Lebanon death toll rises; IDF, Hezbollah clash

The Lebanese Health Ministry says that 1,974 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in the country since Oct. 8, 2023.

This includes 107 children and 202 women, the health ministry said today, while some 9,375 people have been injured.

The Israeli military and Hezbollah have exchanged cross-border fire for nearly a year, but the last few weeks have seen the death toll soar as Israel has intensified its attacks.

The latest from the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on the new wave of Israeli strikes in the city and on the direct military engagements between Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah. 

Two senior Lebanese officials have said that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah agreed to a 21-day cease-fire with Israel days before he was killed in an Israeli attack.

The temporary ceasefire was proposed by the U.S., France and other allies last week.

“They [the US and France] told us that Mr. Netanyahu agreed on this and so we also got the agreement of Hezbollah on that and you know what happened since then,” Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour yesterday.

And this morning, the country’s ambassador to the U.K. said the same.

“Hezbollah … subscribed to this joint statement that was issued calling for a cease-fire, 21-day ceasefire, and immediately after starting to look for a diplomatic solution in the framework of the security council resolution,” Ambassador Rami Mortada told the BBC.

“We were on track trying to discuss a diplomatic alternative to the current abyss, but the hotheads in Israel chose a different path,” he said.

Videos appear to show Israeli soldiers and IDF helicopters conducting military ground operations in southern Lebanon.

In one video, it appears a casualty evacuation process is underway as IDF helicopters land in the Kfar Gil’adi area. The video circulated yesterday, as the IDF announced the deaths of 8 soldiers and many more injuries.

The killing of eight Israeli soldiers during the military’s invasion of southern Lebanon will likely be a “wake-up call” for Israel as it takes stock of the success of its offensive, a security expert told NBC News.

Mahdi Ghuloom, a regional security analyst at Le Beck International, said Israel will have anticipated the risk of casualties in its ground offensive into territory that Hezbollah will inevitably be more familiar with. But, he said the IDF’s claims to have been covertly launching cross-border raids for months prior to its announcement of ground operations, indicates that “familiarity with the terrain is increasing based on intelligence obtained from these raids.”

Still, Ghuloom said, the deaths of eight soldiers in a relatively short time “is certainly a wake-up call for Israel that advancing quite rapidly into Lebanon would be costly.”

Show more

Israel launched another deadly airstrike in Beirut and carried out new attacks in the Gaza Strip while also preparing its response to the unprecedented missile attack from Iran. Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting to address the conflicts in the Middle East. 

Three loud explosions could be heard just now in the Lebanese capital.

A Lebanese army soldier has been killed and another injured by Israeli forces while evacuating casualties in the country’s south, the Lebanese army and the Lebanese Red Cross said.

They were carrying out an evacuation and rescue mission in the southern town of Taybeh when they were attacked by Israeli forces, the Lebanese army said.

The Lebanese Red Cross said that four of its paramedics were also injured, according to The Associated Press. The AP previously reported that it said four paramedics were killed.

It said the convoy for wounded residents was targeted despite coordinating its movements with U.N. peacekeepers.

NBC News has reached out to the IDF for comment.

More women and children have been killed by Israel’s assault in the Gaza Strip over the past year than in any other conflict over the past two decades, aid groups say.

Conservative estimates show that more than 6,000 women and 11,000 children were killed in Gaza over the last 12 months, according to Oxfam and Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).

In comparison, the two figures are both higher than those from existing records. The highest number of women killed in a single year of conflict was more than 2,600 in Iraq in 2016, while an average of more than 4,700 children died in the Syria conflict, the new analysis said, citing previous reports.

It was another sleepless night for many across Lebanon as the sound of Israeli strikes rang out into the early hours, with a strike in central Beirut killing at least nine people and injuring several others.

“It was a nightmare,” said Hiam Khoury, 50, who lives in Hadath, a municipality in the Baabda District, about 4 miles south of Beirut. “We didn’t sleep. How can you do it, even if the bombing stops?” she told NBC News.

Khoury said she woke up at around 2 a.m. to the sound of a strike. “Everything was shaking. The house, us.” She said it had become a daily routine to “wake up in the middle of the night” and “stay up, traumatized.”

“In the morning, we clean the smoke residues from our balconies and houses. We go to work, pass by buildings with broken glass, or hit,” she said. “I don’t know how long this is going to last. We don’t have a place to go to and we don’t want to leave our house and stay on the street. We are exhausted.”

Relatives and friends mourn by the grave of Israeli soldier Eitan Itzhak Oster who was killed during fighting in the with Hezbollah yesterday. The IDF announced that eight of its troops were killed, a day after Israel launched an invasion of southern Lebanon.

Japan today has dispatched two of its military transport aircraft to Jordan and Greece, the Japanese broadcaster NHK reported, as it prepares for a potential airlift of its citizens from Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong announced today the government has booked 500 seats on commercial airlines for Australian citizens to leave Saturday along with their families.

“What I would say to Australians who wish to leave, please take whatever option is available to you,” Wong told reporters.

The British government said it was chartering additional flights, a day after an evacuation flight had left Beirut with 150 British nationals onboard.

The Israel Defense Forces issued another evacuation warning today in southern Lebanon, ordering 27 villages to be evacuated.

Israel has urged the residents of the villages to head north of the Awali River, the IDF’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a post on X, referring to the river that is a third of the way into Lebanon’s entire length.

The orders cover areas that are located north of a United Nations-declared buffer zone that was established after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, potentially signaling an expanding Israeli incursion. 

Earlier today, he had urged residents in southern Lebanon who had already been asked to evacuate not to return as fighting was still ongoing.

At least nine people have now been killed in the Israeli airstrike that hit central Beirut overnight, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said today.

The death toll was updated from six, and the ministry said another 14 people were injured in the airstrike on the neighborhood of Bachoura, which is within walking distance of the prime minister’s headquarters, as well as many foreign embassies, including those of the United Kingdom and Australia.

The CIA is releasing instructions in Farsi, Mandarin and Korean to allow people to share information with the agency without running afoul of authoritarian regimes.

“People are trying to reach out to us from around the world and we are offering them instructions for how to do that safely,” the CIA said in a statement yesterday. “The security of those willing to reach out to us around the world is of paramount importance to us, and we want them to do so as safely as possible.”

Farsi is spoken by more than 100 million people in Iran and nearby countries, while Mandarin, with more than 1 billion speakers, is the majority language in China.

Read the full story here.

More than 1.4 million people in the besieged Gaza Strip did not receive their food rations in September, up from 1 million people the month before, Philippe Lazzarini, chief of U.N.’s agency in Gaza, UNRWA, said in a post on X yesterday.

“Again & again hunger is spreading in Gaza,” he said, adding nearly 70% of crop field have been destroyed in the enclave. “An entire population is forced to exclusively rely on humanitarian aid.”

Lazzarini said that more than 110,000 tons of food supplies are stranded outside of Gaza due to access restrictions and damaged roads.

“Restrictions and delays in aid deliveries only worsen an already dire situation for displaced families,” he said.

The Israeli military said it killed the head of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, Rawhi Mushtaha, and two other Hamas leaders in a strike approximately three months ago.

The three Hamas leaders were “hiding in a fortified and equipped underground compound in the northern Gaza Strip,” the IDF said today in a statement.

The IDF said Mushtaha was one of “Hamas’ most senior operatives” and served as the right-hand man of Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar. The IDF has vowed to hunt down Sinwar for orchestrating the Oct. 7 attacks.

Along with Mushtaha, two security leaders Sameh al-Siraj and Samih Oudeh were killed in the strike, the IDF said. Hamas has not announced the deaths.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels said today they launched a number of drones toward Tel Aviv.

“The operation successfully achieved its goals, with the drones reaching their targets without the enemy being able to intercept or down them,” the Iran-backed militia group said in a statement.

Photos show the aftermath of an overnight Israeli airstrike that targeted the neighborhood of Moawwad in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Israel has warned residents of Lebanese villages in the south to not return to their homes, saying Israeli military raids were still continuing.

“For your safety and the safety of your families — do not return home until further notice,” IDF Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a post on X today.

The IDF had yesterday announced evacuation orders for 21 villages in southern Lebanon.

Vice President Kamala Harris said she does not foresee the need for American troops to enter into combat in Israel.

“I will be unwavering in my commitment to Israel’s ability to defend itself and to take seriously the need to deal with Iran in terms of the threat that it poses to U.S. interests, to our allies and to stability in the region,” she said in an interview with KDKA, the CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh.

Asked whether U.S. forces might be drawn into the escalating conflict, Harris said, “No, absolutely not.”

Satellite photos appear to show damage at an Israeli military air base after Iran’s ballistic missile attack.

Images of the Nevatim air base in the country’s south, taken yesterday, seemingly show a hole in the roof of an aircraft hangar, according to The Associated Press. Large pieces of debris can be seen spread around the building, it adds.

It was not clear exactly what caused the damage and Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the AP about the satellite images.

Israeli strikes in the heart of the Lebanese capital killed at least six people and wounded seven overnight, health officials said.

The strikes hit Beirut’s central neighborhood of Bachoura, which is within walking distance of the prime minister’s headquarters, as well as many foreign embassies, including those of the United Kingdom and Australia.

Three people were killed immediately while three more died because of their severe injuries afterward, according to the country’s Health Ministry.

Oil prices jumped today as tensions escalate in the Middle East, which drives concerns that crude oil supplies might be disrupted.

One possible target for an Israeli retaliatory attack on Iran is the country’s oil facilities, analysts have said.

Brent crude futures were up 92 cents, or 1.24%, to $74.82 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were up 95 cents, or 1.36%, to $71.05.

Hezbollah said it targeted northern Israel early today, claiming to have hit Israeli soldiers.

The Iran-backed militant group said it targeted two Israeli forces at Hanita and Misgav Am respectively.

The Israeli military said this morning that “two UAVs were identified crossing from Lebanon. The IAF intercepted a UAV off the coast of Nahariya and a fallen projectile was identified in an open area. No injuries were reported. No sirens were sounded in accordance with protocol.”

It also said that “following the sirens that sounded in the Upper Galilee area, approximately 25 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon. Some of the projectiles were intercepted and fallen projectiles were identified.”

Israel is preparing for its response to Iran’s missile attack, Israeli and U.S. officials say. President Joe Biden said he supports Israel’s right to respond. Eight Israeli soldiers were killed in combat in southern Lebanon.