Middle East latest: Fireballs light up Beirut sky during Israeli attacks as Haifa hit by rockets

Hamas' armed wing al-Qassam Brigades confirmed death of one of its commanders Zahi Yaser Oufi in an Israeli strike on the West Bank city of Tulkarm along with seven other fighters, the group said in a statement on Friday.

The Israeli military said that it killed Oufi, head of the Hamas network in Tulkarm, in an attack on Thursday.

More than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon as a result of the conflict in the past year, most of them in the past two weeks, according to the Lebanese government, which has not broken down the overall figure to detail the numbers of civilians and Hezbollah fighters killed.

The Lebanese government has accused Israel of targeting civilians, pointing to the dozens of women and children killed.

Israeli officials say the military precisely targets Hezbollah's military capabilities and takes steps to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians. It accuses the group of hiding among civilians, which the group denies.

Prior to the deaths of two Israeli soldiers in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights announced by the military on Friday, Hezbollah had killed 47 people - soldiers and civilians - over the past year, according to data published on Sept. 2 by Alma, an Israeli think tank specializing in Hezbollah.

An American killed in Lebanon this week was a US citizen, a State Department spokesperson said on Friday, adding that Washington was working to understand the circumstances of the incident.

Kamel Ahmad Jawad, from Dearborn, Michigan, was killed in Lebanon in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday, according to his daughter, a friend and the US congresswoman representing his district.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller earlier this week said it was Washington's understanding that Jawad was a legal permanent resident, not an American citizen. On Friday, the department said that he was a US citizen.

"We are aware and alarmed of reports of the death of Kamel Jawad, who we have confirmed is a US citizen," the spokesperson said.

"As we have noted repeatedly, it is a moral and strategic imperative that Israel take all feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm. Any loss of civilian life is a tragedy."

Israel says it is targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, who have been firing rockets into Israel since the war in Gaza began a year ago.

Its recent military campaign in Lebanon has killed hundreds and wounded thousands, according to the Lebanese government, which has not said how many of the casualties were civilians versus Hezbollah members. The Israeli bombardment has also driven more than 1.2 million Lebanese from their homes.

The governor of Michigan has urged the US government to do more to rescue Americans stuck in Lebanon, many of them from Michigan, during Israel's military offensive in the country.

Israel carried out another series of punishing airstrikes Friday, hitting suburban Beirut and cutting off the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria for tens of thousands of people fleeing the Israeli bombardment of the Hezbollah militant group.

The overnight blasts in Beirut's southern suburbs sent huge plumes of smoke and flames into the night sky and shook buildings kilometers (miles) away in the Lebanese capital. Additional strikes sent people running for cover in streets littered with rubble in the Dahiyeh neighborhood, where at least one building was leveled and cars were burned out.

The Israeli military said it targeted Hezbollah's central intelligence headquarters around midnight. It did not say who it was aiming for or if any militants were killed in that strike, but it claimed to have killed 100 Hezbollah fighters in the last 24 hours.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported more than 10 consecutive airstrikes in the area. Some 1,400 Lebanese, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed and some 1.2 million driven from their homes since Israel escalated its strikes in late September aiming to cripple Hezbollah and push it away from the countries' shared border.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched about 100 rockets into Israel on Friday, the Israel military said.

The Israeli military also said that a strike in Beirut the day before killed Mohammed Rashid Skafi, the head of Hezbollah's communications division. The military said in a statement that Skafi was "a senior Hezbollah terrorist who was responsible for the communications unit since 2000" and was "closely affiliated" with high-up Hezbollah officials.

Thursday's strike along the Lebanon-Syria border, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Beirut, led to the closure of the road near the busy Masnaa Border Crossing — the first time it has been cut off since Hezbollah and Israel began trading fire almost a year ago.

Israel said it targeted the crossing because it was being used by Hezbollah to transport military equipment across the border. It said fighter jets had struck a tunnel used to smuggle weapons from Iran and other proxies into Lebanon.

Hezbollah is believed to have received much of its weaponry through Syria from Iran, its main backer.

The US military said it carried out 15 strikes on Friday against targets linked to Iran-aligned Houthi fighters in Yemen, where residents reported blasts at military outposts and even an airport.

Central Command, which oversees US forces in the Middle East, said the targets were tied to Houthi offensive military capabilities, but did not detail whether that included missile, drone or radar capabilities.

In a post on X, Central Command said the strikes took place at about 2pm (GMT).

