Israel launched a series of airstrikes against Iran on Saturday, the Israeli military said, fulfilling its vow to retaliate for an earlier Iranian attack.
The direct attack raised fears that turbulent conflicts in the Middle East could escalate into an all-out war between Israel and Iran, the region’s two most powerful militaries.
Residents of Tehran reported hearing multiple explosions in and around the Iranian capital, and Iranian state media sites said the explosions were near or at Imam Khomeini international airport.
Maryam Naraghi, an Iranian journalist, said she heard large explosions in the eastern part of Tehran, where she lives. “It was the sound of bombs and explosions,” she said. “It was very close to where I am in the eastern part of the city.” The area includes military bases and the secretive military site Parchin.
Another Iranian journalist, Reza Rashidpour, said five massive explosions were heard in Tehran within about 10 seconds. He said Iranian air force jets had taken off in the western part of the country.
The United States confirmed that Israel had launched an attack, but declined to comment further, directing questions to the Israeli government.
“We understand that Israel is conducting targeted strikes against military targets in Iran as an exercise of self-defense and in response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack against Israel,” said Sean Savett, a spokesperson for the National Security Council.
The attack early Saturday was a response to several waves of ballistic missiles that Iran launched at Israel on Oct. 1, which forced millions of Israelis to take cover in bomb shelters but did minimal damage.
Iran said it fired the missiles at Israel in response to Israel killing Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, and an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commander who was with him at the time; and Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, whose assassination while in Tehran was particularly embarrassing to the regime there.
The recent exchanges between Israel and Iran have bucked both countries’ longstanding practice of avoiding direct military clashes. For years, Israel and Iran have fought each other in a shadow war involving covert operations and armed groups backed by Iran, like Hamas and Hezbollah. But the conflict between the two countries has come out into the open this year and threatens to launch a war that could embroil much of the world.
A hospital loses communication: In northern Gaza, the Gaza health ministry on Friday night said that Israeli forces had raided Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few medical facilities still functioning in the area, leading to the death of two children in the intensive care unit after generators stopped operating. The ministry said about 600 people were inside the hospital as Israeli forces were searching and firing shots, causing panic.
Journalists killed in Lebanon: Early on Friday, an Israeli airstrike hit a residence in southern Lebanon where journalists were staying, killing three people, according to their employers and Lebanon’s health ministry. The Al-Manar network, operated by Hezbollah, and Al Mayadeen, an outlet widely seen as aligned with the militant group, said its personnel were among the dead. Photos of the aftermath of the strike show that at least three cars clearly marked “PRESS” were parked at the residence. Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike.
Israeli fatalities: The Israeli military said that five soldiers had been killed overnight in southern Lebanon, and later announced that three others were killed in fighting on Friday in northern Gaza. It has been an unusually deadly 48 hours for Israeli troops. At least 13 have been confirmed killed in operations against Hamas and Hezbollah.
A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Israel had alerted Biden administration officials in advance of the strikes, but declined to say how much warning was provided. White House and Pentagon officials have consulted closely with Israel in recent days about the scope and type of targets Israel would launch against Iran. U.S. officials expressed anger that Israel failed to give Washington advance warning before an Israeli assault killed Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
Thousands of anxious Iranians have flocked to live social media discussions on X and ClubHouse from different cities sharing what they witnessed and heard. There is little official information from state media other than that loud explosions have been heard without any directives for the public to take shelter. Yashar Soltanpour, a prominent investigative journalist, said he woke up to the sound of immense explosions in western Tehran.
Iranians reported hearing sounds of explosions in Isfahan, Mashhad and Kurdistan Province. Explosion sounds in Tehran have ended but a lingering anxiety remains, several residents said.
The chief spokesman of the Israeli military, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said in a video statement in English that Israel’s “offensive and defensive capabilities are fully mobilized.” In a video in Hebrew he said the military was continually assessing the situation regarding the home front and that “at this stage,” there is no change in instructions for the Israeli public.
The Israeli military has announced that its strikes are underway in Iran. It has rarely, if ever, previously acknowledged Israeli military activity on Iranian territory.
Reza Rashidpour, a prominent journalist in Iran, said five large explosions were heard in Tehran within about 10 seconds. He said Iranian Air Force jets had taken off in the western part of the country.
The Israeli military said early on Saturday that it had begun striking Iran in response to several Iranian attacks on Israel, raising fears that a long-brewing confrontation between two of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East could escalate into an all-out war.
