Middle East latest: Rescue workers pull 30 bodies from apartments in Lebanon after Israeli strike

Lebanon’s Civil Defense service says they have pulled 30 bodies from the rubble of an apartment building that Israel struck the night before. Search efforts were ongoing Wednesday, and it was unclear how many survivors or bodies were still trapped under the rubble.

The airstrike Tuesday night came without warning. There was no statement from the Israeli military on the strike, and it was not immediately clear what the intended target was.

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in a surprise announcement that sparked protests across the country. Gallant’s replacement is Foreign Minister Israel Katz, a longtime Netanyahu loyalist and veteran Cabinet minister.

While Netanyahu has called for continued military pressure on Hamas, Gallant said military force created the necessary conditions for at least a temporary diplomatic deal that could bring home hostages held by the militant group.

The Israel-Hamas war began after Palestinian militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others. Israel's military response in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 people, Palestinian health officials say. They do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of those killed were women and children.

Since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted in 2023, at least 3,000 people have been killed and some 13,500 wounded in Lebanon, the Health Ministry reported. A report by Lebanon’s crisis response unit said 361,300 Syrians and over 177,800 Lebanese crossed into Syria between Sept. 23 and Nov. 1.

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Here’s the latest:

Airstrikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs, including one on site adjacent to airport

BEIRUT —Several large airstrikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs early Thursday, including one on a site adjacent to Lebanon’s only international airport.

The Israeli military had earlier issued an evacuation notice for the site saying that there were “Hezbollah facilities” there without giving more details.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Beirut’s airport has not been directly targeted in the war between Israel and Hezbollah, and national air carrier Middle East Airlines has continued to operate commercial flights.

Israeli military says it allowed 231 patients and their caregivers to evacuate Gaza

JERUSALEM - The Israeli military says it has allowed 231 patients and their caregivers to evacuate the Gaza Strip for medical treatment abroad.

COGAT, the military body in charge of civilian affairs in Gaza, said Wednesday that they left through the Kerem Shalom Crossing with Israel.

It says 78 patients and 132 caregivers traveled to the United Arab Emirates, and six patients and 15 caregivers went to Romania.

The operation was coordinated with the World Health Organization, the European Union and the UAE, which forged diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020.

Israel has controlled all of Gaza’s border crossings since it invaded the southern city of Rafah, on the Egyptian border, in May.

The Israel-Hamas war, now in its second year, has gutted Gaza’s health system, with less than half of its hospitals even partially functioning.

Hezbollah rocket attack kills foreign worker in Israel

JERUSALEM — Israeli medics say a foreign worker was killed in a Hezbollah rocket attack. The Magen David Adom rescue service said the worker’s body was found near the northern city of Acre after a rocket barrage from Lebanon on Wednesday. It did not give a nationality.

Hezbollah has stepped up its rocket fire into Israel since war broke out in September after nearly a year of lower-level conflict linked to the fighting in Gaza. Israel has been carrying out waves of airstrikes and invaded Lebanon in early October.

Rocket attacks last week killed seven people, including four Thai farm workers.

Israeli airstrike lands close to Roman ruins at Baalbek

BEIRUT — An Israeli airstrike landed dangerously close to Baalbek’s UNESCO-listed Roman ruins, a revered heritage site with some of the largest and best-preserved Roman temples outside of Rome, a Lebanese local official said.

“This is the closest raid on Baalbek Temple since the beginning of the aggression, as a missile fell inside the castle’s parking lot,” the governor of Baalbek-Hermel province, Bachir Khodr, said in a post on X. “The temple has not yet been inspected to determine if there is any damage inside it.”

Footage captured by a resident in Baalbek showed thick smoke rising from the impact site, with panic gripping the scene as she repeatedly says, “(it hit) right at the temple.”

Since early last week, the Israeli army has been bombarding various areas in Baalbek-Hermel, killing dozens, after having issued several evacuation warnings for the entire city of Baalbek and its surroundings. The maps attached with the evacuation warning included the Roman ruins.

