Middle East crisis: Israeli strike kills six in southern Lebanon, health ministry says – as it happened

An Israeli strike killed six people, including four medics, in the village of Arab Salim in southern Lebanon on Thursday, Reuters is reporting, citing the Lebanese health ministry.

In figures reported before the latest Israeli strikes, the ministry said 21 people were killed in Israeli attacks on the country on Wednesday, bringing the total killed since October last year to at least 3,386.

David Smith

Elizabeth Warren, a leading progressive voice in the US Senate, has denounced the Biden administration’s failure to punish Israel over the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and endorsed a joint resolution of disapproval in Congress.

“On October 13, the Biden administration told Prime Minister Netanyahu that his government had 30 days to increase humanitarian aid into Gaza or face the consequences under US law, which would include cutting off military assistance,” the Massachusetts senator said in a statement shared with the Guardian.

“Thirty days later, the Biden administration acknowledged that Israel’s actions had not significantly expanded food, water and basic necessities for desperate Palestinian civilians. Despite Netanyahu’s failure to meet the United States’ demands, the Biden administration has taken no action to restrict the flow of offensive weapons.”

The amount of aid reaching the territory has dropped to the lowest level in 11 months, official Israeli figures show. Despite an ultimatum last month that gave Israel an ultimatum of 30 days to improve conditions or risk losing military support, the US state department announced it would not take any punitive action, insisting that Israel was making limited progress and was not blocking aid and therefore not violating US law.

The US ambassador to Lebanon, Lisa Johnson, submitted a draft truce proposal to Lebanon’s speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri, to halt fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, Reuters is reporting, citing sources.

Johnson met with Berri, a Hezbollah ally and the typical diplomatic conduit for the group, on Thursday to submit the US’s first written proposal in at least several weeks, two senior Lebanese political sources told the news agency.

“It is a draft to get observations from the Lebanese side,” one source said. There were no details on the contents of the proposal.

Israel has denied allegations by Human Rights Watch that it is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.

In a report published on Thursday, the rights group said it had collected evidence that suggested Israel is using evacuation orders to pursue the “deliberate and massive forced displacement” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, describing it as “a grave breach of the Geneva conventions and a crime under the Rome statute of the international criminal court”.

Israel’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Oren Marmorstein, posted in a statement to X:

Time and again, Human Rights Watch’s rhetoric regarding Israel’s conduct in Gaza is completely false and detached from reality.

He claimed Israel’s efforts are “directed solely at dismantling Hamas’s terror capabilities and not at the people of Gaza” and that Israel “remains fully committed to facilitating the continuous flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

“Israel will continue to operate in accordance with the law of armed conflict,” he added.

Chris Stein

During their meeting at the White House yesterday, Joe Biden asked Donald Trump to work with him on a ceasefire deal that would see the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, Axios reports.

The Biden administration has tried to negotiate such an agreement, as well as another deal to end Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, for months, with no luck. His time as president is running out, and the conflicts will become Trump’s problem once he takes office.

Here’s more, from Axios:

Biden wants to use the two months he has left in office to break the prolonged deadlock in the negotiations over a Gaza deal. Trump, on the other hand, would likely be happy to reach Inauguration Day with one less crisis on his plate.

Biden also met yesterday with the families of the American hostages who are held in Gaza, two sources with knowledge of the meeting told Axios.

One source said the families stressed that the hostages are running out of time and expressed concern for their lives.

Biden told the families that he and Trump agreed that the hostage issue is urgent and that they want to try and solve it before Jan. 20, the other source said.

It has just gone 8pm in Beirut, Tel Aviv and Gaza City, 9pm in Damascus, and 9.30pm in Tehran.

These are today’s latest development:

• Fifteen people have been killed and others injured in Israeli attacks that targeted two residential buildings in suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday, Syrian state news agency Sana said.

• Israel’s military has claimed that in the last 48 hours it has struck what it termed 30 “terror targets” in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahieh. Israel’s Arabic-language military spokesperson has again issued orders for residents to evacuate specific locations in southern Beirut. In addition Several blocks of flats have been destroyed by Israeli strikes in Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon. Israel claims to be targeting Hezbollah facilities.

• Police in Paris are braced for potential violence before Thursday’s France-Israel football match, with police deploying one officer for every five ticket holders at the Stade de France. Speaking to broadcaster BFMTV a few hours before the match, French president, Emmanuel Macron, said “we will not give in to antisemitism”.

• Families of Israeli hostages taken captive to Gaza by Hamas urged US president Joe Biden and president-elect Donald Trump on Thursday to work on a deal to free those still being held before winter. A delegation of former hostages and hostages’ relatives were visiting Rome for meetings including with the local Jewish community and Pope Francis.

• The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) said on Thursday that two or three unknown people fired approximately 30 shots in the direction of peacekeepers, who fired back and moved to safety. No one was hurt and an investigation was launched, Unifil added in a statement.

• Twenty-one people were killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon on Wednesday, bringing the total killed since October last year to at least 3,386, with 14,417 injured, the Lebanese health ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

• UN undersecretary general for peace operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, said the UN remains committed to keeping Unifil in place in all of its positions in southern Lebanon despite intense battles between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants. Unifil forces “continue to be deployed in all the positions, and we think it is very important to preserve that presence everywhere,” LaCroix said.

• In operational updates posted to its official Telegram channel, the IDF has claimed that in the past week it has killed “over 200” Hezbollah operatives and destroyed 140 rocket launchers in its attacks on southern Lebanon.

• Israel is using evacuation orders to pursue the “deliberate and massive forced displacement” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, according to a report by Human Rights Watch, which says the policy amounts to crimes against humanity.

• International Atomic Energy Agency director general, Rafael Grossi, has been in Tehran, and said that Iran’s nuclear installations should “not be attacked”. The UN’s atomic energy chief has said it is important to make progress with Iran in order to avoid the possibility of war.

• Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, said the country was not prepared to negotiate about its nuclear programme while it was “under pressure and intimidation”. The head of Iran’s programme, Mohammad Eslami, issued a warning saying “any interventionist resolution in the nuclear affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran will definitely be met with immediate countermeasures”. The west has accused Iran of enriching uranium for military purposes, which it denies.

• Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baqaei, has condemned remarks by Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich about Israeli intentions to fully and permanently annex the occupied West Bank.

• More than a year of clashes that recently escalated into war have cost Lebanon more than $5bn in economic losses and damaged nearly 100,000 homes, the World Bank said on Thursday. The report provided estimates for damage between 8 October 2023 and 27 October 2024, saying “the conflict has caused $5.1bn in economic losses”, with damage to physical structures amounting to “at least $3.4bn” on top of that.

• According to a report on Wednesday in the leftwing Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Israeli forces in Gaza are clearing large areas with the apparent intention to remain inside the territory until at least the end of 2025.

• The Washington Post has suggested that Israel is working to time any ceasefire deal with Lebanon so that it appears as a “gift” to incoming US president Donald Trump when he takes office.

• The US government issued fresh “counter-terrorism” sanctions on Thursday related to Syria’s Al-Qatirji company, according to the treasury department’s website. The sanctions targeted 26 individuals, companies and vessels associated with the Syrian company, the treasury department’s website showed.

• Chris Sidoti, Australia’s former human rights commissioner, told a UN press briefing that the ongoing bombardment of Gaza was sowing the seeds for generations of conflict, every day of violence making peace harder to achieve.

Families of Israeli hostages taken captive to Gaza by Islamist group Hamas urged US president Joe Biden and president-elect Donald Trump on Thursday to work on a deal to free those still being held before winter, reports Reuters.

A delegation of former hostages and hostages’ relatives were visiting Rome for meetings including with the local Jewish community and Pope Francis.

Reuters reports that during a press conference, they told reporters a deal was swiftly needed to bring back all the hostages still being held after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel, and said Biden and Trump should work together.

“We hope Biden and Trump work together now to get the hostages back, before the winter … it has been so tough for them, they cannot be expected to wait another winter,” said Sharon Lifshitz. Lifshitz’s mother, Yocheved, was freed in October last year while her father, Oded, is still captive.

“This is not about the left and right, all people should come together,” she said.

According to Reuters, Norberto Louis Har, who was freed in February by the Israeli armed forces, told reporters he did not care about the political camps but only that those still held were released.