The military said in a statement at 2.30 a.m. that it was “conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran,” adding that it was acting in response to more than a year of attacks on Israel by Iran and its allies across the Middle East.
Israel did not immediately say where or how the strikes were being carried out. Three news agencies run by different branches of the Iranian authorities reported that several blasts were heard in Tehran early on Saturday, but gave no further details. There was no immediate confirmation that Israel’s attacks had caused the blasts.
The strikes, more than 1,000 miles from Israel, came 26 days after Iran fired several waves of ballistic missiles at Israel, forcing millions of Israelis to take cover in bomb shelters, and damaging several homes and air bases.
The latest retaliation followed a year of rising confrontations between Israel, Iran and its proxies, in the shadow of the war in Gaza.
For years, Israel and Iran have fought a clandestine war in which both sides attacked each other’s interests and allies, while rarely taking responsibility for their attacks. That covert conflict turned into an open confrontation earlier this year, as the war between Israel and Hamas, Iran’s ally in Gaza, dragged the two countries into a direct clash.
Iran first fired ballistic missiles at Israel in April after Israeli fighter jets killed several senior Iranian commanders as they visited Syria.
Earlier this month, Iran fired more ballistic missiles at Israel in response to Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, another ally of Iran; Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of Hamas’s political office, who was visiting Iran at the time of his assassination; and a senior official in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. Israeli air defenses intercepted many of the Iranian missiles, which killed a Palestinian in the Israeli-occupied West Bank but no Israelis.
Israeli leaders vowed to respond with their own attack, which had been expected this weekend.
Maryam Naraghi, an Iranian journalist, said she heard large explosions rock eastern Tehran, where she lives in the Pardis neighborhood. “It was the sound of bombs and explosions," she said. "It was very close to where I am in the eastern part of the city.” There are military bases and the secretive military site Parchin in the eastern part of Tehran.
Fars News, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, reported that multiple large explosions rocked Tehran. Other Iranian media sites reported that the explosions were near or at Imam Khomeini International Airport. Residents have poured into the streets, witnesses said.
The explosions in Tehran came from the western part of the city, where the Revolutionary Guards has headquarters, according to multiple residents in Tehran, including half a dozen Iranian journalists.
Residents in Tehran reported hearing loud explosions early Saturday. It was unclear what caused the explosions, but Iran has been bracing for retaliatory strikes from Israel.
A large crowd outside a bakery Wednesday in the city of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.Credit...Mohammed Salem/Reuters
The United States warned Israel on Oct. 13 to let more aid into Gaza or face cuts in military assistance, and United Nations Security Council members sounded alarms days later about severe shortages in the enclave, particularly in the north.
“One year into the conflict, the risk of famine persists across the whole Gaza Strip,” food security experts said in a recent assessment. Aid and commercial supplies entering the enclave surged between May and August, followed by a sharp decline in September, they noted.
The Israeli agency responsible for coordinating aid to Gaza, known as COGAT, on Tuesday said in a statement that nearly 480 aid trucks had entered the enclave in the week after Oct. 14, compared with 548 in the first two weeks of October. While an increase, that was still short of the 350 aid trucks per day that the United States demanded be allowed to enter.
But getting aid into Gaza is only part of the battle, according to a U.N. official coordinating humanitarian assistance there for nearly a year. Those who pick up and distribute the desperately needed supplies then face bureaucracy, bombings, shootings, lawlessness and looting.
“COGAT is painting a picture of a massive volume of aid by articulating the number of trucks that reach the borders,” Georgios Petropoulos, who leads the Gaza office for OCHA, the United Nations agency for coordination of humanitarian affairs, said in an interview on Thursday. But while Israel tightly controls the aid that enters, humanitarian agencies must navigate a war-ravaged landscape, where criminality is rampant, without assistance and at huge risk, he contends.
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A truck for the main United Nations agency for Palestinians after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike near Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock
COGAT has argued that its job is to get the aid to Gaza and that U.N. agencies are failing to distribute supplies inside the enclave. On Monday, COGAT wrote on social media that “600 trucks worth of aid” were “waiting to be picked up and distributed, the majority by U.N. aid agencies.” It said it had taken “many measures” to assist with collection.
COGAT has made this accusation repeatedly during the war. In June, in a post directed at the U.N.’s World Food Program, the Israeli agency displayed a photo of supplies that it said were waiting at an offloading area. “Stop making excuses and start playing your role as a humanitarian food organization and the head of the logistic cluster,” it said.
Mr. Petropoulos said that Israeli authorities create a range of administrative obstacles and limits that prevent assistance pickups and distribution.
Israeli authorities, for example, commonly deny aid efforts in the enclave. OCHA’s recent update on the humanitarian situation in Gaza reports that access for aid missions “remains severely restricted,” especially in the north and center. In the first three weeks of October, out of nearly 450 planned aid movements across Gaza that required coordination with the Israeli military, the military facilitated 36 percent and denied 45 percent, while the rest were impeded or canceled, OCHA said.
U.N. agencies are also facing their own infrastructure and supply constraints, in part because of military activity that has damaged warehouses, vehicles and roads, according to Mr. Petropoulos. “We never have enough cars or trucks. Our vehicles get destroyed,” he said. “We are being vilified for logistics capacity when we’re being bombed.”
In June, the World Food Program partially paused operations in Gaza after it said two of its warehouse complexes were hit by rockets. In August, it briefly suspended staff movements after it said that Israeli forces shot at its team in armored vehicles returning from a mission escorting a convoy of trucks with humanitarian cargo.
Humanitarian escorts like the ones that drew fire are essential because looting and lawlessness abound in Gaza, Mr. Petropoulos said. Notably, most of the aid reaches the southern crossing, forcing aid convoys to travel a notoriously perilous route known as “looters’ alley.”
Truck drivers who have to travel the treacherous route are often swarmed by organized criminal groups and robbed of their aid, Mr. Petropoulos said.
Some U.N. agencies in June suspended aid pickups, even amid a humanitarian pause in fighting, saying the looting in Gaza was endangering their staff. Trucks get raided not just for food and critical supplies but also by looters in search of contraband, like cigarettes.
Ultimately, about 30 percent of the aid that enters Gaza ends up looted en route, Mr. Petropoulos said. This not only means less humanitarian assistance reaches people in critical need, but it also further warps an extremely distorted local economy, where there are severe spikes in the prices for basic, necessary items.
Still, he said, “I don’t see an interest from Israel to stamp out looting or give us different routes.”
The Israeli military issued another series of evacuation warnings for buildings in Beirut’s southern outskirts, indicating that a round of Israeli bombardment near the Lebanese capital was likely imminent. Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military spokesman, said the sites were affiliated with Hezbollah; that could not immediately be confirmed.
Israeli soldiers fired on U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon earlier this week after realizing they were being observed conducting house clearing operations, the peacekeeping force said Friday. The U.N. peacekeeping mission has accused the Israeli military of a number of deliberate attacks in recent weeks. Israel has asked that the force, known as UNIFIL, leave the areas where fighting is taking place.
The Israeli military said it “did not receive a report” about its troops deliberately firing on U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon earlier this week, noting that its activities “are only directed against Hezbollah” and “are not directed at UNIFIL posts, forces, or infrastructure.” The military added that it had asked the U.N. force to clear the combat zone weeks ago, ahead of Israel’s ground invasion of southern Lebanon, and that it “maintains continuous communication” with peacekeepers to avoid harming them “despite the complexities” their presence presents.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, left, met with Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, in London on Friday.Credit...Pool photo by Nathan Howard
The United Nations human rights chief said on Friday that Israel’s conduct in the Gaza Strip might amount to crimes against humanity, one of his most forceful public denunciations yet, reflecting the rising international backlash against the way Israel is waging war against Hamas.
Around the same time, Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, at a joint news conference in London with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, said that Israel was conducting “ethnic cleansing” in northern Gaza, “and that has got to stop.”
Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights based in Geneva, said in a statement: “Unimaginably, the situation is getting worse by the day. The Israeli government’s policies and practices in northern Gaza risk emptying the area of all Palestinians. We are facing what could amount to atrocity crimes, including potentially extending to crimes against humanity.”
He reminded world leaders that the U.N. genocide convention imposes a binding obligation on states to act when there is a risk of such crimes being committed. “The international rule of law is being progressively dismantled,” Mr. Türk said. “Either the world ashamedly fails those who so desperately need help, or we stand united and put a stop to this.”
The Biden administration, Israel’s most important ally, has criticized Israel’s yearlong campaign in Gaza against Hamas, saying that while Israel was justified in retaliating for the Oct. 7, 2023, assault, the resulting destruction and casualties have been excessive. But it has not gone nearly as far as Mr. Türk, Mr. Safadi and others in condemning Israel’s conduct or demanding that it end.
