Middle East latest: Israel warns Iran it could end up like Gaza as it considers response to missile attack

Iran’s Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani has not been heard from since Israeli strikes on Beirut late last week. Qaani travelled to Lebanon after the killing last month of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike.

Here are some facts about Qaani:

- Tehran named Qaani the head of the Revolutionary Guards Corps’ overseas military-intelligence service after the United States assassinated his predecessor Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.

- Part of Qaani’s task in that post has been to manage Tehran’s paramilitary allies across the Middle East, as well as in other regions around the world.

- According to people familiar with both Qaani and Soleimani, as well as Western military and political analysts, Qaani has never commanded the same respect as his predecessor Soleimani or maintained the same close relationships among Iran’s allies in the Arab world.

- While Soleimani held the reins of the Quds Force during a time when Iran’s proxies - from Lebanese Hezbollah to Iraqi Shi’ite Muslim militias to the Houthis of Yemen - grew their power in the Middle East, Qaani has presided over their battering at the hands of Israeli spies and warplanes.

- Qaani became deputy commander of the Quds Force, the overseas arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, in 1997 when Soleimani became the Force’s chief commander.

- Qaani, 67, was born in Mashhad, a conservative Shi’ite Muslim religious city in northeastern Iran. He fought for the Revolutionary Guards during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

- Qaani has also had experience of overseas operations beyond Iran’s eastern borders, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. He does not speak Arabic, unlike Soleimani who spoke fluently with Iraqi militias and Hezbollah commanders.

Israel is not allowing a search for senior Hezbollah leader Hashem Safieddine to progress after it bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday, a Hezbollah official said on Sunday.

Safieddine’s fate remains unclear.

The group’s political official Mahmoud Qmati told Iraqi state television that picking a new Hezbollah head would take some time.

Iran’s Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani, who travelled to Lebanon after the killing last month of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike, has not been heard from since strikes on Beirut late last week, two senior Iranian security officials told Reuters.

One of the officials said Qaani was in Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as the Dahiyeh, during a strike that was reported to

The fourth charter flight for Britons wanting to leave Lebanon has left Beirut, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has said.

In a post on X on Sunday evening, the FCDO said that in the last week the UK has “helped over 430 people to leave Lebanon”.

“Our fourth UK charter flight has now left Beirut. Due to reduced demand, no further flights are scheduled, but we will continue to monitor the situation closely,” the post said.

A year since the start of the war in Gaza, Israel is still blocking a ceasefire agreement despite Hamas’s flexibility, Hamas chief negotiator and deputy Gaza chief Khalil Al-Hayya said in a televised speech shown on Hamas Aqsa television on Sunday.

He urged countries to stop what he called their “double-standards” over Gaza and Lebanon.

The U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said in a statement on Sunday it was deeply concerned by what it called Israel’s “recent activities” adjacent to the mission’s position inside Lebanon.

It came after Israeli air attacks battered Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight and early on Sunday in the most intense bombardment of the Lebanese capital since Israel sharply escalated its campaign against Iran-backed group Hezbollah.

During the night, the blasts sent booms across Beirut and sparked flashes of red and white for nearly 30 minutes visible from several kilometres away.

It was the single biggest attack of Israel’s assault on Beirut so far, witnesses and military analysts on local TV channels said.

“Last night was the most violence of all the previous nights. Buildings were shaking around us and at first I thought it was an earthquake. There were dozens of strikes - we couldn’t count them all - and the sounds were deafening,” said Hanan Abdullah, a resident of the Burj al-Barajneh area.

Israel is responsible for a record journalist death toll, the Committee Protect Journalists has said, adding that at least 128 journalists and media workers, all but five of them Palestinian, have been killed since 7 October 2023.

That is more journalists killed in the course of any year since they started documenting in 1992, the group added. All of the killings bar two were carried about the Israeli forces.

“By comparison, 56 journalists were killed in Iraq in 2006 – the next deadliest year. The targeted or indiscriminate killing of journalists, if committed deliberately or recklessly, is a war crime,” the group said in a statement.

It added that it found that at least five journalists were specifically targeted by Israel for their work and is investigating at least 10 more cases of deliberate targeting. Two Israeli journalists were killed in the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas militants.

Overnight Saturday another journalist - Hassan Hamad - was killed in north Gaza during a night of heavy Israeli strikes. Maha Hussaini - strategy director at Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor - said on X Hamad had received threats from Israeli numbers, via both text and calls, ordering him to stop filming prior to his death.

The families of the hostages taken on 7 October last year into Gaza gathered on Saturday night just three kilometres from the enclave near the sites of the Hamas attack to demand the Israeli government sign a ceasefire deal immediately.

There they chanted “bring them home now” and held 365 seconds of silence to mark the number of days the remaining 100 or so hostages have been in Gaza.

Kobi Ben Ami, 54 the younger brother of Ohad, 55, who was speaking at the event, told The Independent the families were “stuck in the 7 October 2023" until their loved ones are brought home.

Ohad Ben Ami and his wife Raz, 57, were seized by Hamas militants from their home in Kibbutz Beer’i. The family only realised Ohad was among the hostages when a photo of him being dragged into Gaza in his underwear appeared on social media networks. Raz was released in an earlier prisoner-hostage swap after 54 gruelling days inside Gaza and her family say she is still suffering from medical complications.

“I’m still there in 7 October because it’s been a year and he is still not here,” Kobi said, explaining his house was attacked by militants on 7 October and he survived by hiding in his bomb shelter.

“As long as they are there in Gaza then we are there as well. We don’t have a routine or breaks all we do is work to get him freed,” he added .

“Then facts speak for themselves. We don’t know all the information we are not sitting in the government but the bottom line is it has been a year and they are still not home. As long as the hostages are not here it is the responsibility of the government.”

“People are dying every day - every minute we stand here could be the next murder.”

Israeli air attacks battered Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight and early on Sunday, the most intense bombardment of the Lebanese capital since Israel sharply escalated its campaign against Iran-backed group Hezbollah last month.

During the night, the blasts sent booms across Beirut and sparked flashes of red and white for nearly 30 minutes visible from several kilometres away.

It was the single biggest attack of Israel‘s assault on Beirut so far, witnesses and military analysts on local TV channels said.

On Sunday a grey haze hung over the city and rubble was strewn across streets in the southern suburbs, while smoke columns rose over the area.

“Last night was the most violence of all the previous nights. Buildings were shaking around us and at first I thought it was an earthquake. There were dozens of strikes - we couldn’t count them all - and the sounds were deafening,” said Hanan Abdullah, a resident of the Burj al-Barajneh area in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

A blast was heard in a factory in the Syrian city of Homs, the state news agency reported on Sunday, adding that the cause is still being investigated.