Middle East crisis live: New Israeli military division sent to Lebanon, IDF says, as vigils and ceremonies mark 7 October anniversary

Israelis are expected to flock to ceremonies, cemeteries and memorial sites around the country today, remembering the hundreds of victims, the dozens of hostages still in captivity and the soldiers wounded or killed trying to save them. The Associated Press reports:

At 6.30 am – the exact hour Hamas launched its attack – the families of those killed at the Nova music festival were gathering at the site where almost 400 revellers were gunned down and from where many others were taken hostage.

At that same time, the families of hostages still held in Gaza – about 100, a third of whom are said to be dead – were gathering outside prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence to stand during a two-minute siren, replicating a custom from the the most solemn dates on the Israeli calendar, Holocaust Remembrance and Memorial Day.

An official state ceremony focusing on acts of bravery and hope is set to be aired on Monday evening. The ceremony was prerecorded without an audience – apparently to avoid potential disruptions – in the southern city of Ofakim, where over two dozen Israelis were killed.

But anger at the government’s failure to prevent the attack and enduring frustration that it has not returned the remaining hostages prompted the families of those killed and taken captive to hold a separate event in Tel Aviv.

That event had been set to draw tens of thousands of people but was scaled back drastically over prohibitions on large gatherings due to the threat of missile attacks from Iran and Hezbollah.

Air raid sirens were activated in central Israel on Monday after rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip, the army said. The Israel Defense Forces have also said air raid sirens have been ringing in some areas of northern Israel, including Dovev and Misgav Am, and in Tel Aviv. Earlier today, the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said in a post on Telegram it had hit Tel Aviv with a barrage of rockets. There have not been any immediate reports of injuries.

Kim Willsher is a Guardian foreign correspondent based in Paris

French ministers including prime minister Michel Barnier and former president Nicolas Sarkozy will attend a memorial ceremony for the victims of October 7 on Monday evening.

Around 4,000 people are expected at the Dôme arena at the Porte de Versailles to mark the one year anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel and show their support for the hostages still being held in Gaza.

The families of hostages will attend after a meeting with president Emmanuel Macron. France is home to the largest Jewish community in Europe, estimated to number around 500,000 people.

“October 7 was obviously an earthquake for Israel but it was also a shock in France,” Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council for Jewish Institutions in France (Crif), said. He added that he was dismayed by the surge in antisemitism in France over the last year. A total of 887 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the first six months of 2024, according to the interior ministry.

Monday’s event marking October 7 comes days after Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), called on university students to “put Palestinian flags everywhere if possible” in response to a memo from higher education minister Patrick Hetzel calling on universities to “keep order” on the one year anniversary of the Hamas attacks.

Arfi accused LFI of stoking antisemitism in France having “hysterically forced the public debate around the issue of Gaza”. He said Mélenchon had given “political backing” to antisemitism.

On Saturday, Macron called for a halt on the delivery of arms to Israel that could be used in Gaza, provoking an angry response from Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said another division was deployed yesterday for “localised operations” in southern Lebanon.

This division is reportedly the third troop grouping at division strength to be used in Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon, which was launched a week ago when several areas in the south of the country were told to evacuate.

“The soldiers of the 91st division began localised and targeted operational activity in southern Lebanon,” a statement from the Israeli army read.

More than 2,000 people have been killed and more than 9,500 injured since 23 September 2024, when Israel started an intense aerial bombing campaign in south Lebanon and the Bekaa valley.

Early this morning, Israel intercepted two aerial targets launched from the east after sirens went off in the central areas of Rishon Lezion and Palmachim, the military has said.

As we mentioned in the opening summary, there have been reports that Hezbollah rockets hit Israel’s third-largest city of Haifa early on Monday. Five people were reported to have been injured in the attack in Haifa, with police saying several buildings and properties were damaged.

It was the first direct attack on the northern city that evaded the Israeli military’s usually reliable air defence systems. The military said it is investigating how Hezbollah-fired missiles were able to break through Israel’s air defence systems.

Hezbollah said it targeted a military base south of Haifa with a wave of “Fadi 1” missiles. Media said two rockets hit Haifa – 27 miles (17 km) from the Lebanese border – on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, and five hit Tiberias 65 km (40 miles) away.

Israel’s military confirmed five rockets were launched at Haifa from Lebanon, adding: “Interceptors were fired. Fallen projectiles were identified in the area. The incident is under review.” Israeli media said that overall 10 people were injured in Haifa and Tiberias.

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, have vowed to keep up the fight against Israeli “aggression” and called Israel a “cancerous gland that must be eliminated, no matter how long it takes”.

Both Hezbollah and the Lebanese people have paid a “heavy price” for the militant group’s decision to open a “support front” for Gaza on 8 October, but “we are confident… in the ability of our resistance to oppose the Israeli aggression”, it said in a statement.

Hezbollah also said the Hamas-led 7 October attacks on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed, were “heroic”, saying they will have “historic” effects in the region. There “is no place” for Israel there, the militant group said.

Starting on 8 October 2023, a day after the Hamas led assault on southern Israel, which led to Israel launching a war on Gaza, there have been almost daily cross-border hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, Hamas’ ally. The violence forced about 60,000 Israelis to evacuate from northern Israel, and about 100,000 Lebanese people from the south of their country.

The Israeli government said its invasion of (southern) Lebanon was to push Hezbollah back from the border so displaced Israelis could safely come home.