Concerns have been mounting that further strikes may impact the ancient temples, which have survived nearly two millennia. On Wednesday, 38 people were killed while 54 others were wounded across various areas in northeastern Lebanon amid intensified airstrikes throughout the day, Khodr said in a separate post on X, adding that operations to save more victims from under the rubble are still ongoing.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said that 37 people were killed and 105 wounded in Lebanon on Tuesday, raising the total toll over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah to 3,050 killed and 13,658 wounded.

UN completes vaccinating overwhelming majority of children in Gaza against polio

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — United Nations agencies say they have completed the administration of a second dose of polio vaccine to the overwhelming majority of children in the Gaza Strip.

In all, 556,774 children under the age of 10 received the second dose, the World Health Organization and the U.N. children’s agency said in a statement Wednesday. That amounts to 94% of the total population that age in the territory, “a remarkable achievement given the extremely difficult circumstances,” they said.

But they also said coverage only reached 88% in northern Gaza, where Israel has been waging a major operation over the past month. An estimated 7,000 to 10,000 children in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya were inaccessible, the agencies said.

The first dose was administered across all parts of Gaza in September. The U.N. said both sides largely observed humanitarian pauses to allow the vaccinations to proceed.

At least two doses and a minimum of 90% vaccination coverage are needed to prevent the spread of the disease in a given community, according to the agencies.

The campaign was launched after the first polio case was reported in Gaza in 25 years — a 10-month-old boy, now paralyzed in the leg.

UNRWA head urges action to stop Israel from banning its operations in Gaza and the West Bank

UNITED NATIONS – The head of the U.N. agency that is a lifeline for Palestinian refugees is urging the world’s nations to take action to prevent Israel from implementing a ban on its operations in Gaza and the West Bank, warning it will have “disastrous consequences” for millions of people caught in the ongoing war.

Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the agency known as UNRWA, told the 193-member General Assembly Wednesday that the ban “will collapse the U.N. humanitarian response” in Gaza, end education for 650,000 boys and girls in the enclave, and severely harm the lives and future of Palestinians.

Philemon Yang, president of the General Assembly which established UNRWA in 1949, said Israel’s legislation, which takes effect in 90 days, “constitutes an intolerable affront to the authority of this assembly, an affront to international law and, most importantly, an affront to the human dignity of innocent Palestinian civilians.”

He warned that dismantling UNRWA will also undermine the pursuit of a lasting solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict and constitute “an attack on the foundations of a two-state solution.”

Yang said the assembly extended UNRWA’s mandate in December 2022 by an overwhelming majority until June 30, 2026, and urgently called on Israel to comply with its international legal obligations, the U.N. Charter and U.N. resolutions.

Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon reiterated Israeli accusations that UNRWA is riddled with supporters of Hamas which masterminded the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in southern Israel and fosters terrorism and claimed it is not the backbone of humanitarian operations in Gaza and must be eliminated.

Sitting next to released Israeli hostage Mia Schem in the assembly chamber, Danon strongly criticized the General Assembly and all other U.N. bodies for failing to condemn Hamas or to hold a single session dedicated to the hostages.

Israeli strikes kill at least 15 people in northern Gaza

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip - Palestinian medical officials say Israeli strikes have killed at least 15 people in the Gaza Strip.

A strike hit a house in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, killing at least six people from the same family, according to the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service. The dead include a mother and her three children, as well as the children’s grandmother and uncle, according to a list provided by the service.

In the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya, also in northern Gaza, al-Awda Hospital said it received the bodies of five men killed in an Israeli strike.

Another strike in central Gaza killed four people and wounded 17 others, according to the al-Awda Hospital in the built-up Nuseriat refugee camp. It said rescuers were still searching through the rubble.

The military says it only targets militants and tries to avoid harming civilians. It rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.

