Middle East crisis live: Beirut strikes reportedly target potential Hezbollah leader; 18 killed in Israeli strike on West Bank, officials say

The Israeli military launched a series of strikes on southern Beirut on Thursday night, in one of the most intense bombardments on the city since the campaign began last week.

A source close to Hezbollah told the AFP news agency that Israel had conducted 11 consecutive strikes on the group’s stronghold in the Lebanese capital.

Hashem Safieddine, the most likely candidate to replace Hassan Nasrallah as leader of Hezbollah and the head of its executive council, was the target of the strikes, the New York Times and Axios reported, citing Israeli officials. The result of the strike, said to have targeted a meeting of senior Hezbollah figures, is unclear.

New footage showed giant balls of flame rising from the targeted site with thick smoke billowing and flares shooting out. Reporters in the capital and beyond heard loud bangs that made car alarms go off and buildings shake.

Earlier on Thursday, Israeli army Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee had issued an “urgent warning” for residents to evacuate from the south Beirut area of Burj al-Barajneh. He later issued an evacuation order for the Hadath neighbourhood in Beirut’s south.

“You are located near facilities and interests belonging to Hezbollah, and the IDF will work against them in the near future,” he had said in a statement on X.

Safieddine leads Hezbollah’s highest political decision-making body, the executive council, and was considered the number two in the organisation’s political wing before the death of Nasrallah, who was killed by Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh last week.

He is reportedly designated to succeed Nasrallah, though no formal announcement of his succession has been made since the late-leader was killed last week.

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Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is set to lead Friday prayers and deliver a public sermon that could shed light on the Islamic republic’s plans after a massive missile attack on enemy Israel. AFP reports:

Khamenei’s rare Friday sermon – a first in almost five years – comes three days before the one-year anniversary of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, triggered by the Iran-backed Palestinian group’s 7 October attack.

The supreme leader, who wields the highest authority in Iran, will lead Muslims in prayer at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla mosque in central Tehran, his official website said.

The prayer will follow “a commemoration ceremony” at 10.30am (0700 GMT) for Hassan Nasrallah, the slain leader of Tehran-backed Lebanese armed movement Hezbollah.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who answer to Khamenei, said Tuesday’s barrages of some 200 missiles were in retaliation for Israel’s killing of Nasrallah alongside Guards commander Abbas Nilforoushan in a late September strike on Beirut, and of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.

Khamenei last led Friday prayers in January 2020 after Iran fired missiles at a US army base in Iraq, in response to a strike that killed revered Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani.

In Tehran on Thursday, crowds waving Hezbollah and Iran flags gathered outside the former US embassy building in Tehran to denounce Israeli “crimes” in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon, Iranian media reported.

Khamenei had declared public mourning in Iran for Nasrallah and on Wednesday said that the Hezbollah chief’s death was “not a small matter”.

US President Joe Biden has made a series of comments to reporters overnight including suggesting there is “no action” taking place in the Middle East and that he does not believe there will be an “all-out war”.

Asked by the White House press pool why he had not spoken to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent days after he said he would on Sunday he replied:

Because there’s no action going on right now.

Asked how confident he was that an all-out war could be averted in the Middle East he replied:

How confident are you it’s not going to rain? Look, I don’t believe there is going to be an all-out war. I think we can avoid it. But there is a lot to do yet, a lot to do yet.

Asked if he would send American troops to help Israel, the president said: “We have already helped Israel. We are going to protect Israel.”

And asked if he worried an Israeli strike on Iran’s oil facilities would raise oil prices, he said:

If a hurricane hits, prices are going to go up. I don’t know; who knows.

On Thursday Biden said his administration had been “discussing” possible Israeli strikes on Iranian oil facilities, triggering a spike in oil prices.

At least 18 people were killed in a West Bank refugee camp, the Palestinian health ministry has said, following an airstrike that the Israeli military claimed killed a local Hamas leader.

A source within the Palestinian security services told the AFP news agency that the attack was the deadliest in the West Bank since 2000.

“Eighteen martyrs following the bombing of the Tulkarm camp by the occupation,” the Palestinian health ministry said on its Telegram account.