More than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon in nearly a year of fighting, most in the past two weeks by Israeli attacks, according to the Lebanese health ministry. 1.2 million Lebanese people are estimated to have been forced to leave their homes due to Israeli bombardment that has targeted large swathes of the small country, including Lebanon’s capital, Beirut.

Lebanon’s state run national news agency, which posts regular news alerts on X, says there has been an Israeli attack on the outskirts of Qsarnaba, in the east of the country, and a “raid” in the Hamra area between the southern towns of Briqa and Zrarieh.

Eleven civilians were injured on Sunday evening in Israeli attacks that targeted displaced people in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, and north Gaza’s Jabalia camp, Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, is reporting.

Israeli warplanes reportedly bombed a tent sheltering internally displaced people west of the Nuseirat camp, injuring seven civilians. Four civilians in a centre in the Jabalia camp were injured by Israeli attacks, according to the Wafa report.

Israeli forces have regularly targeted Jabalia, displacing most residents there. Yesterday, the Israeli military said its forces had surrounded the Jabalia area of northern Gaza because of what it claimed was the presence of “terrorists” and their “infrastructure”.

French President Emmanuel Macron has paid tributes to the victims of the Hamas October 7 attack on southern Israel on its one year anniversary.

“The pain remains, as vivid as it was a year ago. The pain of the Israeli people. Ours. The pain of wounded humanity,” he said in a post on X.

“We do not forget the victims, the hostages, or the families with broken hearts from absence or waiting. I send them our fraternal thoughts.”

Macron called for a halt on arms deliveries to Israel for use in Gaza on Saturday, provoking an angry response from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“As Israel fights the forces of barbarism led by Iran, all civilised countries should be standing firmly by Israel’s side,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “Yet, President Macron and other western leaders are now calling for arms embargoes against Israel. Shame on them.”

On Sunday, Macron talked by phone with Netanyahu, reaffirming France’s “unwavering commitment” to Israel’s security while insisting on a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon.

Israeli jets have bombed a house in the town of Srifa, in south-east Lebanon, killing at least four people, according to local media reports.

Idan Shtivi, one of the hostages taken by Hamas from the Supernova music festival on 7 October last year, was killed during the attacks and his “body is still held captive by Hamas”, the Hostages and Missing Families forum has said.

The forum said Shtivi, 28, had just arrived at the festival site when the attack began.

The forum, which is made up of a group of relatives of the abductees who have led the protest movement and calls for a ceasefire deal, said in a statement:

On October 7, Idan arrived at the Nova Festival in the early morning to document his friends’ performances and workshops.

However, he never made it inside. When the attack began, Idan helped two strangers he had just met escape from the site. This selfless choice ultimately led to his abduction.

The announcement came as Israel marked the first anniversary of the 7 October Hamas-led attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage. Hamas are still holding around 100 hostages inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Every day, morning and night, Wiwwaeo Sriaoun prays for the safe return of her son, Watchara. It is now one year since he was taken hostage by Hamas, one of dozens of Thai migrant workers kidnapped from the farms on which they were working in southern Israel on 7 October, last year.

From her home in a sleepy, rural village in Udon Thani, north-east Thailand, Wiwwaeo has followed every development in the devastating and spiralling war that has erupted tens of thousands of miles away since Hamas’s attack on Israel.

“How is he surviving there? Is he safe? Is he still alive? How is he eating? How is he sleeping?” asks Wiwwaeo, 53. The lack of news has been unbearable.

“I have to keeping going because my son still has not returned, and his daughter, my granddaughter, is still little,” she says.

Watchara’s daughter, Irada, whose nickname is Nuu Dee (similar in meaning to “Little Miss Good” or “Little Good Girl”) is now nine years old. At first, she would ask whether her father was still working and when he would return. “She watches the news, and her friends at school ask her about it, and so we told her the truth: that her father was captured, but he is still alive. He’s not dead,” says Wiwwaeo. Someday, they hope, he will come back to pick her up and take her to school again.

Read the full story here:

A 19-year-old Palestinian journalist whose work appeared on Al Jazeera has been killed in an Israeli strike, the Qatar-based network has reported.

Hassan Hamad, a freelance journalist who lived in northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, had reportedly received threats from an Israeli officer via WhatsApp. It was not possible to verify the claim but the Israeli military has been accused of deliberately targeting journalists, which it denies.

In a post on Hamad’s account on Sunday, apparently by a colleague, it said:

Hassan Hamad, the journalist who did not live past the age of 20, resisted for a full year in his own way. He resisted by staying away from his family so they wouldn’t be targeted. He resisted when he struggled to find an internet signal, sitting for an hour or two on the rooftop just to send the videos that reach you in seconds.

The message continued saying:

Yesterday, from 10 PM, he moved between the bombed locations and then returned to search for an internet signal, only to go back and cover the scenes of the scattered remains. He endured the pain of an injury to his leg, yet continued filming.

At 6 AM, he called me to send his last video. After a call that didn’t last more than a few seconds, he said, “There they are, there they are, it’s done,” and hung up. It’s a feeling no human can bear.

Al Jazeera said it had verified footage of Hamad’s body, which was found in pieces and had to be placed into plastic bags and shoe boxes.

Hamad’s colleagues in Gaza posted tributes to him on social media. The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 128 journalists have been killed by Israel in Gaza since the start of the 7 October conflict.

 

Updated: Oktober 7, 2024 — 8:55 am

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