As it happened Israel-Iran conflict updates: IDF strikes Beirut again; Israeli soldiers killed fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon

Thanks for reading our live blog. This is where we’ll end today’s coverage.

To conclude, here’s a look back at the day’s major stories:

• The Middle East is nervously awaiting Israel’s response after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Iran “will pay” for launching almost 200 missiles at Israel on Tuesday in response to Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
• US President Joe Biden said he supported Israel’s right to defend itself, but he warned that any strike on Iran’s nuclear sites could move the region closer to a full-blown regional war.
• In the last few hours, the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of more towns in southern Lebanon, including provincial capital Nabatieh. It signals a possible broadening of Israel’s invasion.
• Foreign Minister Penny Wong announced the federal government has secured 80 seats for Australians wishing to leave Lebanon today, and a further 500 seats on flights to Cyprus leaving on Saturday.
• Last night in Beirut, an Israeli airstrike near the centre of the Lebanese capital killed nine people, including first responders from a Hezbollah-linked health organisation.
• In southern Lebanon, Hezbollah recently said it had detonated explosive device against Israeli forces as skirmishes continue on the ground.

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Tehran has criticised the Group of Seven (G7) for its condemnation of Iran’s attack on Israel this week, calling a G7 the statement issued on Wednesday “biased and irresponsible”.

The G7 leaders had expressed concern over the crisis in the Middle East, but said a diplomatic solution was still viable and that a region-wide conflict was in no one’s interest.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, said today (local time) that the G7 – in particular the US – was responsible for increasing insecurity and instability due to their “armament (and) financial and political support” of Israel.

The G7 is a political and economic intergovernmental bloc made up of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.

AP

Palestinians fear the crisis in Lebanon is diverting the world’s attention from Gaza and diminishing already dim prospects for a ceasefire a year into a war that has shattered the enclave.

An escalation in the conflict between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah over the past two weeks has fuelled fears of a wider regional war, but the death toll has continued to rise in Gaza as Israeli strikes killed dozens more people this week.

Palestinians mourn for relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip at a hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah on Wednesday morning.Credit: AP

“The focus is on Lebanon, which means the war in Gaza isn’t ending anytime soon,” said Hussam Ali, a 45-year-old Gaza City resident.

He told Reuters, via a chat app, his family had been displaced seven times since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began on October 7 last year.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel at the start of the Gaza war in support of Hamas, causing the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents whom Israel says need to return home. In Lebanon, nearly 1900 people have been killed and more than 9000 wounded in nearly a year of cross-border fighting, with most of the deaths occurring in the past two weeks, according to Lebanese government statistics.

The casualty figures are still a fraction of those in Gaza, where the health ministry says at least 41,788 Palestinians have been killed and 96,794 wounded since October 7 last year.

The Gaza war began after Hamas led a shock incursion into Israel, killing about 1200 people and taking more than 250 hostage.

Reuters

Lebanon’s army says Israel killed one of its soldiers as he tried to evacuate a village alongside the country’s Red Cross.

“One soldier was martyred and another was injured as a result of an attack by the Israeli enemy while carrying out an evacuation and rescue mission with the participation of the Lebanese Red Cross in the town of Taybeh - Marjeyoun,” the Lebanese army said according to a translation of an Arabic post on X.

The Lebanese army’s account of the incident couldn’t be immediately verified. Israel has not yet commented.

Lebanon’s health ministry has just said at least nine people were killed in an Israeli strike in central Beirut – up from seven confirmed fatalities earlier – as authorities also run DNA tests on remains to identify others.

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. The Lebanese health ministry said 14 others were wounded in the strike early today.

Hezbollah paramedic gear left on debris after an airstrike today.Credit: AP

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 frequent strikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs as well as occasional strikes in central Beirut have exacerbated Lebanon’s displacement crisis. The government estimated days ago that some one million people are currently displaced in the cash-strapped country.

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh.Credit: AP

Environment Minister Nasser Yassin, who is spearheading the government’s response efforts to the war, told local media that some 167,000 Syrians left Lebanon over the past 24 hours alone. The Associated Press could not independently confirm this figure.

AP

The Israeli military has ordered the evacuation of villages and towns in southern Lebanon that are north of a United Nations-declared buffer zone established after the 2006 war.

The warning issued today signalled a possible broadening of Israel’s incursion into southern Lebanon, which until now has been confined to areas close to the border.

The city of Nabatieh, the biggest in the south-eastern Lebanon governorate of the same name, was included in the order.

AP, Reuters with Lachlan Abbott

Israel has killed Abdel-Aziz Salha, a West Bank Hamas militant who had been jailed for life for taking part in the lynching of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in 2000 but was later deported to Gaza in a prisoner swap, Hamas media and medics said.

Salha was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a tent inside Al-Aklouk School, which shelters displaced Palestinians, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip earlier today, medics said.

From the archives: A Palestinian man stands on the rubble of what was a police station where a lynch mob murdered two Israeli soldiers on October 12, 2000.Credit: REUTERS

There has been no immediate Israeli comment on Salha’s death, and it was unclear if he had been deliberately targeted.

The 2000 killings took place in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where a mob set upon the two Israeli reservists who had been seized at a Palestinian checkpoint and taken to a police station, choking and beating them to death.

Israeli army undated handout photos show Vadim Nourezitz (left) and Yosef Avrahami (right), the two Israeli army reservists who were lynched to death in 2000.Credit: Reuters

Salha was arrested by Israel in 2001 and sentenced to a lifetime in prison.

He was freed along with more than 1000 other Palestinians in an October 2011 swap with Hamas for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had spent five years in captivity in Gaza.

Reuters

A consultant working for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has died from injuries sustained in an Israeli air attack on the Syrian capital Damascus earlier this week, an Iranian media outlet said today.

Iran’s Student News Network identified the consultant as Majid Divani, without giving further details.

Police stand guard at the site of an apparent Israeli airstrike in Damascus on Wednesday.Credit: AP

Meanwhile, Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee today accused the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah of smuggling weapons from Syria through the Masnaa border crossing.

Reuters

The Israeli military says it killed the head of the Hamas government in Gaza three months ago, but claimed the militant group didn’t announce the death at the time “to prevent loss of morale”.

In a joint statement posted on Telegram today, the Israel Defence Force and intelligence agency Shin Bet said it killed Rawhi Mushtaha in an airstrike while he was “hiding in a fortified and equipped underground compound in the northern Gaza Strip”.

Senior Hamas security officials Sameh al-Siraj and Sami Oudeh were also killed, Israel said.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas.

“Following the strike on the compound and the elimination of the terrorists, Hamas did not announce their deaths as it had done following previous eliminations, in order to prevent loss of morale and functioning of its terror operatives,” the Israeli statement today said.

“Rawhi Mushtaha was one of Hamas’ most senior operatives and had a direct impact on decisions relating to Hamas’ force deployment. Mushtaha was involved in military decisions while also acting as the head of Hamas civil governance in the Gaza Strip and holding the prisoners affairs portfolio.”

The IDF and Shin Bet said Mushtaha served a prison sentence with Yahya Sinwar, the paramount Hamas leader who is the top target of Israel after he helped mastermind the devastating October 7 attacks.

“Mushtaha was Sinwar’s right-hand man and one of his closest associates,” the Israeli military said today.

Sinwar is still thought to be alive and hiding underground in Gaza.

With Reuters, AP

An Israeli strike in the Lebanese capital Beirut killed seven health and rescue workers, an Islamic health organisation said.

Associated Press reported the airstrike in the residential Bashoura district targeted an apartment in a multi-storey building that houses an office of the Health Society, a group of civilian first responders affiliated to Hezbollah.

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, further south of another airstrike that hit Bachoura.Credit: AP

It was the closest strike to the central downtown district of Beirut, where the United Nations and government offices are located.

It was the second airstrike to hit central Beirut this week and the second to directly target the Health Society in 24 hours. No Israeli warning was issued to the area before it was hit.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike in central Beirut.

Israel has mostly concentrated its airstrikes in south and eastern Lebanon, as well as the southern suburbs of Beirut where Hezbollah has a strong presence, but its attacks have spanned the entire country and killed many civilians.

Beirut’s southern suburbs also saw heavy bombardment overnight in areas where the Israeli army had earlier issued a warning online for residents to evacuate.

AP