An activist in the area told AFP that the Israeli strike “hit a cafeteria in a four-storey building”, adding that there were “many victims in the hospital”. Al Jazeera reported that the dead included a mother and her two children.

The Israeli army confirmed the strike on the Tulkarm area in the northern West Bank, describing it as a joint operation carried out by the Shin Bet internal security service and the air force, according to a brief statement by the military.

The Israeli military later said the strike had killed a Hamas leader, Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi – and said among the dead were other “operatives” who were also active in Hamas.

The army accused Oufi of participating in numerous attacks in the West Bank and said he was in the process of planning another assault.

Hamas condemned the airstrike, calling it a “cruel attack” that would prove to be a “dangerous escalation”.

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Former Israeli PM Ehud Barak predicts large-scale attack on Iranian oil industry

Julian Borger

Israel is likely to mount a large-scale airstrike against Iran’s oil industry and possibly a symbolic attack on a military target related to its nuclear programme, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak has predicted.

Barak said there was no doubt there would be an Israeli military response to Iran’s assault on Tuesday with over 180 ballistic missiles, most of which were intercepted, but some landed on and around densely populated areas and Israeli military bases.

“Israel has a compelling need, even an imperative, to respond. I think that no sovereign nation on Earth could fail to respond,” Barak said in an interview.

The former prime minister, who also served as defence minister, foreign minister and army chief of staff, said the model for the Israeli response could be seen in Sunday’s reprisal airstrikes against Houthi-controlled oil facilities, power plants and docks in the Yemeni port of Hodeidah, a day after Houthi fired missiles aimed at Israel’s international airport outside Tel Aviv.

“I think we might see something like that. It might be a massive attack, and it could be repeated more than once,” he told the Guardian.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the conflict in the Middle East.

Israel has launched a fresh round of airstrikes on Beirut overnight, with witnesses describing them as more powerful than the massive strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah almost a week ago.

Israeli and US media reported that one of the targets of the strikes on the southern suburb of Dahiyeh was Hashem Safieddine, widely considered to be Nasrallah’s likely successor. There has been no official comment from either Hezbollah or Israel on his fate.

The news agency AFP reported that there had been at least 11 consecutive strikes on Dahiyeh, the southern Beirut suburb regarded as a Hezbollah stronghold, while one strike reportedly hit close to Beirut’s airport.

Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarm an Israeli airstrike killed at least 18 people in a cafe. The IDF claimed it had killed a local Hamas leader, Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, in the attack, which levelled the entire building, along with several other Hamas members.

Civilians were also reportedly killed – including a mother and her two children according to Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera – and Palestinian media said it was the bloodiest single Israeli attack on the West Bank in 24 years.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that more people were buried under the rubble, citing a Red Crescent paramedic and local media.

In other developments:

• The latest Israeli strikes on Beirut on Friday came after Israeli military ordered civilians near two buildings in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, to evacuate immediately ahead of airstrikes. An Israeli military spokesperson published maps alongside the announcement, warning civilians to distance themselves at least 500 metres from the sites.

• Earlier on Thursday, multiple airstrikes were heard in the Lebanese capital, with one of them reportedly hitting the office of Hezbollah’s media department in Dahiyeh, the southern suburbs of Beirut. An official from the media office said they were safe, despite the blast. Israel said it had targeted Hezbollah’s intelligence operation.

• Joe Biden, the US president, said he was “discussing” possible Israeli strikes on Iranian oil sites in response to Tehran’s missile attack earlier this week. His comments quickly sent oil prices soaring. Asked if he would “allow” Israel to retaliate against Iran, Biden said on Thursday that “we don’t ‘allow’ Israel, we advise Israel. And there is nothing going to happen today.” On Wednesday, Biden said he would not support an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites.

• Lebanon’s health ministry said 37 people were killed and 151 others wounded in Israeli strikes on the country on Thursday. Nearly 2,000 people have been killed, including 127 children, and 9,384 injured since the start of Israeli attacks on Lebanon over the last year, the country’s health ministry said on Thursday. More than 1.2 million Lebanese people have been displaced by Israeli attacks. Lebanon’s health minister said more than 40 rescuers and firefighters have been killed by Israeli attacks over the last three days.

• Israel’s military ordered residents of more than 20 towns in south Lebanon to evacuate their homes immediately on Thursday, signaling that it may widen a ground operation launched earlier this week against Hezbollah. Israel has told people to leave Nabatieh, a provincial capital, and other communities north of the Litani River, which formed the northern edge of the UN-declared buffer zone. Israel has previously ordered 52 other villages inside Lebanon to evacuate.

• The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, described an Israeli strike on a central Beirut medical centre on Thursday as a “violation of international humanitarian law”. The attack was the second airstrike on central Beirut this week, with most strikes having previously been confined to suburbs in the southern suburbs.

• Hezbollah carried out new strikes on Thursday, targeting what it called Israel’s “Sakhnin base” for military industries in Haifa Bay on the Mediterranean coast of northern Israel with a salvo of rockets. At least eight Israeli soldiers have been killed in clashes with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

• The Lebanese army said that it returned fire at Israeli forces after one of its soldiers was killed in an Israeli strike, marking the first time that the Lebanese army participated in the fighting against Israel. The soldier was killed when a Lebanese Red Cross convoy accompanied by the Lebanese Army was struck while evacuating wounded from Taybeh, a border-village in southern Lebanon.

• Civilians are bearing the brunt of a “truly catastrophic” situation in Lebanon, a senior UN official said. Since Israel dramatically ramped up airstrikes in Lebanon more than a week ago, the pace of displacement had exceeded worst case scenarios, Imran Riza, the UN’s resident and humanitarian coordinator, told Reuters. “The level of trauma, the level of fear amongst the population, has been extreme,” he said.

• G7 leaders expressed “deep concern over the deteriorating situation in the Middle East” and called on regional players to “act responsibility and with restraint”. In a joint statement on Thursday, G7 leaders said they condemned “in the strongest terms” Iran’s military attack against Israel earlier this week, which they said “constitutes a serious threat to regional stability.”

• Iran has warned Washington that any country that aids an Israeli attack will be deemed an Iranian target. In a statement issued by Iran’s mission at the UN on Thursday, Iran warned that a large Israeli strike will lead to attacks on Israeli infrastructure and that “should any country render assistance to the aggressor, it shall likewise be deemed an accomplice and a legitimate target.” The warnings came as the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, sought assurances from Gulf States in Doha that they would remain neutral in the event of any joint Israeli-US attack in Iran.

• The death toll in Gaza has risen to 41,788 reported fatalities with 96,794 people wounded, according to the latest figures by territory’s health ministry late on Thursday. At least 90 Palestinians were killed and 169 others injured in eight attacks by Israel over the last 24 hours, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported earlier, including in strikes on a school and an orphange housing displaced people.

• Unrwa chief Philippe Lazzarini condemned the Israeli attacks on Thursday, saying “Schools used to be a safe haven for learning, they have now turned into hell for far too many.”

• The Israeli military said it killed a Hezbollah commander who was responsible for a rocket attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 children and teenagers on a football field in July. The IDF said Khader Shahabiya was killed in an airstrike on Wednesday. The attack on Majdal Shams village, a predominantly Druze village, killed 12 children between the ages of 10 and 16 as they were playing football and wounded dozens more.

• Israel’s military also announced that in a strike “approximately three months ago” it believes it killed three senior Hamas figures. It named them as “Rawhi Mushtaha, the head of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip; Sameh al-Siraj, who held the security portfolio on Hamas’ political bureau and Hamas’ labor committee; and Sami Oudeh, commander of Hamas’ general security mechanism.”

• The Lebanese ambassador to the UK, Rami Mortada, claimed that Hezbollah’s leadership had agreed to a proposed 21 day ceasefire shortly before “hotheads” of Israel blew up the diplomatic path to peace by assassinating leader Hassan Nasrallah. Mortada’s comments on Thursday support a previous assertion made by Lebanese foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib.