Middle East crisis live: Hezbollah rocket hits Haifa after IDF bombards Beirut; Israel marks 7 October anniversary | Lebanon

Rebecca Ratcliffe

Every day, morning and night, Wiwwaeo Sriaoun prays for the safe return of her son, Watchara. It is now one year since he was taken hostage by Hamas, one of dozens of Thai migrant workers kidnapped from the farms on which they were working in southern Israel on 7 October, last year.

From her home in a sleepy, rural village in Udon Thani, north-east Thailand, Wiwwaeo has followed every development in the devastating and spiralling war that has erupted tens of thousands of miles away since Hamas’s attack on Israel.

“How is he surviving there? Is he safe? Is he still alive? How is he eating? How is he sleeping?” asks Wiwwaeo, 53. The lack of news has been unbearable.

“I have to keeping going because my son still has not returned, and his daughter, my granddaughter, is still little,” she says.

Watchara’s daughter, Irada, whose nickname is Nuu Dee (similar in meaning to “Little Miss Good” or “Little Good Girl”) is now nine years old. At first, she would ask whether her father was still working and when he would return. “She watches the news, and her friends at school ask her about it, and so we told her the truth: that her father was captured, but he is still alive. He’s not dead,” says Wiwwaeo. Someday, they hope, he will come back to pick her up and take her to school again.

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A 19-year-old Palestinian journalist whose work appeared on Al Jazeera has been killed in an Israeli strike, the Qatar-based network has reported.

Hassan Hamad, a freelance journalist who lived in northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, had reportedly received threats from an Israeli officer via WhatsApp. It was not possible to verify the claim but the Israeli military has been accused of deliberately targeting journalists, which it denies.

In a post on Hamad’s account on Sunday, apparently by a colleague, it said:

Hassan Hamad, the journalist who did not live past the age of 20, resisted for a full year in his own way. He resisted by staying away from his family so they wouldn’t be targeted. He resisted when he struggled to find an internet signal, sitting for an hour or two on the rooftop just to send the videos that reach you in seconds.

The message continued saying:

Yesterday, from 10 PM, he moved between the bombed locations and then returned to search for an internet signal, only to go back and cover the scenes of the scattered remains. He endured the pain of an injury to his leg, yet continued filming.

At 6 AM, he called me to send his last video. After a call that didn’t last more than a few seconds, he said, “There they are, there they are, it’s done,” and hung up. It’s a feeling no human can bear.

Al Jazeera said it had verified footage of Hamad’s body, which was found in pieces and had to be placed into plastic bags and shoe boxes.

Hamad’s colleagues in Gaza posted tributes to him on social media. The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 128 journalists have been killed by Israel in Gaza since the start of the 7 October conflict.

Peter Beaumont

In her new home in a kibbutz near Netanya, Batsheva Yahalomi knows what it is to see a child released, but also to have a husband who remains missing.

They had lived in Nir Oz kibbutz, where a quarter of the residents were killed or kidnapped. Batsheva’s husband, Ohad, was wounded in the initial attack. In the chaos Batsheva and her two daughters were separated from her teenage son, Eitan, and taken towards the Gaza border by motorbike. She and her daughters managed to escape, but Eitan and Ohad were abducted by different groups of men.

“At the beginning of war, I think the fact of the kidnappings and that children and women were taken was so shocking for everyone that it was urgent to get them out,” she said.

Like many among the families of the remaining hostages, Batsheva has detected a subtle change in attitudes after the impetus for a deal under which more than 100 hostages were released. Support remains still strong, but momentum has faded as other considerations have crept in.

“There are people, I think a small group of people in Israel, radical people, who have accepted situation that the hostages are there and think that there are bigger goals. But most people are supportive.

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Israel continued its bombardment of Beirut up overnight, with Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr reporting that the latest attack took place just minutes ago.

Huge balls of fire and smoke were seen rising from Beirut’s southern Dahiyeh suburb, which is regarded as a Hezbollah stronghold. The Israeli military claimed it was targeting Hezbollah’s headquarters and weapons warehouses, without providing any evidence for the claim.

It was not immediately clear if there were casualties from the area, which has become difficult to access due to Israeli strikes.

A separate Israeli strike earlier Sunday in the town of Qamatiyeh southeast of Beirut killed six people, including three children, Lebanon’s health ministry said, according to the Associated Press.

Israelis are expected to flock to ceremonies, cemeteries and memorial sites around the country today, remembering the hundreds of victims, the dozens of hostages still in captivity and the soldiers wounded or killed trying to save them. The Associated Press reports:

At 6.30 am – the exact hour Hamas launched its attack – the families of those killed at the Nova music festival were gathering at the site where almost 400 revellers were gunned down and from where many others were taken hostage.

