Israel-Iran latest: Biden says Israeli strikes on Iranian oil being discussed as 9 killed in hit on Beirut

A second UK government evacuation flight is on its way to Beirut. Up to 180 British citizens and their dependents are likely to board the charter jet to Birmingham via Bucharest.

Flight DN9999 will repeat the pattern of Wednesday’s first flight, and uses the same plane, belonging to the Romanian airline, Dan Air. It is a 15-year-old Airbus A320 – a standard low-cost jet equipped with 180 seats. After an overnight stop in Birmingham, it is heading back empty nonstop to Beirut.

On Thursday afternoon it is scheduled to depart from Beirut at 3.40pm, Lebanese time, with another technical stop at Bucharest to refuel and change crew.

More evacuation flights are planned. The government says they “will continue for as long as the security situation allows”.

Lebanon’s health ministry have said that at least nine people were killed in an Israeli strike in central Beirut.

DNA tests on remains are currently ongoing to identify those killed, while people were injured in the strike on an amartment building. Hezbollah said that seven paramedics and rescue workers from its medical arm the Islamic Health Committee were killed in the strike that hit its office in Bashoura.

Prior to the attack, the ministry said that 55 people were killed and 156 others were wounded in Israeli strikes over Lebanon on Wednesday.

The Israeli military have warned citizens in 25 more areas in southern Lebanon to evacuate and head north.

In a new update on social media, the Israel Defence Forces’ Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee urged civilians to “save your lives”.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the UN General Assembly in New York last Friday was a bombastic defence of Israel’s war in Gaza and the cross-border exchanges of fire with Hezbollah since 7 October.

The starkest message Netanyahu wanted to send was to Iran, Israel’s bitter enemy and supporter of both Hamas and Hezbollah. The Israeli leader warned that there was nowhere in Iran or across the Middle East at large that Israel’s military could not reach. It was a message that he would repeat on Monday just hours ahead of his forces crossing Israel’s northern border – the beginning of the first invasion into Lebanon since the 2006 war with Hezbollah.

But that UN speech would have sent an equally stark message to Washington. Less than 48 hours before his address, US officials were briefing that America, alongside a number of other allies, had thrashed out a proposal for a 21-day ceasefire. Washington felt secure enough to go public with it, with officials suggesting it would be a case of when, not if, both Israel and Hezbollah signed on.

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The UK government have chartered more flights to help UK nationals leave Lebanon, a day after an evacuation flight left Beirut.

The government said in a statement that the flights will continue as “long as the security situation allows” and that it’s working to increase capacity on commercial flights for British nationals.

Defence secretary John Healey visited a British military base on Cyprus on Wednesday, where around 700 troops, Foreign Office staff and Border Force officers have been deployed to help with evacuation plans.

British nationals and their spouses, partners and children under the age of 18 are eligible. Dependents who aren’t British nationals will need a valid visa granting a maximum six-month stay in the U.K.

At least 41,788 Palestinians have been killed and another 96,794 wounded by Israeli military action in Gaza since Oct. 7, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry have said.

Ninety-nine Palestinians have been killed and 169 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry said in a statement.

Medics said scores of people were killed a day before in an Israeli strike that hit a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City, while another struck the Al-Amal Orphan Society, which also houses displaced persons.

A consultant working for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has died after an Israeli air attack on the Syrian capital of Damascus on Monday, Iranian media has reported.

Iran’s Student News Network identified the advister as Majid Divani.

The attack appeared to be the same as one reported by Syrian state media, which said on Tuesday that three civilians were killed and nine others injured in the strike.

Syrian air defences intercepted “hostile targets” over the vicinity of Damascus three times in a row in one night, following explosions that were heard in the capital, state media said on Tuesday.

When asked about the reported attack, the Israeli military said on Tuesday that it does not comment on foreign media reports.

Lebanon’s prime minister Najib Mikati said about 1.2 million Lebanese had been displaced by Israeli attacks.

More than 300 of those displaced have taken shelter in a Beirut nightclub, once known for hosting glitzy parties and where staff are now using their guest-list clipboards to register residents.

“We’re trying to keep strong,” said Gaelle Irani, who was formally in charge of guest relations at Skybar, taking a brief break from finding people a corner to live in.

“Its just overwhelming. So overwhelming and sad. But just as this was a place for people to come enjoy themselves, it’s now a place to shelter people and we are doing everything we can to help and be there for them.”

The US Army is testing robot dogs mounted with AI-enabled rifles at a military facility in the Middle East amid rising tensions in the region, according to newly released images.

Photos shared by the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) show one such four-legged robot going over “rehearsals” at the Red Sand Dunes area near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which has a joint military research facility.

The quadrupedal unmanned vehicle can be seen mounted with what appears to be an AR-15/M16-pattern rifle on a rotating turret and resembles the robot system the US Army tested at Fort Drum, New York in August.

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