The Houthis have carried out nearly 100 attacks on ships crossing the Red Sea since November and say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Israel's year-long war in Gaza. They have sunk two vessels, seized another and killed at least four seafarers.

Al Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by the Houthi movement controlling much of Yemen, and residents said airstrikes were launched at several parts of Yemen including its capital Sanaa and Hodeidah airport.

Strikes also targeted the south of Dhamar city and the southeast of al-Bayda province, the channel added.

Residents said that the attack on al-Bayda province targeted several Houthi military outposts.

The Biden administration has been acting mostly defensively against Houthi strikes in the Red Sea, usually moving to intercept drone and missile attacks against commercial vessels and US warships.

It has also struck Houthi military infrastructure with less frequency and avoided broader targets in Yemen, as it seeks to contain fallout from the nearly year-old Israel-Hamas war.

The British government said it has chartered a flight to leave Lebanon on Sunday to support its citizens looking to leave the country.

"There are no more scheduled flights, although we will continue to keep this under review," Britain's foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday, adding that more than 250 British nationals have left Lebanon on flights chartered by the government.

Democrats fear Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is escalating tensions in the Middle East in order to influence the U.S. election.

This past week, Israel has increased its attack on Lebanon, targeting the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, and vowed to make Iran “pay” for its recent missile attack.

Democratic Senator Christ Murphy, of Connecticut told CNN he fears Netanyahu is being strategic in launching attacks right before the November election.

Ariana Baio reports:

US President Joe Biden has said he would think about alternatives to striking Iranian oil fields if he were in Israel's shoes, adding he thinks Israel has not yet concluded how to respond to Iran.

"The Israelis have not concluded what they are going to do in terms of a strike. That's under discussion," Biden said in remarks to reporters at a White House press briefing on Friday.

"If I were in their shoes, I'd be thinking about other alternatives than striking oilfields," the president added.

Tensions between Iran and Israel have been high as Israel has been weighing options to respond to Tehran's ballistic missile attack on Tuesday, which Iran had carried out in response to Israel's military action in Lebanon.

Biden was also asked if he thought that by not engaging in diplomacy, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was trying to influence the 5 November US election in which Republican former President Donald Trump faces Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

"Whether he is trying to influence the election, I don't know, but I am not counting on that," Biden said in response. "No administration has done more to help Israel than I have."

Israel has claimed to have targeted Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut as it carried out strikes against the militant group’s leadership – with Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowing that Tehran and its proxies will not back down.

The air attack on Beirut, part of a wide assault that has driven more than 1.2 million Lebanese residents from their homes, is reported to have targeted the potential successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah who was assassinated by Israel a week ago.

Hashem Safieddine’s fate is unclear, and neither Israel nor Hezbollah has offered any comment. Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said on Friday afternoon that the military was still assessing the damage caused by the airstrikes in southern Beirut. He added that the army had “eliminated” approximately 250 Hezbollah operatives, including four battalion commanders and nine company commanders.

The Independent’s international correspondent Bel Trew reports from Jerusalem along with international editor Chris Stevenson:

The ruins of a coffee shop in the West Bank city of Tulkarm show the force of the airstrike on Thursday night that killed at least 18 people including a senior local commander of the militant group Hamas.

The strike in Tulkarm refugee camp, one of the most densely populated in the occupied West Bank, destroyed the ground floor shop entirely, leaving rescue workers picking through piles of concrete with the smell of blood still hanging in the air.

Two holes in an upper level show where the missile penetrated the three-storey building before reaching the coffee shop, where a mechanical digger was clearing rubble on Friday.

The strike by the Israeli air force was the largest seen in the West Bank during operations that have escalated sharply since the start of the war in Gaza almost a year ago, and one of the biggest since the second "intifada" uprising two decades ago.

"We haven't heard this sound since 2002," said Nimer Fayyad, owner of the cafe, whose brother was killed in the strike. "There is no safe place for the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves."

The Israeli military said the strike killed Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, head of the Hamas network in Tulkarm, a volatile city in the northern West Bank that has seen repeated clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinian fighters.

Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said the military had verified that at least seven militants were killed in the attack, including Ghaith Radwan, a prominent commander from the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad militant group.

He said the strike had been carried out "as they met to plan a terrorist attack against the State of Israel in the immediate term".

The United Nations Human Rights Office said the attack was "part of a highly concerning pattern of unlawful use of force" by Israel in the West Bank.