3 IDF soldiers killed in combat in northern Gaza
Israel's military said today that three of its soldiers were killed in combat in northern Gaza, where military operations have intensified once again.
They served in the IDF's 460th Brigade under a logistical support unit.
Italy summons Israeli ambassador over attacks on UNIFIL, calls them a possible war crime
ROME — Israeli forces have acted illegally by shooting at positions used by U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said, denouncing it as a possible war crime.
“This was not a mistake and not an accident,” Crosetto said at a news conference. “It could constitute a war crime and represented a very serious violation of international military law.”
Crosetto said he had contacted his Israeli counterpart to protest and had also summoned the Israeli ambassador to Italy to demand an explanation, which he said was not yet forthcoming.
Unlike some European countries, Italy has been highly supportive of Israel throughout its yearlong war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Italy has traditionally supplied a large number of troops to UNIFIL, and although none of its contingent was injured this week, Crosetto said, the Israeli actions were unacceptable. Israel has sought to shift the UNIFIL peacekeepers away from the border, but Italy said it had no right to do so.
“I told the ambassador to tell the Israeli government that the United Nations and Italy cannot take orders from the Israeli government,” Crosetto said.
Central Beirut rocked with two Israeli strikes; injuries reported
There were two Israeli strikes in central Beirut tonight, one in the Basta neighborhood and the other nearby, in the Ras al-Nabaa area, according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency.
Ambulances were rushed to both scenes.
Al-Manar, a Hezbollah news station, said multiple injuries were reported after a residential building collapsed.
The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Israel accused of crime of ‘extermination’ in destruction of Gaza health system by U.N. inquiry
Israel carried out a “concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system” during its war with Hamas, actions amounting to both war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination, a United Nations inquiry said today.
The report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, a fact finding mission set up by the U.N Human Rights Council to investigate war crimes, also said Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups “committed the war crimes of torture, inhuman or cruel treatment and the crimes against humanity and other inhumane acts” against Israel hostages.
But it reserved most of its criticism for Israeli forces which it said had “deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles while tightening their siege on Gaza and restricting permits to leave the territory for medical treatment.”
NBC News has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment on the report, which was produced by a panel of independent experts who do not speak for the world body and led by Navi Pillay, a former U.N. human rights chief.
In what it called one of the “most egregious cases” the report highlighted the killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab, who became one of the conflict’s most high-profile victims of the war when, on Jan. 29, her final pleas over the phone to be saved were recorded by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and heard around the world.
Hind and her relatives piled into the car following evacuation orders issued by the IDF in Arabic. As they tried to flee their neighborhood in Gaza City, they were shot leaving Hind the only one alive in the back seat of a car, trapped inside and surrounded by the bodies of her aunt, uncle and four young cousins.
She spent hours on the phone with emergency services and her mother, begging to be rescued. Twelve days later, once the area became accessible to rescuers, she was found dead in the back of the car. A blown-out ambulance containing the remains of the two paramedics who were sent to rescue her was found nearby.
“The Commission determined on reasonable grounds that the Israeli Army’s 162nd Division operated in the area and is responsible for killing the family of seven, shelling the ambulance and killing the two paramedics inside. This constitutes the war crimes of willful killing and an attack against civilian objects,” the report said.
It also accused Israel of the “institutionalized mistreatment of Palestinian detainees” held in its prisons which are under the authority of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the country’s ultranationalist minister of national security.
“The lack of accountability for actions ordered by senior Israeli authorities and carried out by individual members of Israeli security forces and the increasing acceptance of violence against Palestinians have allowed such conduct to continue uninterrupted, becoming systematic and institutionalized,” it said.
Plumes of smoke rise in central Beirut after suspected missile strike
The sound of what could be missiles were heard over Beirut just now.
From a hotel in the city, an NBC News crew could see black smoke rising from the direction of a central area of Beirut, though it's not clear yet what the target was. The sound was distinctly different from prior strikes.
U.N. humanitarian organization says it was denied lifesaving mission to northern Gaza
Israel is not allowing an aid convoy from the United Nations into northern Gaza to help evacuate critical patients, where the IDF has renewed intense military action.
The U.N.'s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for the Occupied Palestinian Territories said in a post on X today that 83% of all humanitarian movements into the north were denied or impeded last month. Georgios Petropoulos, head of the Gaza branch, recorded an attempt yesterday for one of its convoys to help civilians who were given a 24 hour notice to evacuate.
Though the convoy, which included seven ambulances, were coordinated with Israeli authorities as all aid is required to, Petropoulos said they were denied access at a checkpoint.
"We are looking at options, as we do very frequently, of what kind of things we can cut off from this mission," Petropoulos said."Unfortunately, every single component is life saving."
After waiting five hours, Petropoulos' convoy had to return to the south without completing its mission.
Renowned restaurant cooks up thousands of meals for Lebanon's displaced
It’s renowned for its Armenian cuisine, but this week the menu at Beirut’s Mayrig restaurant is much more basic and much more plentiful as it churns out meals for people who have been displaced by Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon.
Walking in the smell of a home-cooked meal hits you right away. The restaurant’s owner Aline Kamakian, 55, and her staff of about 10 are ladling rice and potato stew with minced meat into plastic containers.
Kamakian and her team make 3,500 out of the 50,000 daily meals currently being distributed to some of the 1.2 million people now displaced across the country.
“Food is home, food is security, food is, you know, it’s comfort. And when you are creating and we are, when you are giving the same food that they are used to, you’re giving some kind of comfort, some kind of security,” Kamakian told NBC News today.
Kamakian, who has allowed her restaurant to be used by the World Central Kitchen charity added that it was “very important,” for people “especially when you are displaced.”
Kamakian was in Beirut during Lebanon’s 2006 war with Israel, as well as when the capital’s port exploded in 2020. That blast destroyed her restaurant and left her deaf in her right ear. But, she said this is the worst time she’s ever experienced in her country.
For now, Kamakian said she found solace in the kitchen and she’s hoping her meals will provide a sense of home for those now displaced.
“These people had life. These people had careers. These people had families, had homes, they are not refugees,” she said, adding, “Most of them don’t want war. They’re not against anyone. They want just to live in peace and raise their families.”
Killings cannot continue in Mideast, Irish PM says after meeting with Biden
Ireland's taoiseach, or prime minister, said today that he was hopeful that a “very serious” conversation between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would secure a cease-fire in the Middle East.
"I made it clear to the president the Irish view, it’s a view I make clear in public and in private, that all countries should be doing everything in their capacity to stop the violence," Simon Harris told reporters after a White House meeting with Biden.
"Of course, in relation to the United States that does involve the issue of arming and providing arms and munitions," he said.
"The killings, the bombings, the maimings cannot continue. It is utterly disproportionate, and I again made the point to the president that Ireland of all countries knows that the only way you bring about peace is through dialogue and political process," he added.
But Harris said he was "very clear" that when Biden spoke to Netanyahu "it was a very serious conversation of substance about bringing about a cessation of violence."
Photos: Turkish citizens evacuate Beirut by boat
Evacuees, mostly Turkish citizens, rest on a Turkish military ship in Beirut’s port before leaving for Turkey today.
A Turkish soldier carries a young evacuee onto the ship.
Lebanese bristle at reports of U.S. push for an election
Lebanese residents bristled today at reports that the Biden administration is seeking to use Israel's fight against Hezbollah to spur a presidential election and end the Iran-backed militant group's political dominance.
“I don’t fully agree with the American intervention in the Lebanese political scene,” Khaled Hamade, a military expert and retired brigadier general with the Lebanese army, told NBC News today.
“I don’t think that the election of a president for the republic will overcome or is more important than a cease-fire now,” Hamade, 68, added.
Lebanon has been without a president since the previous leader, Michel Aoun, ended his term in 2022. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the U.S. was going to push for someone to take the job after a series of Israeli attacks took out several senior Hezbollah figures, including its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
But Jamal Wakim, a history professor at Lebanese University, said he believed the U.S. was on an “impossible” mission to control the situation in the Middle East. “A large section of the Lebanese people support Hezbollah,” he said.
Wakim, 55, added that he felt the Lebanese had been caught up in a “proxy war that the U.S. and Israel are conducting against Iran” and feared a “long battle" in Lebanon.
Another resident, Anwar Abdo, 55, urged the international community to “let the Lebanese government take its time to negotiate and decide about the election of a new president.”