Live Updates: Israel Targets Hezbollah Official in Strike in Damascus
Two Israeli officials described the attack as an attempt to assassinate a Hezbollah official involved in weapons smuggling. It came as Israel continued to press its campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy.
Damascus, Syria
Rescue workers at a residential building on the western outskirts of Syria’s capital, Damascus.
Louai Beshara/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Central Gaza Strip
Mourning for relatives after overnight Israeli strikes on the Bureij area, where Palestinian civil defense officials said 12 people had been killed.
Reuters
Central Gaza Strip
Salvaging belongings in Bureij.
Eyad Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Haifa, Israel
Hezbollah fired about 135 rockets from Lebanon toward northern Israel by midafternoon. Most were intercepted.
Reuters
Kiryat Yam, Israel
A village apartment in northern Israel, damaged by one of the rockets from Lebanon.
Shir Torem/Reuters
Khiam, Lebanon
As Israel ramps up its fight in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah, the death toll in Lebanon over the last year has surpassed 2,000, with most deaths in the last three weeks.
AFP
Qlayaa, Lebanon
Villagers who have resisted evacuation unloading aid in southern Lebanon.
-/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Beirut, Lebanon
Displaced Lebanese people receiving food at a school-turned-shelter.
The Israeli military carried out airstrikes on a residential building near the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria, in an attempt to assassinate a ranking Hezbollah official involved in weapons smuggling, according to two Israeli officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.
Syria’s state news agency, SANA, cited a military source Tuesday as saying that Israel had launched three missiles that targeted a residential and commercial building in the Mezzeh district of Damascus, a highly fortified neighborhood that houses foreign embassies and security buildings, killing seven civilians, including women and children.
It wasn’t clear if the targeted official was among the dead, but the Iranian Embassy in Damascus said in a statement on Tuesday that no Iranian citizens had been killed or wounded in the strike. That could not immediately be independently verified.
In April, Israeli officials confirmed that Israel had struck part of the Iranian Embassy complex in Damascus. The attack killed at least three senior commanders and four officers overseeing Iran’s covert operations in the Middle East.
The attack on Tuesday in the Syrian capital came as Israel sent new troops into Lebanon and bombarded the Hezbollah-dominated suburbs south of Beirut. The midday strikes were audible from miles away.
Also on Tuesday, Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy, stepped up its attacks into northern Israel, firing approximately 180 projectiles by the end of the day, according to the Israeli military, whose earlier updates said that most had been intercepted. A home was hit north of Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city. It was the second time since Sunday that areas near Haifa were struck by Hezbollah rockets. No injuries were reported.
Hezbollah began firing against Israeli positions after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks last year, and the two sides have traded fire since in a cross-border tit-for-tat that has forced tens of thousands from their homes in northern Israel and southern Lebanon. Hamas, like Hezbollah, is backed by Iran. Last week, Israel sent ground troops into southern Lebanon to try to stop the attacks and eliminate the threat near its border.
Here is what else to know:
Defense chiefs won’t meet: Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, postponed a visit to Washington scheduled for Wednesday to meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III to discuss Israel’s military response to Iran’s recent missile barrage, the Pentagon said, without explaining the reason for the delay.
Houthi arms talks: The Russian arms dealer Viktor A. Bout is trying to broker a deal with Houthi militants in Yemen, who are backed by Iran and have been attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, according to Western officials. The negotiations are continuing, but no deal has been completed and no arms have been transferred, the officials said.
Lebanon deaths: More than 2,000 people have been killed and nearly 10,000 injured in Lebanon since the war in Gaza began last October, according to Lebanon’s ministry of health. Most of the deaths and injuries have occurred over the past three weeks. The World Health Organization said that Israeli attacks in Lebanon had killed at least 65 health workers and injured 40 others since Sept. 17.
Retaliation on Iran: Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said on Monday that Israeli officials were debating when and where to attack Iran in retaliation for the missile barrage it fired at Israel last week. “It will happen,” he said.
Gaza deaths: The Palestinian health authorities said the death toll over the past year had surpassed 41,900, with more than 97,590 people injured. Adding to the toll, Palestinian Civil Defense said on Tuesday that 12 people had been killed and several others injured in Israeli airstrikes on a home and tents housing displaced people in the Bureij area of central Gaza. The Israeli military said its troops were “eliminating terrorists” in the area.
Aryn Baker Eric Schmitt, and Hiba Yazbek contributed reporting.
Waiting to receive food assistance at a school operated by UNRWA in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza, in June.Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Two days after Israel’s Parliament advanced legislation that would effectively ban the arm of the United Nations that works with Palestinians, the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, warned on Tuesday that the loss of the agency would have catastrophic consequences for the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza and damage prospects for any long-term peace.
Mr. Guterres, speaking to reporters at the United Nations, said he expressed his “profound concerns” in a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, saying that the passage of the legislation “would suffocate efforts to ease human suffering and tensions in Gaza, and indeed, the entire occupied Palestinian territory. It would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.”
The Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee approved two bills on Sunday relating to the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA. One would block the agency’s ability to “operate any institution, provide any service, or conduct any activity, whether directly or indirectly” in Israel, and the other would bar civil servants and government agencies from having any contact with UNRWA or its representatives. The bills now await final approval in the Parliament, the Knesset.
Mr. Guterres also said that Israel would be in violation of international law if it approved such legislation because it would be “diametrically opposed to the U.N. Charter.”
He described UNRWA as the backbone of humanitarian aid in Gaza and as the main agency coordinating crucial services: deliveries of supplies from other U.N. agencies, their offices, protection of staff members and operating shelters serving hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians.
Without UNRWA, the delivery of food, shelter and health care to most of Gaza’s population would “grind to a halt,” Mr. Guterres said, and some 660,000 children would lose the only entity that could provide them education.
The measures would also deal a blow to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, where UNRWA provides health care, social services and operates schools for Palestinians. The relationship between Israel and the United Nations has deteriorated since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and the war in Gaza that followed. The U.N., while denouncing the attack, has been sharply critical of Israel’s conduct of the war as disproportionate, collective punishment and accusing Israel of committing war crimes. Mr. Guterres and Mr. Netanyahu have not spoken directly in months, according to U.N. officials.
UNRWA has been operating since 1949 under a mandate of the General Assembly, which constitutes the organization’s core body. But, in the last year, UNRWA has become a flashpoint in the Israel-Gaza war.
Israel raised accusations that UNRWA had been infiltrated by Hamas, and then accused some of its 12,000 workers of participating in the Oct. 7 attacks, leading the United States and more than a dozen other funders to temporary halt donations. The U.N. fired nine workers that it found my have had ties to Hamas, but a U.N. investigation found that Israel had not provided evidence for its broad claims, and most funders have resumed donations.
Palestinian officials, including the ambassador to the U.N., Riyadh Mansour, have accused Israel of targeting UNRWA as part of a campaign to choke off income and aid to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates “vehemently condemned” the Knesset committees for passing the two bills.
Beyond the immediate humanitarian impact, Mr. Guterres said abolishing UNRWA would be an “enormous setback to sustainable peace efforts and a two-state solution — fanning even more instability and insecurity.”
Rescue workers at a residential building on the western outskirts of Syria’s capital, Damascus, on Tuesday.Credit...Louai Beshara/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Israeli military carried out airstrikes on a residential building near the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria, on Tuesday night in an attempt to assassinate a high-ranking Hezbollah member involved in weapons smuggling, according to two Israeli officials.
Israel fired three missiles from the area of the Golan Heights, targeting a residential building, Syria’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. The building was in the Mezzeh district of Damascus, a highly fortified neighborhood that houses embassies and security structures. The ministry’s statement said that seven people had been killed and 11 others injured in the strikes, including women and children.
Footage from the attack, broadcast on Iran’s state television, showed the building partly collapsed and badly damaged, and sirens could be heard in the background. A crowd gathered near the site, and a pile of debris and twisted metal covered the road and cars parked nearby, the footage showed.
It was not immediately clear if the strikes were part of Israel’s promised retaliation for Iran’s launch of about 200 missiles at Israel last week. It was also not known if the targeted building in Damascus belonged to Iran’s Embassy compound. The embassy owns and rents a number of buildings to house its staff in that neighborhood, according to the two Iranian officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.
It was not clear if the targeted official was among the dead, but the Iranian Embassy said in a statement on Tuesday that no Iranian citizens had been killed or wounded in the strikes. That could not be independently verified.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the strikes.
In April, Israeli officials confirmed that Israel had struck part of the Iranian Embassy complex in Damascus. That attack killed at least three senior commanders and four officers overseeing Iran’s covert operations in the Middle East. Iran retaliated by launching hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles at Israel at the time.
The latest Israeli attack in Damascus, the Syrian capital, comes as the United States and its allies have been trying to avert a direct war between Iran and Israel.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Aragchi, was in Damascus on Saturday as part of a regional diplomatic tour of Arab countries. He was to travel to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.
Before he left, Mr. Aragchi said at a conference in Tehran about Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel that his message to regional Arab countries was that Iran would continue its steadfast support of the regional miltiant groups known as the “axis of resistance.”
While Iran did not want war with Israel, he added, it was prepared to strike back if attacked, according to a video of his speech.
Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, in Tel Aviv, last year.Credit...Maya Alleruzzo/Associated Press
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, postponed a visit to Washington on Wednesday to meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III to discuss Israel’s military response to Iran’s recent missile barrage, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon press secretary, declined to say why Mr. Gallant had postponed the visit and referred all questions to the Israeli Defense Ministry, which, she said, had informed the Pentagon of the decision on Tuesday.
Ms. Singh played down the notion that any tensions between Mr. Austin and Mr. Gallant were behind the postponement, and did not comment on whether internal Israeli political machinations might have prompted the decision.
“We’re in constant communication with the Israeli government at different levels, including the secretary to Minister Gallant,” Ms. Singh told reporters. “We’re going to keep talking to them about their response.”
President Biden has said he would not support an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear or energy sites in response to the missile attack on Israel last week, saying that any response should be “proportionate,” essentially acknowledging that some counterstrike is appropriate.
The president and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel last spoke on Aug. 21 by phone, according to a White House statement.
In a phone call on Sunday, Mr. Austin made clear to Mr. Gallant that the United States wanted Israel to avoid retaliatory steps that would result in a new escalation by the Iranians, a senior Pentagon official said on Monday. The two men had been expected to discuss options in more detail in the face-to-face meeting on Wednesday.
As Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon expands to include ground incursions and intensifying airstrikes, senior Pentagon officials are mulling whether the enhanced American military presence in the region is containing a widening war, as they had hoped, or inflaming it.
In the 12 months since Hamas has attacked Israel, opening a conflict that includes Yemen, Iran and Lebanon, the Pentagon has sent a bristling array of weaponry to the region, including aircraft carriers, guided-missile destroyers, amphibious assault ships and fighter squadrons. But Pentagon officials complain that the Israelis have not been completely candid or timely in alerting the United States to impending Israeli operations, including its assassination of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
Mr. Gallant had informed Mr. Austin during a phone call as the Israeli operation was underway. Pentagon officials said Mr. Austin was seething that the Israelis had not given more notice to allow American troops in the region to increase defensive measures against likely Iranian retaliation.
When asked about Mr. Austin’s reaction, Ms. Singh told reporters that “he was caught off guard.”
The Israeli military said that about 180 projectiles were launched by Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon at Israel throughout the day and into the night on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel with President Biden at the White House in July.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
President Biden has had a long and complicated relationship with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu — one that has taken an especially intense turn in the year since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks, as documented in a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward.
The book, “War,” which is set to be released next week and relies on some anonymous sources, lays bare just how frustrated Mr. Biden has become with Mr. Netanyahu since the war in Gaza began and Israel has bombarded the enclave, killing more than 40,000 people and displacing most of the more than two million residents there.
Outwardly, Mr. Biden has voiced strong support for Israel, sometimes in the face of withering international criticism. He has said that Israel has a right to defend itself, although he has from time to time publicly expressed some of his frustration with Mr. Netanyahu. Privately, the president has reacted far more explosively, sometimes with expletives, to Israel’s moves, as multiple news reports have indicated.
Mr. Netanyahu and the president last spoke on Aug. 21, according to a White House statement.
Mr. Woodward’s book, obtained by The New York Times and other news outlets on Tuesday, adds additional, inside-the-room details to those previous accounts, including direct quotes from Mr. Biden speaking with his staff or with the prime minister.
In April, for instance, the president questioned Mr. Netanyahu’s conduct in the war in a phone call, asking, according to the book, “What’s your strategy, man?”
When Mr. Netanyahu insisted that the Israeli military needed to push deeper into southern Gaza and invade the southern city of Rafah, a key border crossing with Egypt, the president, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname, dismissed this response.
“Bibi, you’ve got no strategy,” Mr. Biden replied, according to Mr. Woodward.
In May, Mr. Biden halted a shipment of 3,500 bombs to Israel out of concern that they would be used in the Rafah operation and cause excessive civilian casualties. After Mr. Netanyahu proceeded with the invasion of Rafah anyway, Mr. Biden told advisers that Mr. Netanyahu was a liar, using an obscenity, and added that “18 out of 19 people who work for him” were also liars, the book says.
He questioned Mr. Netanyahu’s motivations, saying that “he doesn’t give” a damn about Hamas but gives a damn “only about himself,” although he used an earthier term than “damn.”
Mr. Biden has also occasionally expressed his irritation with Mr. Netanyahu directly with the prime minister as the relationship has frayed.
“Bibi, what the fuck?” the president yelled at Mr. Netanyahu in July, the book says, after an Israeli airstrike killed a top Hezbollah military commander, Fuad Shukr, and several civilians in an airstrike near Beirut and an Israeli bomb killed Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, during a visit to Iran.
“You know the perception of Israel around the world increasingly is that you’re a rogue state, a rogue actor,” Mr. Biden told him, the book reports.
“This is Haniyeh,” Mr. Netanyahu replied, according to the book, “one of the leading terrorists. A terrible guy. We saw an opportunity and took it.”
The New York Times could not independently verify the specific statements reported in Mr. Woodward’s upcoming book.
As efforts at a cease-fire in Gaza have all but collapsed, the war has reached the one-year mark and conflicts with other Iranian proxy groups like Hezbollah have escalated, threatening to draw Iran directly into the conflict. Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu are facing a situation not unlike one they have faced in the recent past.
In April, Israel conducted a strike in Syria that killed a top general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, and Iran responded with a salvo of about 300 ballistic missiles, rockets and drones at Israel. The United States and its allies helped intercept most of the projectiles and, as The New York Times has previously reported, Mr. Biden urged Mr. Netanyahu not to respond, telling him to “do nothing” and “take the win.”
But Israel launched a limited, calibrated strike against Iran in response, and Mr. Biden told his advisers he had anticipated as much. “I know he’s going to do something but the way I limit it is tell him to ‘do nothing,’” he said, according to Mr. Woodward.
That statement may foretell what lies ahead in the fraught relationship. Last week, Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in what it said was retaliation for the Israeli assassinations of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader; Mr. Haniyeh; and a commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Mr. Biden has warned Israel against striking Iranian nuclear sites, saying any response should be “in proportion.” But based on the recent past, the president may not expect Mr. Netanyahu to take U.S. advice.
The Israeli military is once again bombarding the Dahiya, the tightly packed cluster of neighborhoods adjoining Beirut. I just heard a series of large explosion that shook my windows and can now see thick black smoke rising into the air.
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Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, has postponed a visit to Washington on Wednesday to meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III to discuss Israel’s military response to Iran’s missile barrage last week, the Pentagon said on Tuesday. Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon press secretary, declined to say why Gallant had postponed the visit. She referred all questions to the Israeli ministry of defense, which she said informed the Pentagon of the decision earlier in the day.
The Iranian Embassy in Damascus said in a statement on Tuesday that there had been no Iranian citizens killed or wounded in what it said was an Israeli strike. Those claims could not immediately be independently verified.
Israeli military vehicles staging near the border with Lebanon earlier this month.Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
The Israeli military announced on Tuesday that a new division of soldiers, the 146th, was operating in southern Lebanon, signaling that it could be ramping up the ground invasion of its neighbor.
Since beginning the invasion on Sept. 30 to target the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, the military has announced the involvement of three other divisions, but released few details about the number of troops deployed in Lebanon and their activities there.
Here’s what we know about the Israeli forces engaged in the ground operation.
How many Israeli troops are in Lebanon?
The Israeli military has said that its 36th, 98th, 91st, and 146th divisions have sent troops across the border into Lebanon, though it has not publicly disclosed how many soldiers are involved in the invasion or how many each division has contributed.
