Israel threatens residents of Lebanon’s Baalbek to leave

The Israeli army has issued forced displacement orders for residents of Lebanon’s eastern city of Baalbek and the towns of Ain Bourday and Douris.

The military “will act forcefully against Hezbollah interests inside your city and villages and does not intend to harm you”, read a statement posted on X, showing a map with the areas to be evacuated.

“For your safety, you must evacuate your homes immediately,” it said, indicating two main roads to be used.

Israel’s latest threat includes Roman ruins area in Lebanon

The Israeli military’s newest forced displacement order in the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek includes its 3,000-year-old Roman ruins. The city, which was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984, is home to some of the best-preserved Roman temples.

Residents flee Lebanon’s Baalbek after Israel forced displacement warning

Residents of Baalbek rushed out of their homes after the Israeli army ordered Lebanon’s main eastern city and its outskirts evacuated for the first time in more than a month of war. The main roads out of the city were jammed with vehicles as civilians fled in panic, an AFP correspondent reported.

Civil defence vehicles drove around the city, urging everyone to leave immediately over loudspeakers. “The city is almost empty,” the correspondent said about an hour after the evacuation warning.

Hezbollah says targeted Israeli base in Haifa

Hezbollah has said it launched drones at an Israeli base in the port city of Haifa in the country’s north. The group “launched an air attack at 7:45 am (05:45 GMT) … with a squadron of attack drones” on a “base in southern Haifa,” the group said in a statement.

Two injured arrive at Haifa hospital after Hezbollah rocket attack

Two people injured by shrapnel from a Hezbollah-fired rocket in Metula have been transferred to Rambam Hospital in the Israeli city of Haifa.

The hospital released footage on its Telegram account that showed a helicopter landing and transferring the injured individuals following a projectile fall in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon.

The hospital clarified in a statement that the two injured people were wounded by shrapnel due to the projectile fall and that they are not military personnel. One of them is in mild to moderate condition while the other is in serious condition, including a foreign worker.

Car in Lebanon’s Baabda on fire after Israeli drone attack

Lebanese media outlets have released footage, verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad agency, of a car on fire after an Israeli drone attack in the Araya area of Baabda district in Mount Lebanon Governorate. Lebanese army personnel closed off one side of the road and kept citizens away from the burning car.

The Lebanese News Agency reported on its official website that an Israeli drone hit a car on the Araya road, causing it to catch fire. The target and potential casualties are still unclear.

بالفيديو والصور- مسيرة تستهدف سيارة في منطقة عاريا pic.twitter.com/vTzkTSxVTJ

— Voice of Lebanon 100.3 100.5 (@sawtlebnan) October 30, 2024

Fifteen projectiles detected from Lebanon: Israeli army

Israeli forces say its air force intercepted some of them, it said, adding that “crashes were detected”.

Earlier, the Israeli army said it intercepted five drones launched from Lebanon, and one fell in the industrial zone in Nahariya, northern Israel. Israeli media reported that it hit a factory producing aircraft components.

Israeli army issues more displacement orders for southern villages

The Israeli army has issued a new wave of enforced displacement orders for at least eight towns in southern Lebanon. “For your safety, you must evacuate your homes immediately and move to the north of the Awali River. To ensure your safety, you must evacuate without delay,” a spokesperson said on X.

Civilians are prohibited from heading south, it added.

Hundreds of villages in the country’s south have been evacuated for an area that the United Nations estimates covers a quarter of Lebanon’s territory.

Israeli threat on Baalbek ‘another strain on the system’

This is a significant chunk of Baalbek that has been put under these evacuation orders and let’s call evacuation orders what they are. They’re effectively a kill zone – if you remain behind, Israel says that you are a fair target.

Now, that despite the fact that Israel does have under international humanitarian law a responsibility to any civilians left behind after they give those orders, but people are taking them seriously. They’re already fleeing. We’ve heard from the governor of Baalbek telling people to go to safe areas, to avoid certain roads.

No air strikes have taken place as of yet, but people are very worried that those are going to come in very, very quickly.

People used to be able to go to Tyre, but that’s actually being bombed by the Israelis as well. Some people are coming to Beirut, to other areas, but there aren’t any government shelters that are receiving people.

If you have the money for a hotel and you can find a hotel, how much longer can you stay there if you’ve left everything behind, including the way you make money, your livelihood?

It’s another strain on the system, and we are expecting these air strikes to take place in Baalbek very shortly.

Countries deliver statement in support of UNRWA, says Israeli ban violates international law

A group of 16 countries has expressed support for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), delivering a joint statement at Tuesday’s UN Security Council open debate, saying that if Israel were to implement new legislation banning UNRWA, it would “clearly be in violation of international law”.

The statement was delivered by Algeria, Belgium, Brazil, Guyana, Indonesia, Ireland, Jordan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Qatar, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain and the State of Palestine – the core members of the “Shared Commitments” group supporting UNRWA at the UN.

“We deplore the measures being taken by Israel against UNRWA, including the legislation adopted by the Israeli Parliament,” said the statement.

It added that the move risks collapsing “the entire humanitarian response in Gaza which rests on UNRWA’s infrastructure”.

 
Amnesty says Israel’s UNRWA ban ‘amounts to criminalization of humanitarian aid’

Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary-general, has called on the international community to quickly condemn the Israeli laws and urge the country’s government to repeal them.

“This unconscionable law is an outright attack on the rights of Palestinian refugees. It is clearly designed to make it impossible for the agency to operate in the Occupied Palestinian Territory by forcing the closure of the UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem and ending visas for its staff,” she said in a statement.

“It amounts to the criminalization of humanitarian aid and will worsen an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis.”

Callamard added that the ban “flies in the face of” the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) orders on Israel to ensure sufficient humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza.

“This appalling, inhumane law will only exacerbate the suffering of Palestinians, who have endured unimaginable hardship and whose need for global support is greater than ever,” she said.


_{Palestinians search for missing people under the rubble of the destroyed UNRWA-run al-Jaouni school following an Israeli air strike in the Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza, September 11}

 
UNRWA chief calls on the UN General Assembly to intervene over Israel’s ban

Philippe Lazzarini has written to the president of the UN General Assembly calling for “decisive intervention” to help the UNRWA carry out its mandate in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The Knesset’s laws forbidding Israeli officials from contact with UNRWA and banning the agency’s operations in Israeli-controlled territory risk the collapse of the UNRWA’s operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, posing “dire consequences for international peace and security”, he wrote.

“Today, even as we look into the faces of children in Gaza, some of whom we know will die tomorrow, the rules-based international order is crumbling in a repetition of the horrors that led to the establishment of the United Nations, and in violation of commitments to prevent their recurrence,” he said.

“The attacks on UNRWA are an integral part of this disintegration,” he wrote.

“Under such untenable conditions, I seek Member States’ support, commensurate with the gravity of the situation and risks, to ensure the Agency’s ability to fully implement the mandate conferred by the General Assembly,” he added.

London protest commemorates Palestinian infants killed by Israeli forces


_{Demonstrators hold baby vests outside the Houses of Parliament as a tribute to Palestinian infants killed in Gaza, in London, UK, on October 29}

_{Baby vests hang outside the Houses of Parliament}

Rights organisations project ‘stop arming Israel’ onto London hospital

Three rights organisations have projected a video of British actor Khalid Abdalla recounting accounts from doctors inside Gaza onto the St Thomas’ Hospital in central London to call for ending the UK’s arming of Israel.

“I cannot unsee what I saw. I cannot unhear the screams and the cries that I heard. I cannot unsmell the smell of festering wounds,” Abdallah quoted Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah after he returned to the UK from the enclave.

“It wasn’t just Israel’s planes and tanks. The people he could not save were killed by weapons provided by Western countries, and one of these countries is the United Kingdom.”

Hospitals are under attack in Gaza and the UK is sending the weapons. We must #StopArmingIsreal

To make our message clear, we projected @khalidabdalla sharing testimonies from doctors, outside St Thomas’ Hospital: https://t.co/wrU6pXY8tj pic.twitter.com/WWP5DyvQVN

— Artists for Palestine UK (@Art4PalestineUK) October 30, 2024

UK’s Lammy faces backlash after Gaza ‘genocide’ comments

British SNP politician Chris Law has criticised comments made by Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Monday that he does not believe “genocide” is taking place in Gaza because the number of Palestinians who have been killed so far is too low.

“These are quite properly legal terms that must be determined by international courts. But I do agree that those terms when millions of people lost their lives in crises like Rwanda, the second world war and the Holocaust,” he told the parliament in response to an MP who said terms like “genocide” are being used too freely.

“The way they are used now undermines the seriousness of that term.”

Law, the SNP politician, wrote a letter to the minister saying his comments reveal “blatant contempt for the fundamental rights and the very lives of Palestinians”. He added that “it would not require at least one million Palestinians to be killed for claims of genocide to be taken seriously by the UK government”.

وزير خارجية بريطانيا يرفض توصيف أحداث غزة بالإبادة #حرب_غزة #فيديو pic.twitter.com/d3vQi1JEyk

— الجزيرة فلسطين (@AJA_Palestine) October 30, 2024

UN’s Middle East envoy condemns ‘appalling’ Israeli attack on Beit Lahiya

Tor Wennesland said he was appalled by Israel’s attack that killed at least 93 people, including 25 children, in Beit Lahiya early on Tuesday.

“This horrific strike is yet another in a deadly series of recent mass casualty incidents, alongside a massive displacement campaign, in the north of Gaza that raises serious concerns about violations of international humanitarian law,” the UN’s envoy for the Middle East Peace Process said in a statement.

“I unequivocally condemn the widespread killing and injury of civilians in Gaza, and the endless displacement of the population in Gaza,” he said. “This endless spiral of death and destruction must end immediately”.


_{Palestinian first responders remove a body from the rubble of a building following an Israeli strike in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip, on October 29}

UN records seven ‘mass casualty incidents’ in Gaza in one week

The UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA) said the seven incidents took place between the afternoons of October 22 and 29. They are:

Israel ‘does not belong to community of nations’: Palestinian foreign affairs ministry

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemns what it has called “the continued violent campaign” against the UN and its personnel, including the special human rights rapporteur on occupied territories.

“Israel’s 76-year campaign to dismantle the United Nations, undermine its promise, and delegitimize its purpose, is aimed at destroying any obstacle in its plan to exterminate the Palestinian people, to forcibly displace them and replace them, and to implement its supremacist and colonial plans,” it said.

The ministry added that Israel is a “serial violator of the UN Charter and does not belong to the community of nations” as it keeps trying to distract the global community from the genocide in the Gaza Strip.

The State of Palestine condemns in the strongest terms the continued violent campaign against the United Nations, its agencies, its officials and personnel, including Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in oPt, Francesca Albanese.

Israel’s 76 years campaign to… pic.twitter.com/D2QLdlGNGp

— State of Palestine - MFA 🇵🇸🇵🇸 (@pmofa) October 30, 2024

Parents losing hope as food insecurity ‘reaches critical levels’ in Gaza: WHO

The World Food Programme (WFP) reports that Palestinians across the Gaza Strip are increasingly losing hope of finding any food for their starving children.

“If I could provide as little as an onion and a tomato for my kid, it would cost me a fortune,” a Palestinian mother said. “I only cook flour for my kids to eat it like rice.”

Many parents expressed fear that they would soon be fully unable to feed their children and lose them.

No parent should see their child go hungry.

As food insecurity in #Gaza reaches critical levels, parents are watching hope slip away. Every day is a struggle to feed their children.

💔Hear their voices.📢 pic.twitter.com/1ZJtZjDFAO

— World Food Programme (@WFP) October 30, 2024

Israeli military bombs tents for displaced people in Khan Younis, Deir el-Balah

Israeli fighter jets have bombed tents sheltering displaced Palestinians in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, the Wafa news agency reports. A correspondent from the al Mayadeen news agency reports that “numerous” people have been killed and injured in the attack.

Separately, the Israeli military has also bombed a tent sheltering displaced Palestinians in the city of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, according to Wafa. At least two people have been killed in the attack, according to the Quds News Network and the Palestinian Information Center.

متابعة ... وصول شـ.ـهيدان إلى مستشفى الأقصى جراء قصف الاحتلال خيمة تؤوي نازحين غرب مدية #دير_البلح وسط قطاع غزة pic.twitter.com/7WUW6dMJi6

— المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام (@PalinfoAr) October 29, 2024

Israeli military carries out another attack on tents in Gaza

Israeli forces have shelled tents sheltering displaced Palestinians in the al-Mawasi area west of Rafah city in southern Gaza, our Al Jazeera Arabic colleagues report. No casualties or injuries have been reported so far. We will bring you more information when we have it.

Earlier, we reported that the Israeli military had attacked tents housing displaced Palestinians in both Khan Younis in southern Gaza and Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, resulting in several casualties.

Gaza’s Beit Lahiya declares state of disaster as Israel steps up attacks

We are seeing tragedy after tragedy unfolding in northern Gaza.

While people were still searching for bodies under the rubble – and there’s so many who have gone missing because it is believed that their bodies were pulverised by the intensity of the attack on the Abu Nasr family home in Beit Lahiya – another attack late at night killed at least 19 people.

These successive attacks have put more pressure on civil defence crews on the ground. They are carrying out rescue work in an unofficial way at these sites because [the Israeli military] has threatened them not to operate in the northern part of the Strip.

People in the north are enduring a military siege, a lack of basic supplies, and ongoing attacks that are destroying virtually all means that support their existence. People do not have any access to any basic necessities, including the medical care that is really needed right now just to treat the large number of wounded and to mitigate some of the suffering. None of the health facilities are operational. They have turned into standing skeletons of concrete, into desolate graveyards. They do not have the capacity to offer medical help.

Not only that, there is also a lack of food, of water and other essential resources.

That is why the municipality in Beit Lahiya has declared that the northern part of the Strip is a disaster area, which means there’s nothing to sustain life there.

_{People sit next to the body of a relative as they look at the rubble of their building after an Israeli strike in Beit Lahiya}

‘Absolutely desperate conditions’ in northern Gaza: UNRWA official

Sam Rose, the senior deputy director of UNRWA affairs in Gaza, has described scenes in northern Gaza as “catastrophic”. “Absolutely desperate conditions. It’s horrific, incident after incident being meted out to a population which is on its knees,” he said.

He added that Israel has carried out “relentless attacks on civilian population in the most awful of conditions in Jabalia, and people who fled to Beit Lahiya have themselves been bombed”.

“It’s really difficult for us to know precisely what’s going on given the intensity of fighting and given our lack of access,” he said.

Sam Rose, the UNRWA official, said that Israel has denied permission to bring in aid supplies to northern Gaza except for a couple of missions to hospitals in the north, which has been enduring a military siege.

“We are not typically given reasons; we are told it’s not possible to facilitate the missions for operational reasons,” he said.

“Most of the aid missions have only been able to get into Gaza City. We have not been able to get to north of Gaza City, which is where the siege is, which is where the intense military operation is taking place.

“Our ability to provide services is essentially curtailed. UNRWA has stopped, civil defence no longer working. Efforts and mission to retrieve bodies and trapped people underneath rubble have also been denied in the past several days,” Rose told Al Jazeera from Khan Younis.

On Wednesday morning, the Municipality of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza declared a state of disaster in the town. “We declare that the city is a disaster area due to the Israeli war of extermination and siege, and it has no food, water, hospitals, doctors, services, or communications,” it said.

Rose said that Palestinians in Gaza have been “on the verge of famine, on the verge of catastrophic food insecurity for months now”. “People are already dying, we are reaching close to a point where over 10 percent of Gaza’s population has either been killed or injured. And it’s inevitable what will happen eventually if you are not able to bring in supplies.”

On the Israeli ban on UNRWA, Rose said “no other organisation can take the load that UNRWA has been performing over the past 75 years. “Several generations of Palestinians are educated in UNRWA schools and millions of children were provided healthcare.

“No organisation is set up to do that, no organisation has the staff, has the system, has the understanding of what’s happening on the ground apart from UNRWA.”

‘Everything in Beit Lahiya is being wiped out’

Everything is being wiped out in Beit Lahiya: shelters, schools, hospitals, houses.

The past couple of days had the most horrific air raids in residential areas. Residents in Beit Lahiya had opened their homes to all civilians fleeing from Jabalia, where the Israeli army had been focusing its military operations at the start of the siege three weeks ago. So now Israel forces are concentrating all their attack on Beit Lahiya.

Videos shared online show that no civil defence team, no ambulance have been allowed to access and rescue the wounded in Beit Lahiya, with many people trapped under the rubble.

We are talking about a siege for the past three weeks, meaning no water, no food or aid. People are now forced to drink dirty water.

‘Whoever is injured, just lies there on the ground’: Kamal Adwan doctor

We reported earlier that authorities in Beit Lahiya declared the area a disaster zone and described how Israeli attacks have left the area “without food, without water, without hospitals, without doctors”.

Dr Eid Sabbah of Beit Lahiya’s Kamal Adwan Hospital told Reuters that bodies and injured people remained trapped under rubble.

He said the destruction of hospitals and lack of medical supplies meant doctors and nurses mostly had no chance of saving people who came in with injuries from air strikes and gunfire.

“Whoever is injured, just lies there on the ground and whoever is killed can’t be transported, except by mule-drawn cart,” he said.

Clashes reported as Israeli forces carry out raids across the West Bank

The Israeli military has carried out military operations across the occupied West Bank in recent hours, according to local media reports, including: