LIVEWest Asia Conflict LIVE | Israeli strike kills 19 including kids at Gaza school

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Hezbollah MP says Israel has not captured any villages in southern Lebanon

A Hezbollah member of Lebanon's parliament said on Thursday the Israeli military had not so far captured any villages in southern Lebanon.

Hassan Fadlallah also told reporters that Hezbollah's leadership was carefully coordinating with the speaker of Lebanon's parliament, Nabih Berri, in efforts to secure a ceasefire in the fighting with Israeli forces. (Reuters)

Israel stops processing key commercial food imports to Gaza

Israel has stopped processing requests from traders to import food to Gaza, according to 12 people involved in the trade, choking off a track that for the past six months supplied more than half of the besieged Palestinian territory's provisions.

Since Oct. 11, Gaza-based traders who were importing food from Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank have lost access to a system introduced in spring by Cogat, the Israeli government body that oversees aid and commercial shipments, and have received no reply to attempts to contact the agency, the sources said.

The shift has driven the flow of goods arriving in Gaza to its lowest level since the start of the war, a Reuters analysis of official Israeli data shows. The details of the halt in commercial goods into Gaza have not been previously reported.

Cogat did not respond to Reuters' questions about commercial food imports and aid to Gaza. The agency says it does all it can to ensure that enough aid enters the coastal enclave, and that Israel does not prevent the entry of humanitarian aid. It rejects allegations Israel has blocked supplies.

Between Oct. 1 and Oct. 16, the overall flow of shipments to Gaza - including both aid and commercial goods - fell to a daily average of 29 trucks, according to Cogat statistics.

That compares with a daily average of 175 trucks between May and September, the data shows. Commercial shipments -- goods bought by local traders, trucked in after direct approval by Cogat, and then sold in marketplaces in Gaza -- accounted for about 55 per cent of the total during that period. (Reuters)

Israeli strike kills 19 including children at Gaza school

At least 19 Palestinians including children were killed on Thursday after an Israeli strike hit a school in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip that is sheltering displaced people, a Gaza health ministry official told Reuters.

Dozens were also injured in the strike, said the official, Medhat Abbas, adding: "There is no water to extinguish the fire. There is nothing." (Reuters)

Iran warns of 'painful' retaliatory attacks against Israel

Speaking at the funeral of slain Major General Abbas Nilforoushan, Major General Salami of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said that the earlier volley of missiles launched by Tehran on October 3 was merely a warning to Israel, and that further escalations, if any, would be met by a much harsher response.

UK govt pledges to match £10million donation by British public for humanitarian aid to West Asia

Anneliese Dodds, the UK Minister of State for Development, said donations to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Middle East Humanitarian Appeal fund will be used to “provide life-saving aid including medical supplies, shelter and clean water to those who need it most”.

Iran, Egypt foreign ministers meet amid conflict in West Asia

Egypt's Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty attends a press conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi at Tahrir Palace, in Cairo, October 17, 2024.

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After evacuation call, Israeli strike hits city of Tyre

An Israeli strike hit near the south Lebanon coastal city of Tyre on Thursday, reported news agency AFP.

Earlier, Israel had issued an evacuation call in the area.

UN peacekeeping mission has vital role, must be strengthened, Italy says

The UN peacekeeping mission to Lebanon is vital to ending war in the region and needs to be strengthened, not withdrawn from combat zones as Israel has demanded, Italy's defence minister said on Thursday.

The UN mission known as UNIFIL is stationed in southern Lebanon to monitor hostilities along the demarcation line with Israel -- an area that has seen fierce clashes this month between Israeli troops and Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters.

Israel has said the UN forces are providing a human shield for Hezbollah and has fired at the UNIFIL bases repeatedly over the past week, injuring several peacekeepers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says UNIFIL should temporarily "get out of harm's way".

Italy has long been a major contributor to the multi-national operation and has denounced Israel for its actions, straining relations between two nations, which have been very close under Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's leadership. (Reuters)

42,438 Palestinians killed and 99,246 injured in Israeli ops in Gaza since Oct 7, 2023

More than 42,438 Palestinians have been killed and 99,246 injured in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since Oct 7, 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Thursday. (Reuters)

Hezbollah claims to have hit two Israeli tanks with guided missiles

Amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, the Lebanon-based group said that it had hit two Israeli tanks near the border with guided missiles, news agency AFP reported.

Sirens ring out in northern Israel

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on Telegram announced on Thursday that sirens had been sounded Misgav Am, Margaliot, and Ghajar in northern Israel.

German warship part of UN mission shoots down drone off Lebanon

A German warship operating as part of the United Nations' UNIFIL mission brought down an unmanned flying object off the coast of Lebanon on Thursday, a spokesperson for the German defence ministry told Reuters.

"The corvette brought an unidentified unmanned aerial vehicle into the water in a controlled crash," the spokesperson said, reporting no damage to the German vessel or its crew.

The corvette Ludwigshafen am Rhein is continuing its duties, he added.

The dpa news agency first reported on the incident. (Reuters)

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Latest visuals from the Israel-Lebanon border amid ongoing hostilities

Biden heads to Germany for talks on Ukraine, West Asia

US President Joe Biden takes off for Berlin on Thursday for a rapid visit to discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine with the leaders of Germany, France and Britain as Kyiv urges its western allies to take urgent steps to end the fighting.

The rapidly expanding conflict in the West Asia is also expected to be high on the agenda in talks between the leaders as diplomatic efforts to halt the fighting have stalled.

Biden had originally been scheduled to convene a broader meeting of Ukraine's military supporters at the US Ramstein airbase in Germany last week during a planned three-day state visit to the country that would have been the first in nearly 40 years.

He canceled that trip to focus on dealing with the onslaught of and fallout from Hurricane Milton, but is making up for it with the quick sojourn this week. (Reuters)

EU's Borrell questions US giving Israel one month to improve Gaza situation

The EU's foreign policy chief on Thursday appeared to criticise the United States giving Israel one month to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, saying that during that time, too many people would die.

"The US has been saying to Israel that they have to improve humanitarian support to Gaza, but they gave one month delay. One month delay at the current pace of people being killed. It's too many people," Josep Borrell told reporters in Brussels, adding that the situation was a "catastrophe."

Israel must take steps over the next month to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza or face potential restrictions on US military aid, US officials said on Wednesday, in the strongest such warning since Israel's war with Hamas began a year ago. (Reuters)

Germany's Scholz assures, 'We will help Israel defend itself with weapons'

Germany will continue to help Israel defend itself by supplying weapons, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Thursday, adding that Israel must abide by international law and that a two-state solution was the ultimate goal.

"For me, however, it is clear that supporting Israel also means that we are constantly ensuring Israel's defence capability, for example by supplying military goods or weapons," said Scholz on the sidelines of an EU leaders' summit. (Reuters)

Gaza unemployment surges to 80% as economy collapses, UN agency says

Unemployment in Gaza has soared to nearly 80 per cent since the Israel-Hamas war erupted, with the devastated enclave's economy in almost total collapse, the International Labour Organization said on Thursday.

Economic output has shrunk by 85 per cent since the conflict with Israel began a year ago, plunging almost the entire 2.3 million population into poverty, the United Nations agency said.

The conflict has caused "unprecedented and wide-ranging devastation on the labour market and the wider economy across the Occupied Palestinian Territory", the ILO said, referring to Gaza and the West Bank.

In the West Bank, the unemployment rate averaged 34.9 per cent between October 2023 and the end of September 2024, while its economy has contracted by 21.7 per cent compared with the previous 12 months, the ILO said.

Before the crisis, the unemployment rate in Gaza was 45.3 per cent and 14 per cent in the West Bank, according to the Geneva-based organisation. (Reuters)

Israeli fire kills 11 in Gaza City as its forces tighten siege in the north

Israeli airstrikes killed 11 Palestinians in Gaza City on Thursday, medics said, while Israeli forces sent tanks into Jabalia in the north, where Palestinians and United Nations officials expressed alarm over shortages of food and medicine.

Residents of Jabalia said Israeli forces blew up clusters of houses from air, by tank shells and by placing bombs in buildings before blowing them up remotely. Gaza's civil emergency service said it evacuated several wounded people from a school sheltering displaced Palestinians that caught fire after being hit by Israeli tank shells.

Residents said Israeli forces had effectively isolated Beit Hanoun, Jabalia, and Beit Lahiya in the far north of the enclave from Gaza City, blocking movement except for those families with permission to heed evacuation orders and leave the three towns.

"We have written our death notes, and we are not leaving Jabalia," one resident told Reuters via a chat app.

"The occupation (Israel) is punishing for not leaving our houses in the early days of the war, and we are not going now either. They are blowing up houses, and roads, and are starving us but we die once and we don't lose our pride," the father of four said, refusing to give his name fearing Israeli reprisal.

On Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had killed more than 50 Palestinian fighters over the past days in airstrikes and close quarters combat as troops try to root out Palestinian militant Hamas forces operating as guerrillas in the rubble.

In an update on Thursday, Israel's military said it had "eliminated" militants, destroyed infrastructure and recovered weapons in Rafah in the south and was operating in central Gaza, but did not mention the north. (Reuters)