A complete division in Israel, as in the United States, usually comprises 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers, with roughly a third being combat troops and the remainder playing supporting roles, including in logistics and intelligence.
The Israeli military has declined to specify how many soldiers from the Israeli divisions have entered Lebanon since the invasion began, arguing that they do not want to publicize information that could benefit Hezbollah. Analysts estimate that they number in the thousands.
Gershon HaCohen, a retired Israeli major general who served as a reservist in Israel’s northern command in the last year, said that the number of Israeli troops fighting in Lebanon was in the lower range of that in 2006, during the last full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah. Prior reports in The Times put that figure at an estimated 10,000 to 30,000, depending on the phase of the 34-day war.
General HaCohen said that Israel’s announcement of the deployment of the additional division did not mean that Israel was significantly expanding its campaign into southern Lebanon. Instead, he suggested that the troops would simply be operating in new areas along the border.
Where are Israeli soldiers fighting in Lebanon?
Israeli soldiers have entered several Lebanese villages directly across Israel’s northern border. Many residents of such villages have evacuated over the past year of cross-border strikes between Israel and Hezbollah.
Where Israel is fighting in Lebanon
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Awali River
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Towns Israel has
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Nabatieh
Where evidence of
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Abbasiyeh
Odaisseh
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in videos posted by
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Maroun
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Yaroun
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U.N. buffer zone set in 2006
5 miles
Awali River
Lebanon
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Israel
Towns Israel has told
residents to leave
Where evidence of
Israeli forces is visible
in satellite imagery
Med.
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Litani River
Odaisseh
Locations visible
in videos posted by
the Israeli military
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zones
closed by
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Maroun
al-Ras
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U.N. buffer zone set in 2006
Israeli forces have been operating in and around the villages of Yaroun, Maroun al-Ras, Odaisseh and nearby Kfar Kila, according to Israeli security officials. During visits to the Israeli side of the border over the past week, a New York Times reporter heard booms and what sounded like clashes between soldiers and Hezbollah militants a few miles away in Lebanon.
Videos from Yaroun that were posted to social media and verified by The Times show many demolished and damaged homes, and soldiers walking near a launch site for anti-tank missiles directed toward Israel.
Which divisions also served in Gaza?
Two of the divisions that have been deployed in Lebanon — the 36th and 98th — also took part in Israel’s ground invasion of the Gaza Strip that began in the weeks following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel last year.
The 36th division was involved in Israel’s raids on northern Gaza, while the 98th led Israel’s invasion of the southern city of Khan Younis.
What is Israel’s strategy in Lebanon?
Israeli military officials have repeatedly described the invasion as “limited, localized and targeted raids” against Hezbollah, suggesting the operation wouldn’t extend deep into Lebanon.
But it has called for the evacuation of dozens of villages in southern Lebanon and told residents to relocate north of the Awali River, which is more than 15 miles from the Israeli border at its nearest point.
Despite the extensive evacuation warnings, General HaCohen asserted the Israeli forces were staying near the border.
“The goal is not to eliminate Hezbollah, at least not at this stage, but to destroy their capabilities along the border,” he said.
Natan Odenheimer reported from Rosh Pina, Israel, and Adam Rasgon from Amman, Jordan. Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel.
Hashem Safieddine, center, in a southern suburb of Beirut, in August.Credit...Khaled Desouki/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested in a video message released on Tuesday that Israel had not only killed the presumed successor of Hezbollah’s assassinated leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in airstrikes last week outside Beirut, but also the successor’s potential replacement.
“We took out thousands of terrorists, including Nasrallah himself and Nasrallah’s replacement, and the replacement of the replacement,” Mr. Netanyahu said. The statement was an apparent reference to Hashem Safieddine, a cousin of Mr. Nasrallah’s who was expected to succeed him and had been targeted in an attack in Lebanon. It was not immediately clear who “the replacement of the replacement” might be.
Neither Hezbollah nor Israel has confirmed Mr. Safieddine’s death. And Hezbollah did not immediately respond to Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks.
Earlier on Tuesday, Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said that “Nasrallah’s successor seems to have been eliminated,” without naming Mr. Safieddine.
When asked in a news briefing on Tuesday if Mr. Safieddine had been killed in the strike, the spokesman for the Israeli military, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said, “The results of that strike are still being investigated.”
The group has been firing rockets into Israel in solidarity with Hamas, an ally that is also backed by Iran, since the war in Gaza began. Israel has retaliated with a ground invasion and airstrikes in southern Lebanon, killing more than 2,000 people, most of them in the past three weeks alone, according to the Lebanese health ministry. The ministry’s numbers do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
This was Mr. Netanyahu’s second appeal in weeks to the Lebanese people, hoping to sway public opinion against Hezbollah. In a statement on Sept. 23, he said, “Israel’s war is not with you; it’s with Hezbollah.”
The prime minister’s videotaped speech included another direct appeal to the people of Lebanon, calling on them to “stand up” and “free” their country from Hezbollah.
“Do you remember when your country was called the pearl of the Middle East? I do,” he said, adding, “A gang of tyrants and terrorists destroyed it.”
“You can take your country back,” he added. “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering, as we see in Gaza.”
Euan Ward contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.
Fars News Agency, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, reported that Israel fired four missiles at a residential building near Iran’s Embassy in Damascus and posted photographs of the partially collapsed building and debris covering the road. Times reporters are working to confirm the report and collect additional information.
The aftermath of an Israeli strike on Bureij, in central Gaza.
The Palestinian civil defense in Gaza said on Tuesday that 12 people were killed and several others were wounded in overnight Israeli airstrikes that hit a family home and tents housing displaced people in the Bureij area in the central Gaza Strip.
Bodies were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza, where Palestinians mourned their relatives. The death toll could not be independently verified.
The Israeli military said it was “dismantling terrorist infrastructure sites and eliminating terrorists” in Bureij.
More than 41,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, and more than 97,000 injured, according to the local health ministry. Experts have said the true toll is likely far higher.
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The body of a Palestinian killed in the overnight strike being carried at his funeral outside of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock
Satellite images from Planet Labs released on Tuesday show Lebanon’s southern Maroun al-Ras village on Sept. 29 and widespread destruction at the same village on Oct. 5. The Israeli military said Tuesday it had established operational control over a Hezbollah compound in Maroun al-Ras.
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Credit...Planet Labs PBC, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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Credit...Planet Labs PBC, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, is traveling to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, continuing a regional tour that has already taken him to the capitals of Qatar, Lebanon and Syria. He told Iranian media that he was telling his Arab counterparts that Iran would be steadfast in its support for the region's militant groups and would strike back at Israel if attacked. Israel has said it is preparing a response to the barrage of nearly 200 missiles Iran fired on Oct. 1.
The Israeli military said it had uncovered and “neutralized” a Hezbollah tunnel that crossed from Lebanon roughly 10 meters into Israeli territory, near the town of Zar’it. Israel has long hunted for and destroyed such tunnels, seeking to avert any Hezbollah invasion into northern Israel. The military said on Tuesday that it was not currently aware of any other tunnels.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad
Reporting from Haifa, Israel
Hospitals in Gaza City and other parts in the north of the enclave will soon stop providing services because of a lack of fuel, Gaza’s health ministry said on Tuesday. It called on humanitarian organizations to help with fuel deliveries. Fuel shortages have been common at Gaza’s healthcare facilities, many of which have been badly damaged during the war.
William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, said American intelligence agencies did not believe that the leaders of Iran or Israel wanted an all-out conflict but risks remained.Credit...Kent Nishimura for The New York Times
William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, said the Middle East faced “a very real danger” of a further escalation of fighting, even though American intelligence agencies do not believe that the leaders of Iran or Israel want an all-out conflict.
Mr. Burns said the risk of further escalation between Israel and Iran remained. He said the challenge would be for Israel to translate its recent tactical success against Hezbollah into a longer-term peace.
Speaking on Monday evening at the Cipher Brief conference in Sea Island, Ga., he said Israel should build “an effective strategy that marries the use of force” against Hamas and Hezbollah with “good intelligence and ultimately smart diplomacy to try to produce a cease-fire to Israel’s north, as well as what has been a very elusive cease-fire in Gaza.”
Mr. Burns, a longtime diplomat before taking the helm of the C.I.A., has led the U.S. negotiations seeking to secure a cease-fire in Gaza in exchange for the release of hostages taken during the Hamas-led attacks last October. The United States, Qatar and Egypt have negotiated various proposals with Israel and Hamas as part of attempts to secure a deal.