“It’s getting worse, unfortunately, every time we meet,” Mr. Safadi said. “Not for lack of us trying, but because we do have an Israeli government that is not listening to anybody.”
The State Department said that Mr. Blinken had met with Mr. Safadi “to discuss ongoing efforts to de-escalate regional tensions.” They also talked about efforts to end the war in Gaza, to free the remaining hostages there and to get more food and medicine to the territory, it said.
Mr. Blinken was holding a day of meetings with Arab officials in London after his latest tour of the Middle East. He met with Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, to pursue a diplomatic solution to Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, a conflict entwined with the war in Gaza, as well as the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Mr. Türk noted that Hamas and other armed groups were putting civilians in harm’s way by continuing to operate among areas such as shelters for the displaced, which he said was “totally unacceptable.” But his harshest words were aimed at Israel.
“The bombing in north Gaza is nonstop,” he said. “The Israeli military has ordered hundreds of thousands to move, with no guarantees of return. But there is no safe way to leave. The bombs continue to fall.”
The war has killed almost 43,000 people in Gaza, according to health authorities there. It has also destroyed much of the territory’s housing and other infrastructure and has forced most of its people to flee their homes.
Mr. Türk said the number of Palestinians reported killed, injured or missing in the war exceeds 150,000, a figure that the current Israeli offensive in northern Gaza could push dramatically higher.
“The Israeli military is striking hospitals, and staff and patients have been killed and injured or forced to evacuate simultaneously,” he said. “Shelters, once schools, are struck daily. Communication with the outside world remains extremely limited. Journalists continue to be killed.”
Mr. Türk said that Israel has allowed little aid to reach Gaza, and many Palestinians now face starvation.
Thirteen children and a woman from the same family were among several Palestinians killed in overnight Israeli strikes on Khan Younis in southern Gaza.CreditCredit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock
The Israeli military provided no advance warning before the skies over Khan Younis filled with falling munitions and hovering drones, residents of the city in the southern Gaza Strip said on Friday.
At least 38 people were killed and dozens injured by Israeli air and ground forces in strikes that began on Thursday night and went on into the early hours of Friday, the Gaza health ministry said.
“There was no warning at all,” said Naseem Hassan, an emergency medical worker at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. The drones began to appear in the skies at about 8 p.m. on Thursday night, signaling the start of an attack that went on for many hours, he added.
When paramedics arrived at the site of the blasts, they found seven badly damaged homes.
At least 11 people who appeared to be part of one family were among those killed in a strike that destroyed their home in Khan Younis, according to videos and photos shared on social media and distributed by news agencies on Friday and verified by The New York Times. Some of them appeared to be children.
Social media posts showed the bodies of the 11 dead arranged in a row on blankets laid out across the floor. Later, the same bodies were seen at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where footage filmed by local journalists displayed their names written on white, open plastic shrouds. They all shared the same last name, al-Farra.
Mr. Hassan, the emergency medical worker, said at least 14 members of the al-Farra family, many of them children, were killed.
The Israeli military said on Friday that in attacks “from the air and ground” it had killed a number of Hamas fighters in southern Gaza and dismantled numerous infrastructure sites over the previous day, but it did not give an overall death toll or mention civilian casualties. Gazan authorities, in reporting numbers of dead and wounded, do not differentiate between combatants and civilians.
Tariq Abutaha, who lives on the outskirts of Khan Younis, also said the strikes came without any warning, landing a few miles from his home in an area that has been generally calm for the last few weeks. He described the bombardment as extremely intense.
Mr. Abutaha said his family was yet again trying to gauge whether it was too dangerous to remain there.
“We’re trying to see whether this is something limited. If it’s over, then we’ll stay,” he said. “But if not, we may have to pick up and go.”
Such calculations had now become a bitter routine for many Gazans, said Mr. Abutaha, amid a mass displacement of the Palestinian territory’s population over the past year. Most Gazans have been forced not only to leave their homes, but to relocate multiple times.
“Unfortunately, this is now something we’ve had to become accustomed to,” he said.
Majed Abdeen, 35, said he had heard no warning, when, “Suddenly, we saw the tanks in front of us.”
Mr. Hassan said most residents and rescuers were unable to flee the area during the airstrikes.
“Only a small number of residents and those who have been displaced could flee to Nasser Hospital,” Mr. Hassan said. “Everyone else was trapped.”
Continued Israeli strikes prevented rescuers from being able to respond to the scene until after Israeli forces left the area, Mr. Hassan said.
When Mr. Abdeen arrived at what was once the two-story home of his cousin, he said it was nothing but broken stones, rubble and the broken bodies of an entire family.
The search for the dead and their burial took hours and was particularly painful. He said the searchers repeatedly had to dig open the graves to bury more body parts that they found as they combed through the rubble.
Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, seen from Haifa, Israel, intercepting rockets launched from inside Lebanon earlier this month.Credit...Ammar Awad/Reuters
Assassinations of top leaders. Intense attacks on infrastructure and weapons supplies. A ground incursion. These moves by Israel have degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities in Lebanon, but so far have failed to block a steady stream of retaliatory strikes.
Hezbollah, which began attacking Israel more than a year ago in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza, remains resilient, experts say.
“Before all this began, it had a massive arsenal, highly qualified leaders, good leadership selection and a deep bench of skilled fighters,” said Daniel Byman, a senior fellow with the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Hezbollah has been “significantly degraded,” he assessed, but even weakened, it “is still pretty competent.”
Those killings were part of a wave of intensified Israeli attacks on the group that began last month with the mass remote detonation of Hezbollah operatives’ pagersand later walkie-talkies, and was followed by a ground incursion into the country’s south, as well as severe airstrikes in southern Lebanon and Beirut.
Yet Hezbollah has continued to carry out strikes into Israel at a consistent and significant pace. On Wednesday night, the Israeli military said about 135 projectiles had crossed into Israel from Lebanon. On Tuesday night, the count was 140. And last Saturday, a Hezbollah drone hit the private home of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the northern seaside town of Caesarea.
“A month ago Hezbollah was reeling from the pager attacks. It’s plausible that midlevel commanders have recovered,” Mr. Byman suggested.
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A billboard in Baalbek, Lebanon, this month displaying an image of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah who was killed in an Israeli assault in September.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
Hezbollah and Israel were last at war in 2006, and the Lebanese armed group has long been preparing to fight Israel again.
Its strength has always been rockets and missiles, according to Audrey Kurth Cronin, director of the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy and Technology. And, in recent years, Hezbollah has been making motors for precision-guided projectiles domestically, she added, using guidance kits supplied by Iran, making it much easier to build up its supply.
“They are not just shooting off missiles willy-nilly,” she said. “That is how they can hit Netanyahu’s house.”
While Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system has been “remarkably effective,” Ms. Kurth Cronin said, no system is foolproof when targeted by many weapons simultaneously, so if Hezbollah sends swarms of drones and rockets, some will surely penetrate.
Hezbollah has perhaps the largest arsenal of any armed nonstate group in the world, according to experts. Israeli and American officials said earlier this month that about half of its stockpile — built up over decades with help from Iran and estimated at about 120,000 to 200,000 rockets and missiles — had been destroyed.
But Hezbollah also has access to weapons from Iranian allies in Syria and Iraq via the relatively porous Lebanese border. Plus, it has been stockpiling rockets and missiles for a long time, Ms. Kurth Cronin said. “Israel won’t be able to target all of them,” and Hezbollah still has a lot of capabilities, she added.
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Iranians gathering in Tehran last month to show their support for Hezbollah.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
The midlevel command was devastated by the September pager attacks, but Hezbollah does have “very well-trained fighters” who are battle-hardened through wars with Israel and through fighting in Syria, Ms. Kurth Cronin said. She also noted that there are about 1,000 Iranian trainers on the ground in Lebanon assisting Hezbollah.
Israel also faces significant obstacles. An assessment of the ground operations in Lebanon in a policy paper for Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies last week noted that “ground forces face numerous constraints,” with soldiers and reservists “weary after a year of continuous war” in Gaza and “shortages of ammunition and spare parts.”
The shortages are partly because of limits on arms transfers to Israel that “could become worse if Israel loses its current legitimacy for its actions in Lebanon,” the paper warned. The paper was written by Brig. Gen. Guy Hazut, an author of books on military affairs, and Ofer Shelah, the director of the Israel National Security Policy research program at the institute and a former member of Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset.
Part of what Israel is trying to do now is to flex muscles, Ms. Kurth Cronin suggested, to show its military and intelligence prowess with the remote detonation attacks and strikes on Hezbollah leaders. Displays of strength are part of an effort to restore deterrence, she believes.
This approach historically has not necessarily proved effective, she said. Both Hamas and Hezbollah have survived Israeli assassinations of their leaders before and came roaring back.
“This is an unpredictable stage,” Ms. Kurth Cronin said of Israel’s conflict in Lebanon, all the more so because it’s unclear who Hezbollah’s next chief will be. “Just because you kill a leader doesn’t mean you have a less aggressive opponent.”
Two Israelis died from wounds sustained during a rocket barrage from Lebanon on Friday, according to Israel’s emergency service. Most attacks fail to penetrate Israel’s tight civil defense system, which includes sophisticated antimissile defenses, but others manage to slip through.
Palestinians in the trauma ward at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, on Thursday.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The director of the World Health Organization said on Friday that it had lost contact with the staff at one of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza after health officials in the enclave said Israeli troops had raided the facility. The Israeli military said only that it was “operating in the area” of the hospital.
The Gaza health ministry on Friday said that Israeli forces had stormed the facility, Kamal Adwan Hospital, and were “detaining hundreds of patients, medical staff and some displaced people.” On Friday night, the ministry said that the situation was “alarmingly deteriorating” as Israeli troops searched the hospital and fired shots, causing panic among the 600 people inside. Two children in the intensive care unit died after generators stopped operating, the ministry said.
The Israeli military’s statement did not address those claims, but said its operation in the area was based on intelligence that “terrorists and terrorist infrastructure” may be there.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O. director, said in a statement that a team from the organization had been at the hospital on Thursday night to deliver supplies. Losing contact with the hospital was “deeply disturbing given the number of patients being served and people sheltering there,” he said on X.
Israeli forces had previously besieged and raided Kamal Adwan Hospital last December and detained its director. This month, the Gaza health ministry said the hospital was one of three that the Israeli military had ordered to evacuate as its forces launched a new offensive targeting what it said was a Hamas resurgence.
Mr. Ghebreyesus said W.H.O. staff members on Thursday had escorted 23 patients and 26 caregivers to another hospital in the territory. The Israeli military helped coordinate the organization’s aid efforts on Thursday, according to the Israeli government agency that oversees its policy in Gaza, COGAT. The Israeli military also said it had facilitated “the evacuation of patients from the area while maintaining emergency services” in recent weeks.
Mr. Ghebreyesus posted pictures online that show wounded people, their faces ashen and their eyes closed, lying on the floor of the hospital, and videos showing the hospital surrounded by shattered concrete buildings and piles of uncollected garbage.
Rik Peeperkorn, the W.H.O. representative for the Palestinian territories, said he had been on the Thursday visit to the hospital, where he saw “mayhem and chaos.” Speaking to reporters by video link from northern Gaza, he said the hospital was poorly equipped and its staff overwhelmed.
Med Global, a U.S.-based humanitarian organization, shared a video it said was recorded Thursday night from the hospital’s intensive care unit. In it, the hospital’s director, Husam Abu Safiyeh, called for international help to save dying patients. The New York Times verified that the video was taken at the hospital, though it could not determine when.
It shows a woman hugging the body of a child who Dr. Abu Safiyeh said had died that morning because of a lack of medical supplies..
“This is the situation: every day we lose people, every hour we lose people,” he says.
Calls to Dr. Abu Safiyeh went unanswered on Friday.
The Israeli military just announced that another three soldiers were killed in fighting on Friday in the northern Gaza Strip. It has been an unusually deadly 48 hours for Israeli troops: at least 13 have been confirmed killed in operations against Hamas and Hezbollah.
The State Department said that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had met with Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, “to discuss ongoing efforts to de-escalate regional tensions.” They also talked about efforts to end the war in Gaza, to free the remaining hostages there and to get more food and medicine to the territory, it said. Blinken was holding a day of meetings with Arab officials in London at the end of his latest tour of the Middle East.
At least two people in northern Israel were critically injured by shrapnel during a rocket barrage from Lebanon and another is in serious condition, according to Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency service. The injuries were reported in Majd al-Krum, an Arab community in the area. Hezbollah has repeatedly aimed rockets at northern Israel, where dozens of Arab communities have heard frequent air-raid sirens for weeks.
Video circulating on social media and verified by The New York Times showed significant damage at the border crossing that links Syria’s Homs Province with northern Lebanon. The footage showed a crater on the Syrian side of the crossing. In a statement, the Israeli military said it had targeted Hezbollah infrastructure there.
The aftermath of an Israeli strike on the Jousieh border crossing in Syria on Friday.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Israeli military carried out airstrikes on two border crossings between Lebanon and Syria early Friday morning, disrupting routes used by hundreds of thousands of people to flee Israel’s bombardment, the U.N. refugee agency said.
An Israeli airstrike has shut down a northern crossing at Jousieh, Rula Amin, a spokeswoman for the agency, told reporters by video link from Amman, Jordan.
Another Israeli strike hit the Masnaa crossing point, the main route for tens of thousands of people fleeing to Syria, she said. It was at least the third time that crossing had been hit since Israel launched its invasion of Lebanon this month and escalated air attacks in an intensification of its conflict with Hezbollah militants. It was not immediately clear if the Masnaa crossing point remained operable.
The Israeli military confirmed in a statement that it had struck the Jousieh crossing, saying it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure and a conduit for the Syrian military to transfer weapons into Lebanon. Previously, it has said that it struck the Masnaa crossing to destroy an underground tunnel used to transport weapons to Hezbollah.
Ms. Amin said she was unaware whether Israeli forces had issued any warning before the latest strikes.
“The attacks on these border crossings is a major concern as this will block the way for people fleeing the conflict from seeking safety,” Ms. Amin said.
The overnight strike in Masnaa hit close to an office set up to process people crossing the border, Ms. Amin added, expressing concern for the safety of U.N. staff members in the area.
U.N. agencies estimate that Israel’s invasion and bombardment of Lebanon have displaced 1.4 million people, around one-fifth of the country’s population, and that more than 430,000 people have crossed into Syria to escape the conflict. Around 70 percent of those leaving were Syrians who had previously fled the civil war in that country, according to the estimates.
After the Gazan Health Ministry said that Israeli forces had raided Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, the Israeli military issued a statement saying its forces were conducting operations in the area “based on intelligence information regarding the presence of terrorists.” It said that before the operation, Israeli forces had helped evacuate patients from the area while emergency services continued. Details of the Israeli operation there were not immediately known.
Israeli soldiers carry the coffin for one of five Israeli soldiers killed while fighting in southern Lebanon.Credit...Amir Levy/Getty Images
The Israeli military said on Friday that five soldiers had been killed amid clashes with Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, the latest indication that the conflict there is escalating despite diplomatic efforts by the Biden administration and others to calm the region.
The five soldiers, all of them army reservists, were killed overnight when a rocket struck the building they were in, according to Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster. Twenty-four other soldiers were wounded in the attack, the broadcaster reported.
It was among the most casualties for the Israeli military in a single attack since it launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon this month.
Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, claimed to have carried out two rocket attacks on Israeli soldiers operating near the southern Lebanese town of Markaba, which has been the scene of intense clashes. It was not immediately clear if that was where the soldiers had been killed.
Israel has ramped up its bombing campaign in the southern outskirts of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, in a densely populated cluster of neighborhoods where Hezbollah holds sway. The area, known as the Dahiya, was hit by intense Israeli airstrikes overnight, many of them without evacuation warnings.
The Israeli military said on Friday that its air force had struck over 200 targets in Lebanon over the past day and had killed a commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit. The Israeli military also said it had continued to locate and destroy underground compounds used by Hezbollah along Israel’s northern border.
Israel’s military campaign has sparked a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon. About 1.4 million people — more than a fifth of the population — have been displaced amid the fighting, according to U.N. agencies.
A U.N. official said that Israeli aircraft struck two crossing points on the border between Lebanon and Syria early Friday, disrupting the movement of people trying to escape Israeli attacks in Lebanon. “This is a major concern as it hinders the ability of people to flee the violence and seek safety,” a U.N. refugee agency spokeswoman, Rula Amin, told reporters by video link from Jordan.
Israel’s invasion and airstrikes have displaced 1.4 million people in Lebanon, according to the U.N. More than 430,000 people have evacuated into Syria, around 70 percent of them Syrian refugees who had fled the civil war in their own country.
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Khan Younis, southern GazaAfter Israeli strikes, on Friday.![[object Object]](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/10/25/multimedia/25mideast-crisis-carousel-2-wzqk/25mideast-crisis-carousel-2-wzqk-threeByTwoMediumAt2X.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp)
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