Israel has been waging a major offensive over the past month in northern Gaza, the most heavily destroyed and isolated part of the territory, where it says Hamas has regrouped.

Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands driven from their homes.

Attack in the West Bank leaves 2 lightly wounded

JERUSALEM — Israeli authorities say two people were lightly wounded in a car-ramming and stabbing attack in the West Bank on Wednesday.

The military said the attacker was killed.

Palestinians have carried out scores of stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks against Israelis in recent years, and tensions have spiked across the region since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of Gaza ignited the war there.

Israel has carried out near-daily military raids in the West Bank that have killed hundreds of Palestinians. Most appear to have been militants killed in gunbattle, but the dead also include people killed during violent protests as well as civilian bystanders.

Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want both territories to be part of their future state.

Hezbollah leader says group is not concerned with results of US election

BEIRUT — Hezbollah’s leader Naim Kassem said in a speech aired Wednesday the Lebanese militant group “is not basing its expectations on the results of the American elections.”

“We will make the enemy seek to demand an end to the aggression,” Kassem said, speaking from an undisclosed location in a pre-recorded televised address. “Our military capabilities are available for a long time, and we do not rely on the results of the American elections.”

His speech marked the 40-day mourning period since former Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated in Beirut.

“Whether Harris wins or Trump wins, they have no value to us,” Kassem said.

He said that Hezbollah is open for cease-fire negotiations only once “the enemy stops its aggression.”

“The only thing that will stop the war is the battlefield,” he said.

U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein visited Israel nearly a week ago, raising hopes for an imminent cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel. However, he immediately returned to the U.S. without traveling to Lebanon, which many saw as a sign of a setback.

As Kassem spoke, the Israeli army issued evacuation warnings for three buildings in Burj al-Barajneh, a district in Beirut’s southern suburbs with a strong Hezbollah presence. Since the hostilities escalation, the suburb has faced repeated Israeli strikes, which have leveled hundreds of buildings.

Hezbollah rockets target Israel, reaching as far as Tel Aviv and central city of Raanana

JERUSALEM — Sirens blared across northern and central Israel on Wednesday, including in the populous metropolitan area of Tel Aviv, as Hezbollah launched 10 rockets towards Israel.

Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue services said there were no reports of injuries.

A large portion of a rocket slammed into a parked car in the central Israeli city of Raanana. Rockets also struck an open area near Israel’s main airport, Israeli media reported, though the airport said flights were operating as normally.

Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue services said there were no injuries. Israeli police said they arrested 40 people during protests on Tuesday night when the demonstrators blocked Israel’s main highway in Tel Aviv.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah continues to send dozens of rockets and drones towards Israel. The projectiles have killed 72 people in Israel so far, including 30 soldiers, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

30 bodies are pulled from the rubble of a Lebanon apartment building struck by Israel

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Civil Defense service said Wednesday they have pulled 30 bodies and remains out of the rubble of an apartment building in the town of Barja that Israel struck the night before. Search efforts were ongoing.

The airstrike Tuesday hit an area that had not been regularly targeted by Israeli military operations. It came without warning. There was no statement from the Israeli military on the strike, and it was not immediately clear what the intended target was.

Civil defense official Mostafa Danaj said it was unclear how many survivors or bodies were still trapped under the rubble.

“We hope that there isn’t anyone else, but the neighbors have said that there are still people (missing),” he said.

Israeli forces and the Hezbollah militant group have been clashing for more than a year, since Hezbollah started firing rockets across the border on Oct. 8, 2023 — a day after the deadly Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel sparked the war in Gaza. The war on the Lebanese front has substantially escalated since mid-September, with Israel launching a massive aerial bombardment of much of Lebanon and a ground invasion.

More than 3,000 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon, the vast majority of them since Sept. 23. Israel has said it targets Hezbollah militants and weapons caches, but hundreds of civilians have also been killed.