“It has been pushing a very big rock up a very steep hill,” Mr. Burns said on Monday. “We’ve come close at least a couple of times, but it’s been very elusive.”
Mr. Burns said that he hoped he could close a Gaza cease-fire deal before the end of the Biden administration, and that he was focused on an agreement to end the fighting on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon as well as the conflict in Gaza.
“I very much hope that we’ll be able to pivot from what is currently an extremely risky environment dominated by military actions to one in which people in the region in particular see the possibility of doing a diplomatic arrangement to help produce a cease-fire in south Lebanon and Israel’s northern border, and on Gaza, a cease-fire and hostage deal across Israel’s southern border as well,” Mr. Burns said.
Asked if Israel was considering a strike on Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities, Mr. Burns said he would not make any predictions. He said Israel’s leadership was “weighing very carefully” how it would respond to Iran’s recent missile barrage, but was listening to President Biden’s concerns about an escalatory response.
Mr. Burns said he did not believe that Iran had decided to restart its nuclear weaponization program. While he predicted it would take Iran a week or a little more to produce one bomb’s worth of weapons-grade enriched material, he said no decision had been made by Iran to make a weapon.
“We watch it very carefully. I think we’re reasonably confident that working with our friends and allies, we would be able to see it relatively early on,” Mr. Burns said. “But the great risks now — the great danger in a way — is that time frame has been compressed in ways which create huge challenges for us.”
Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, said in a statement that “Nasrallah’s successor seems to have been eliminated” — an apparent reference to Hashem Safieddine, who is considered a successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader who was assassinated by Israel. But Gallant stopped short of confirming his death.
The Israeli military said it hit several rocket launchers that Hezbollah used earlier on Tuesday to fire a barrage at Haifa, the third-largest city in Israel. Most of those rockets were intercepted.
The Israeli military said that Hezbollah had fired “approximately 135 projectiles” from Lebanon today as of 3 p.m. local time. A home was hit in Kiryat Yam, north of the coastal city of Haifa, the second time since Sunday that areas near the city were struck by rockets from Lebanon.
The U.N. World Food Program expressed “extraordinary concern for Lebanon’s ability to continue to feed itself,” because of the impact of the fighting on food production. More than seven square miles of cropland has been burned over the past year, most of it in the last few weeks, in fires started by explosions, Matthew Hollingworth, the agency’s representative in Lebanon, told reporters. More than 45 square miles of some of the most productive farmland has been abandoned because of the conflict, he said, threatening harvests of such crops as olives, citrus fruits and bananas.
The World Health Organization expressed concern over rising Israeli attacks on health care workers and facilities in Lebanon. Since Israel launched its cross-border assault on Sept. 17, such attacks have killed 65 health workers and injured 40 others, Ian Clarke, a W.H.O. official in Lebanon, told reporters on a video call. Five hospitals are no longer functioning due to damage, and four others are partly evacuating as a result of Israel’s operations, he said, warning that the attacks are further weakening a health system that had been struggling amid Lebanon’s political and economic turmoil.
Smoke rising above areas south of Beirut on Tuesday.Credit...Mohamed Azakir/Reuters
A new series of Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday pounded the densely populated neighborhoods south of Beirut, a stronghold of the militant group Hezbollah.
The explosions, which could be heard from miles away, came shortly after the conclusion of a speech by Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy leader and a possible successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s longtime chief, who was killed in an Israeli strike in the same area on Sept. 27.
Sirens sounded in northern Israel and the city of Haifa at around the same time, as Israeli air defenses intercepted most of a barrage of more than 100 rockets coming from Lebanon over the course of 30 minutes, according to the Israeli military. One woman was slightly injured by shrapnel, and six others were hurt while seeking shelter, Israel’s emergency service said. Hezbollah took credit for the attack, saying it was in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in defense of Lebanon and in response to the Israeli invasion.
Earlier on Tuesday, Israel hit several other areas in south Lebanon with airstrikes, as the military announced that it was sending another division of ground troops across the border to aid in its campaign to eradicate Hezbollah infrastructure and head off further rocket launches into Israel.
Avichay Adraee, the Arabic-speaking spokesman for the Israeli military, warned residents of southern Lebanon to stay away from their homes. The military, he said on X, “continues to attack Hezbollah sites in and near your village, so for your own safety, you are prohibited from returning to your homes until further notice.” Israel has issued similar warnings for the past several days.
In his speech, a defiant Sheikh Qassem declared that Hezbollah had “overcome all the blows that have been dealt to us,” and that leaders who had been killed by Israel would be replaced so they could continue the fight. A successor to Mr. Nasrallah, he said, would be announced “when it has been finalized.”
Myra Noveck and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.
The Palestinian civil defense in Gaza said 12 people were killed and several others were wounded in Israeli airstrikes this morning on a family home and tents housing displaced people in the Bureij area of central Gaza. The Israeli military said its troops were operating in Bureij, where they were “dismantling terrorist infrastructure sites and eliminating terrorists.”
The Israeli military said about 85 rockets were launched over the border from Lebanon. Sirens were activated in Haifa and surrounding areas in northern Israel, and large explosions could be heard.
There has just been yet another strike in the area, this time a few blocks south. Three daytime attacks in such a short time period is uncommon. I can see a thick plume of smoke rising in the distance.
Sheikh Naim Qassem, the deputy leader of Hezbollah, said in a televised speech that the Lebanese militia’s ability to fight Israel remained intact, despite a series of attacks and assassinations by Israel. “Our capabilities are fine, and what the enemy said about exhausting our capabilities is an illusion,” he said, adding that the group, still reeling from the assassination of its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, was working on electing his replacement. “The current circumstances are difficult and complicated because of this war,” he said.
The Israeli military said that a fourth division had begun operating in Lebanon’s southwest on Monday, expanding its forces there. Israeli troops first crossed into Lebanon a week ago in what the military called a “limited” operation.
Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in February.Credit...Dimitar Dilkoff/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israel has rejected the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants for its prime minister and defense minister over their conduct of the war in Gaza, in filings to the court made late last month that were reclassified as public on Friday.
The Israeli filings rejecting the warrants are based on technical grounds, not on the substance of the claims. They do not address the questions raised by the court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, about whether the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, may be guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their prosecution of the war in Gaza.
Instead, the documents challenge the court’s jurisdiction, arguing that Mr. Khan failed to provide sufficient notice of the scope of his inquiry or to give Israel time to show that it is capable of independently investigating the same matters. Under the treaty setting up the International Criminal Court, which Israel is not a party to, a case could be inadmissible in the court if it is already being or will be investigated by a state with jurisdiction over it.
That means if Israel has the ability to conduct its own investigation into the actions underlying the accusations against Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant, the International Criminal Court in theory could give precedence to the country’s judicial system, allowing it the opportunity to address the claims.
In this case, Israel has argued that Mr. Khan did not provide enough information about what he was investigating, nor did he give Israel the chance to show it would inquire into the allegations itself.
“Despite having been forced into a bloody conflict that it did not want, Israel remains a democracy endowed with an independent judiciary and deeply committed to the rule of law,” the Israeli filing argued, adding that Israel “has the appropriate mechanisms” to ensure accountability for any alleged crimes.
In May, Mr. Khan sought arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant, and Israel is hoping to thwart or delay the issuance of the warrants. Mr. Khan also sought warrants for three Hamas leaders who were responsible for the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks that set off the war in Gaza — Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Muhammad Deif. Of these three, only Mr. Sinwar is believed to still be alive.
Among other technical arguments rejecting the international court’s jurisdiction, Israel is now asking the I.C.C. to delay the request for arrest warrants for two of its top leaders until Mr. Khan provides more details about the scope of his investigation. And it wants the chance to show the court that it will address the accusations internally.
“Israel has primary jurisdiction and is best placed to investigate allegations of the sort raised by the Prosecutor, given the access required to relevant evidence, information and persons,” the Israeli submission argued.
The I.C.C. does have jurisdiction to proceed when a state is unable or unwilling to investigate accusations, or if the state inquiry is conducted in bad faith to protect the accused. And each situation is assessed on a case-by-case basis, so an Israeli inquiry wouldn’t necessarily preclude an I.C.C. prosecution going forward even if the court decides to grant Israel’s initial requests.
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