Middle East live: 28 killed, 54 wounded in Israeli strike on Gaza school as Lebanon peace talks ‘intensify’

The US has called on Israel to urgently address the “catastrophic conditions” in Gaza and stop “intensifying suffering” by limiting the delivery of aid.

Speaking to the UN security council, US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said: “These catastrophic conditions were predicted months ago, and yet, have still not been addressed. That must change, and now.”

Ms Thomas-Greenfield added that there must be “no demographic or territorial change” in the Gaza strip, The Guardian reported.

Israeli tanks attacked northern Gaza with force this week, stating they were preventing Hamas from regrouping.

Israeli strikes on the southern Lebanese town of Derdghaiya have killed five health workers, according to authorities.

The total number of health workers is now 115 since Israel began its bombardment and subsequent invasion last month, the BBC reports.

A makeshift emergency response centre in a church hall was hit by an Israeli strike, killing at least five, with more possible under the rubble.

The Lebanese government says such attacks violate the laws of war.

The Israeli military said one of their reserve soldiers was killed during fighting with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

Sgt Maj Ronny Ganizate of the Alon Brigade’s 5030th Battalion is the 12th Israeli soldier killed in the ground invasion in Lebanon.

Another reserve soldier from the same battalion was critically wounded in the fighting and rushed to a hospital, the Israel Defense Forces said.

At least one journalist was killed in northern Gaza as the Israeli army was accused of attacking a group of reporters in Jabalia refugee camp.

Al-Aqsa TV photojournalist Mohammad Al-Tanani was killed and reporter Tamer Lubbad was injured in the Abu Sharakh roundabout area of Jabalia, the network said yesterday.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera said its photojournalist Fadi Al-Wahidi was also injured by Israeli army gunfire while reporting on the latest ground invasion.

The “gunfire was directed at the Al Jazeera team, injuring its photojournalist Fadi Al-Wahidi with a bullet to the neck during coverage,” said Anas Al-Sharif, an Al Jazeera correspondent.

The Israeli military said it has killed two Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon and its fighter jets attacked ammunition depots in the Beirut area and ammunition depots and other military infrastructures in southern Lebanon

.Ground clashes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, which is also backed by Iran, spread along southern Lebanon’s mountainous frontier yesterday as the Middle East was on high alert awaiting Israel’s response to an Iranian missile strike last week.

Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon has killed more than 2,100 people, most of them in the last few weeks, and forced 1.2 million from their homes, according to the Lebanese government.

Hezbollah has dropped the demand for a truce in Gaza as a condition for reaching a ceasefire in Lebanon, rowing back from an often-repeated promise to keep fighting until Israel halts its offensive against Hamas.

Ever since Hezbollah began launching missiles across Lebanon’s border, Hezbollah officials have consistently said they would not stop until Israel ended the war in Gaza.

Naim Qassem, the deputy leader of Hezbollah, broke that link in a televised speech, even as he promised to continue to stand with Hamas and Palestinians in their battle with Israel.

“We support the political activity being led by [Nabih] Berri under the title of a ceasefire,” Qassem said. “If the enemy (Israel) continues its war, then the battlefield will decide.”

At least 400,000 people remain trapped in northern Gaza, the UN has said, as Israeli forces press on with a raid on the Jabalia refugee camp.

The commissioner general of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, has warned that tens of thousands of people have nowhere to go despite evacuation orders from the Israeli army.

The Israeli military says the raid, now in its fifth day, is intended to stop Hamas fighters staging further attacks from Jabalia and to prevent them regrouping.

Rachel Hagan reports.

Lebanon yesterday said it arrested two Syrians on suspicion of being spies for Israel as Benjamin Netanyahu’s troops continue to pound southern Beirut.

The Lebanese army intelligence arrested two Syrians “for photographing different places... and documenting the results of enemy air strikes”, the military said on X.

The Lebanese army said the arrests were “a result of surveillance and follow-up of Israeli spy networks and enemy agents”.

The duo had documented “search and rescue operations and the recovery of bodies” at Israeli strike sites and were “recruited through social media”, it added.

Over 2,000 Turkish citizens and some foreign nationals started boarding a Turkish military ship that brought in aid last night and will take them out of Lebanon.

Zehra Cibbin, an ethnic Arab from the southeastern Turkish city of Mardin who lives in Beirut with her Lebanese husband, got off a bus packed with the other evacuees, her two children in tow and luggage in hand.

“It’s indescribable. They bombed the street below our house. From that moment on, it was over for me, I said I didn’t want to stay in Beirut anymore,” Ms Cibbin, 46, told the Associated Press.

Apart from the Turkish citizens, people from Bulgaria, Romania and Kazakhstan were among those who applied to evacuate on the ships.

Officials did not provide numbers.“Israel’s aggression has severely impacted Lebanon and our brothers here,” said Ali Baris Ulusoy, the Turkish ambassador to Lebanon.