At that same time, the families of hostages still held in Gaza – about 100, a third of whom are said to be dead – were gathering outside prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence to stand during a two-minute siren, replicating a custom from the the most solemn dates on the Israeli calendar, Holocaust Remembrance and Memorial Day.

An official state ceremony focusing on acts of bravery and hope is set to be aired on Monday evening. The ceremony was prerecorded without an audience – apparently to avoid potential disruptions – in the southern city of Ofakim, where over two dozen Israelis were killed.

But anger at the government’s failure to prevent the attack and enduring frustration that it has not returned the remaining hostages prompted the families of those killed and taken captive to hold a separate event in Tel Aviv.

That event had been set to draw tens of thousands of people but was scaled back drastically over prohibitions on large gatherings due to the threat of missile attacks from Iran and Hezbollah.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza, invasion of Lebanon and the wider Middle East crisis.

Israel is holding vigils and ceremonies to mark the one-year anniversary of the 7 October Hamas attack on the country – in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 kidnapped and taken into Gaza – including at the site of the Nova music festival.

Israel is also on high alert for possible terrorist attacks timed to coincide with the anniversary. Fighting meanwhile continues in Gaza and Lebanon, and the conflict appears on the brink of escalating further, as Israeli leaders threaten Iran with further retaliatory strikes.

Early on Monday Israeli media reported that at least five people were injured in Hezbollah rockets attacks on the Israeli city of Haifa and another in the nearby city of Tiberias. Hezbollah said it had targeted an Israeli military base near Haifa in its third attack on a military position in the area in one day.

Israel launched fresh strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Sunday, a day after heavy consecutive strikes on the Lebanese capital.

Israeli jets launched a strike targeting the Saint Therese area, and a second targeting the Burj al-Barajneh area, Lebanese state media reported, as well as two additional strikes, including one it described as “violent”. Pictures and videos showed huge explosions of orange fire and smoke from the southern suburbs.

Lebanese security sources said Israeli strikes since Friday on Dahiyeh – said to be a Hezbollah stronghold and the area where leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed over a week ago – were keeping rescue workers from scouring the site of Thursday night’s attack, which apparently targeted his likely successor.

Israel’s military claimed it was targeting Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut and weaspons storage sites, adding that secondary explosions indicated the presence of weapons.

In other developments:

• The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ordered a “closed military zone” around three towns on the border with Lebanon and issued new evacuation orders for areas in southern Lebanon on Sunday. In a statement, the IDF said it is “strictly prohibited” to enter the communities of Manara, Yiftach, and Malkia. The Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson ordered residents of about 25 areas in southern Lebanon to head immediately to the north of the Awali river.

• Israel expanded its actions in Lebanon, making its first strike in the northern city of Tripoli on Saturday, and Israeli troops launched raids in the south. A Lebanese security official told Reuters that Saturday’s strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli killed a member of Hamas, his wife and two children. Media affiliated with the Palestinian group said the strike killed a leader of its armed wing, naming him as Saeed Atallah.

• Iranian authorities confirmed the resumption of air traffic after flight cancellations at some airports over “operational restrictions”, state media reported. Flights have been operational again since 11pm (1930 GMT) on Sunday a spokesperson for Iran’s civil aviation organisation said.

• The UN’s peacekeeping force in Lebanon (Unifil) has said it is deeply concerned by what it called Israel’s “recent activities” adjacent to the mission’s position inside Lebanon. Unifil said on Sunday that the activities by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are an “extremely dangerous development” as it “urgently” reminded all actors of “their obligations to protect UN personnel and property.” Ireland’s president, Michael D Higgins, said it is “outrageous” for the IDF to have “threatened” Unifil.

• More than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon nearly a year of fighting, most of them in the past two weeks, according to the Lebanese health ministry. The ministry said on Sunday 23 people had been killed on Saturday.

• The latest Israeli strikes on Beirut came after days of Israeli bombing that killed the Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and possibly his potential successor, Hashem Safieddine. A Lebanese security source said on Saturday that Safieddine had been out of contact since Friday, after an Israeli airstrike near the city’s international airport that was reported to have targeted him. Israeli strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in the past few weeks, have shattered Hezbollah’s leadership. On Sunday, the Israeli foreign ministry said its air force killed Hezbollah commander, Hader Ali Taweel.

• At least 41,870 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s military offensive in Gaza since 7 October, according to latest figures released by Gaza’s health ministry on Sunday. The health ministry also reported at least 97,166 people have been injured. Thousands more are most likely lost in the rubble of the territory.

• Israel issued a new blanket evacuation order for all of the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, where hundreds of thousands of civilians remain. “We are in a new phase of the war,” the Israeli military said in leaflets dropped over the area. “These areas are considered dangerous combat zones.” Up to 300,000 people are estimated to have remained in the heavily destroyed north after earlier Israeli warnings that sent around a million people fleeing to the south, even though people say there is nowhere safe to go.

• For the first time in months, Israel sent a column of tanks into northern Gaza and launched major operations there, surrounding Jabalia, the largest of strip’s eight historic refugee camps. Gaza’s civil defence agency said 24 people were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a mosque in central Gaza early on Sunday. Witnesses said the number of casualties could rise as the mosque, near the Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah, was being used to house displaced people. The Israeli military said it was being used as a Hamas command centre.

• Palestinians across northern Gaza have been told to flee to al-Mawasi on the southern coast, a so-called “humanitarian area” where an estimated one million displaced people are sheltering. Mawasi, which has been the target of deadly Israeli airstrikes, is severely overcrowded and aid agencies struggle to provide even the most basic services. In May, an aid worker described to the Guardian the “horrific and dehumanising” conditions, with limited food, filthy and scarce water, overwhelmed healthcare facilities and almost no sanitation.

• The UN high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, said that Lebanon is seeing a “major displacement crisis” as a result of Israel’s escalating airstrikes, some of which have violated international law. About 40% of Lebanon’s 1.25 million school pupils have become displaced by ongoing Israeli attacks, Lebanon’s director general of education, Imad Achkar, said. The Lebanese government has said schools will postpone the start of the academic year due to intensifying Israeli airstrikes. Israeli strikes have forced 1.2 million people – almost a quarter of Lebanon’s population – from their homes, officials say. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) said 20,000 Palestinian refugees have been forcibly displaced by Israeli airstrikes on camps in Lebanon.

• Israeli authorities said they were on the lookout for attacks timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the 7 October attacks on Monday. One woman was killed and 10 people were wounded in the suspected terror attack on Sunday at the central bus station in Be’er Sheva, a city in the Negev desert in southern Israel, the second attack in the last week. Israel’s military reportedly said it anticipates possible long-range rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

• Syria’s defence ministry said Israel launched airstrikes on military positions in central Syria on Sunday, causing “material damage”. “Israeli strikes” targeted a “weapons depot south of Homs and a rockets depot in the eastern Hama countryside,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights War Monitor, told AFP.

• Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said his country is closely coordinating with the US as it prepares to strike back at Iran, but that Tel Aviv will make its own independent decisions about how to retaliate. Despite the US having made clear that it opposes a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, Gallant told CNN on Sunday that “everything is on the table”. Gallant is expected to visit the US this coming week where he is scheduled to meet with the US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin. In a statement on Sunday, Gallant warned Iran that it may end up like Gaza or Beirut if it attempts to harm Israel.

• The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said Washington will not stop putting pressure on Israeli and Arab leaders during ongoing diplomatic efforts. Harris was asked, in an interview with “60 Minutes” if the US has a “real close ally” in Netanyahu, to which she responded: “The better question is, do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people? The answer to that question is yes.”

• The last currently scheduled plane for British nationals leaving Lebanon landed in Birmingham airport on Sunday night. The flight was the fourth charter flight to have left Beirut for the UK. There are no further flights scheduled, the UK Foreign Office said, citing a reduction in demand but it said the situation will be “closely” monitored. In addition, the UK has advised its citizens on Sunday against all travel to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

• The UK government is advising Israel to show “restraint” as Keir Starmer warned that “sparks”’ from the Middle East conflict could “light touchpapers in our communities at home”. Peter Kyle, a UK cabinet minister, did not rule out the possibility of the UK military helping Israel attack Iran, but noted any “operational decision to be taken” would be based on “delicate negotiations”.

• A call by France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, for a halt in arms supplies to Israel for use in Gaza has been met with an angry rebuttal from Benjamin Netanyahu. “As Israel fights the forces of barbarism led by Iran, all civilised countries should be standing firmly by Israel’s side,” Netanyahu said in a statement. The pair spoke on Sunday in a call that the Élysée Palace described as “frank”.

• Thousands of protesters took to the streets in major cities around the world for a second day on Sunday to demand an end to bloodshed in Gaza and the wider Middle East as the start of Israel’s war in the Palestinian territory approaches its first anniversary. About 40,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through central London while thousands gathered in Paris, Rome, Manila, Cape Town, New York City, Sydney and Melbourne.