:40 pm

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