Middle East latest: Israeli strike in Beirut kills 9 as troops battle Hezbollah in southern Lebanon

An Israeli airstrike on an apartment in the Lebanese capital has killed nine people, according to Lebanon's health ministry. Israel has been pounding areas of the country where the Hezbollah militant group has a strong presence since late September, but has rarely struck in the heart of Beirut.

There was no warning before the strike late Wednesday, which hit the building close to the United Nations headquarters, the prime minister’s office and parliament. Hezbollah’s civil defense unit said seven of its members were killed.

Israel is also conducting a ground incursion into Lebanon against Hezbollah, while also conducting strikes in Gaza that killed dozens, including children. The Israeli military said eight soldiers have died in the conflict in southern Lebanon.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas' cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 others hostage. Israel declared war on the militant group in the Gaza Strip in response. More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, and just over half the dead have been women and children, according to local health officials.

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Here is the latest:

Biden says he does not expect Israel to retaliate against Iran on Thursday

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden says he doesn’t expect Israel to retaliate immediately against Iran and rejects the suggestion the U.S. would grant permission for such an attack.

Biden was speaking to reporters Thursday, two days after Tehran bombarded Israel with almost 200 ballistic missiles. Israel says it intercepted many of them, while Iran says most of its missiles hit their targets.

The barrage has raised concerns about the escalating conflict in the Middle East and the role of the U.S. in Israel’s defense.

“First of all, we don’t ‘allow’ Israel, we advise Israel,” Biden said. “And nothing’s going to happen today.”

Israel says an airstrike in Gaza killed a Palestinian convicted of killing soldiers

JERUSALEM — Israel says one of its airstrikes in Gaza killed a Palestinian who was convicted in the killing of two Israeli soldiers in the West Bank at the start of the 2000 uprising.

Abdel-Aziz Salha was part of an angry mob that stormed a Palestinian police station in the West Bank city of Ramallah and killed two Israeli reservists. The two had been detained after accidentally entering an area administered by the Palestinian Authority.

Salha waved his blood-stained hands from the window of the police station in what became one of the defining images of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule.

The killing of the reservists marked a major escalation in Israeli-Palestinian tensions as the peace process of the 1990s collapsed.

The military said Thursday that Salha was killed in an overnight strike on the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah. The military identified him as a Hamas militant.

Salha was arrested by Israeli forces shortly after the killing of the reservists, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He was among more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners released in 2011 in exchange for an Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas in Gaza. One of the other released prisoners, Yahya Sinwar, was one of the masterminds of the Oct. 7 attack and is now the top leader of Hamas.

Lebanon says all border crossings with Syria function under state supervision

BEIRUT —Lebanon’s minister of public works and transport says all the country’s border crossing with Syria function under the supervision of state institutions.

Ali Hamie spoke to reporters hours after the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman posted on the social platform X that Lebanon’s Hezbollah group has been trying to transport military equipment through the Masnaa border crossing with Syria.

“All border crossings, the first among them the Masnaa border crossing” are being monitored by state institutions including the transport ministry, customs authorities, the General Security Directorate and the Lebanese army.

Israeli military spokesperson, Avchay Adraee, called on Lebanese authorities earlier Thursday to conduct inspections on trucks crossing its eastern border and to turn back any vehicle found to be containing combat equipment.

“The Lebanese State is responsible for its official border crossings and is able to prevent Hezbollah from passing through these crossings,” Adraee said on X.

Adraee also said Israeli forces bombed a truck on Sunday packed with weapons that Hezbollah was trying to smuggle into Lebanon. No further details about this airstrike were made public.

In recent weeks, the Israeli air force has struck hundreds of targets across Lebanon, including the eastern border area and the Bekaa valley, areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

Analysts have long accused the Iran-backed group of transporting weapons across the porous Lebanese-Syrian border.

Lebanese official says Israeli strikes that hit health facilities violate international law

BERUIT — Lebanese Health Ministry Firas Abiad says Israeli strikes that hit health facilities and workers are in “violation of international law and treaties.”

“This is a war crime, there is no doubt about that,” Abiad told reporters Thursday, after an overnight Israeli strike on an apartment building in Beirut hit a Hezbollah health center and killed several civilian first responders affiliated with the group. There was also a separate strike that wounded Red Cross paramedics evacuating wounded people in southern Lebanon.

“The argument that some vehicles or hospitals had weapons or something else in them, these are old false arguments and lies we heard before in Gaza,” Abiad said. “International laws are clear in protecting these people, I mean, paramedics. Who gave Israel the right to be the judge and the executioner at the same time?”

Israeli airstrike hits Hezbollah's media building

BEIRUT — An Israeli airstrike on a Beirut southern suburb has struck the building housing the media office of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.

The airstrike Thursday destroyed the Hezbollah media relations office in the Mawad neighborhood.

A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press that no one was hurt.

In southern Lebanon, Israeli fire at a Lebanese army post in the town of Bint Jbeil killed a Lebanese soldier, raising to two the number of members of the Lebanese military killed on Thursday.

The Lebanese army said in a statement that troops “opened fire at the source of” the attack. It did not elaborate.

A Lebanese security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of regulations, said the army post was hit by artillery fire.

Belgian broadcaster VTM says its crew was attacked in central Beirut

BRUSSELS — Belgium’s VTM broadcaster says one of its television reporters and a cameraman have been attacked in central Beirut while reporting on the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

VTM said correspondent Robin Ramaekers and cameraman Stijn De Smet were working on a report on Wednesday evening about a bombing in the Lebanese capital when they were attacked in unclear circumstances.

“Stijn is currently in a hospital in Beirut where he is being treated for a leg wound. Robin is also still being cared for, in another hospital, for some fractures to the face,” a statement said. It said the cause of the attack is not yet known.

VTM said the two men have worked in conflict zones for more than a decade. Lebanon’s Information Minister Ziad Makary said he is following the situation

Spain sends two planes to Beirut to evacuate its civilians

MADRID — Spain’s defense ministry says two planes it sent to Beirut to evacuate Spanish civilians have taken off and are heading to an airbase near Madrid.

Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said between 400 and 500 of the around 1,000 Spaniards registered as living in Lebanon are being airlifted out. The government has urged all Spaniards to leave and is offering to assist those who say they want to be evacuated.

Robles said a third plane could be sent if needed.

Spain also has 676 soldiers in Lebanon deployed as part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission. Robles said the troops are staying put until otherwise ordered by the UNIFIL command.

Hundreds of people arrive in Turkey from Lebanon

ISTANBUL — Hundreds of people leaving Lebanon have arrived in southern Turkey.

A ship carrying over 300 passengers who boarded the vessel in the Lebanese city of Tripoli docked at a port in Mersin on the country’s Mediterranean coast on Thursday, according to Turkish news agency IHA.

IHA says the Med Lines ship was the third to arrive at the Mersin port carrying foreign nationals from Lebanon in recent days.

The increasing violence in Lebanon is a significant escalation in the war in the Middle East, this time between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Lebanese Red Cross says 4 paramedics wounded and a soldier killed in an Israeli strike in the south

BEIRUT —The Lebanese Red Cross says an Israeli strike killed four of its paramedics and a Lebanese soldier as they were evacuating wounded people from the south.

It says the convoy near the village of Taybeh, which was accompanied by Lebanese troops, was targeted Thursday despite coordinating its movements with U.N. peacekeepers.

Israel extends evacuation warnings north of the UN buffer zone in Lebanon

BEIRUT — 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 Thursday signals a possible broadening of Israel’s incursion into southern Lebanon, which until now has been confined to areas close to the border.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry says at least 9 people were killed in an Israeli strike in central Beirut

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Health Ministry says at least nine people have been killed in an Israeli strike in central Beirut.

The ministry says it is running DNA tests on remains to identify other possible victims in the attack early Thursday.

Hezbollah said seven paramedics and rescue workers from its medical arm, the Islamic Health Committee, were killed in the strike on its office in Bashoura. The Health Ministry said 14 others were wounded.

Prior to the attack, the ministry said 55 people were killed and 156 others were wounded in Israeli strikes in 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 has estimated that about 1 million people have been displaced in the cash-strapped country.

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

Israel says it killed a senior Hamas leader in an airstrike in Gaza three months ago

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military says it killed a senior Hamas leader in an airstrike in the Gaza Strip around three months ago.

It said Thursday that a strike on an underground compound in northern Gaza killed Rawhi Mushtaha and two other Hamas commanders, Sameh Siraj and Sameh Oudeh.

Hamas has not commented on the report.

The military says the three commanders had taken refuge in a fortified underground compound in northern Gaza that served as a command and control center.

It says Mushtaha was a close associate of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who helped mastermind the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.

Sinwar is believed to be alive and in hiding inside the Palestinian territory.

UK plans more evacuation flights

NICOSIA, Cyprus — The British government has chartered more flights to help U.K. 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.

U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey on Wednesday visited a British military base on Cyprus where around 700 troops, Foreign Office staff and Border Force officers have been deployed to a British military base in Cyprus 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.

Strike in Beirut suburb killed seven health and rescue workers

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

The airstrike in the residential Bashoura district targeted an apartment in a multistory building that houses an office of the Health Society, a group of civilian first responders affiliated to Hezbollah.

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 or the allegations it used phosphorous bombs.

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.

Japan readies military jets for evacuations

TOKYO — Japan has dispatched two Self Defense Force planes to prepare for a possible airlift of Japanese citizens from Lebanon.

Two C-2 transport aircraft are expected to arrive in Jordan and Greece on Friday, Japan NHK national television reported.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters that there has been no report of injury involving the about 50 Japanese nationals in Lebanon.

Japan dispatched SDF aircraft in October and November 2023 to evacuate more than 100 Japanese and South Korean citizens from Israel.

Australia plans evacuation flights from Lebanon

SYDNEY — Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong says her government had booked 500 seats on commercial aircraft for Australian citizens, permanent residents and their families to leave Lebanon on Saturday.

The seats are available to 1,700 Australians and their families known to be in Lebanon on two flights from Beirut to Cyprus, Wong said Thursday.

“What I would say to Australians who wish to leave, please take whatever option is available to you,” Wong told reporters in Geelong, Australia.

“Please do not wait for your preferred route,” she added.