Israel-Hezbollah latest: Netanyahu says would-be Hezbollah leader Safieddine killed in airstrike

China will provide emergency medical supplies to Lebanon, China’s official foreign aid agency said this morning.

Li Ming, the spokesperson for the China International Development Cooperation Agency, said in a statement that as the fighting escalated recently, explosions and air strikes “have occurred in many places in Lebanon, causing a large number of casualties”.

“At the request of the Lebanese government, the Chinese government has decided to provide emergency humanitarian medical supplies to Lebanon to help Lebanon carry out medical assistance,” the statement said.

There is no evidence to suggest that Iran has decided to build a nuclear weapon, said CIA director William Burns, adding the US and its allies would be able to detect such a step.

Mr Burns said Iran has advanced its nuclear program by stockpiling uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels and could quickly secure enough fissile material for an atomic bomb.

“No, we do not see evidence today that the supreme leader has reversed the decision that he took at the end of 2003 to suspend the weaponisation program,” Mr Burns said at the Cipher Brief security conference in Sea Island.

The Israeli military today said it killed Suhail Hussein Husseini, the commander of Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut.

The military claimed Husseini was a partner in the weapons transfer agreements between Iran and Hezbollah and was responsible for the distribution of the smuggled weapons between the various units in Hezbollah.

The US warned Israel not to attack the airport in Lebanon’s capital or the roads leading to it after Israel intensified its bombardment of southern Beirut around the one-year anniversary of the 7 October Hamas attack.

“We think it’s very important that not only the airport be open, but that the roads to the airport be open,” state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said yesterday.

He added the airport and the road around it needed to be spared so that the American and other foreign citizens “who want to leave can get out” of Lebanon safely.

The Israeli air force yesterday struck the southern suburbs of Beirut, near the international airport, security sources told AFP.

Mr Miller said some 8,500 Americans have contacted the state department to inquire about departure conditions, but this does not mean they all wish to leave.

One year on from the Hamas terrorist attack that sparked 12 months of intense conflict in the Middle East, Donald Trump has said that Israel needs to “get smart” and support him.

The former president appeared to complain that he was not being backed by Israel, claiming in typical fashion that he had done more for the nation and Jewish people “than anybody.”

Trump phoned into conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt’s show, and was asked if he thought Israel would be able to fully recover after its war. The former president replied that Israel “would be good.”

“I think that Israel has to do one thing. They have to get smart about Trump, because they don’t back me,” he said.

Mike Bedigan reports.

Israel has detained at least 108 Palestinian journalists from Gaza and the occupied West Bank since it launched its war on Gaza a year ago, a rights group has said.

About 58 journalists still remain in Israeli custody, including six women journalists and 22 from Gaza, said the Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, also known as Addameer.

The group said at least 16 journalists were being held under administrative detention.

More than 9000 orders of administrative detention have been issued since 7 October last year, including orders against children and women, the group claimed.

At least 21 people, including five children and two women, were killed in Israeli airstrikes in central Gaza last night, according to Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital.

The strikes took place on the anniversary of the 7 October Hamas attack in southern Israel.

Two strikes hit houses in the Bureij refugee camp as emergency responders said more people are thought to be under the rubble.

The Palestinian death toll in the war in Gaza is nearing 42,000, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Strip.

Sir Keir Starmer used the first anniversary of Hamas’s barbaric terrorist attack on Israel to urge the international community to turn its focus on the “malign” regime in Iran.

In a carefully crafted statement in the Commons to commemorate the 7 October atrocity, which sparked war in the Middle East, Sir Keir’s message to MPs was that the ayatollahs who rule Iran must be held to account and forced to take responsibility for the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the region.

He said his government “will never stop selling weapons to Israel”, despite calls from French president Emmanuel Macron for a full arms embargo.

His words came as Sir Keir resisted calls to distance himself from Israel after its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened up a new front in the north against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists in southern Lebanon.

David Maddox reports: