Live: Israel ramps up strikes on Gaza after Iran attack

The death toll from Israel's assault on Lebanon has risen to at least 569 people since Monday, Lebanon’s Health Minister Firas Abiad told Al Jazeera.

The new death toll includes 50 children and 94 women.

The Biden administration may be slow-rolling a new Israeli request to refill its arms and munitions stockpiles, raising some questions among US officials whether or not it is trying to apply pressure on Israel to stop a full-scale offensive on Lebanon, Middle East Eye can reveal.

Israel submitted an “extensive” three-page request last week for additional munitions and armaments to the Biden administration, a senior US official and former US official told MEE.

Israel did not request new types of weapons but is looking to replenish stockpiles from its US ally which have been depleted, as fighting with Hezbollah escalates.

To read the full story by Sean Mathews, click below.

US delaying Israeli request to replenish munitions and missile interceptors

Hezbollah said it launched attack drones on Israel's Atlit base located south of Haifa, which is home to Israel's elite Shayetet 13 naval forces.

The Lebanese movement said it targeted the locations of officers and soldiers, and that its drones hit their targets accurately.

Haaretz reported, citing Israel's military, that three drones entered Israel's air space from Lebanon and that sirens were activated in Atlit. It further reported that some of the drones were intercepted.

The following is an excerpt from an op-ed by Lina Mounzer.

I’m having my morning coffee in Montreal when I receive the news.

My friend Rami forwards a WhatsApp message. In Arabic, it reads: “Ouzai, Ghobeiri, Sfeir, Haret Hreik, Saida, pagers are exploding. A breach. They’ve hacked into devices and phones and exploded them. Lots of contradictory information. Some 500 explosions so far.”

In Beirut, it’s just after 3:40 pm.

There is no need to ask who “they” are. It is the same “they” who have been decimating and starving the Palestinians of Gaza for almost an entire year now, who have bombed hospitals and refugee camps, who have raped prisoners and then, when chastised, rioted for the right to rape prisoners.

The “they” who are on trial at the International Court of Justice for the crime of crimes, genocide, and who have otherwise breached, on camera, any number of the so-called red lines of international humanitarian law.

After all of that, I shouldn’t be surprised at anything “they” might be capable of, nor how the world will excuse it.

Still, I start receiving videos and I can’t believe what I’m seeing. CCTV footage from grocery stores, with explosions going off at people’s waists or in their hands. Streets crowded with ambulances and shouting people. Men on gurneys, the shredded leftovers of their hands gushing blood.

The most absurd thing is how no western headline called this textbook act of mass terrorism by its name.

What is this dystopian nightmare? How did they hack into people’s devices? And what devices are vulnerable?

I try to remember where I bought my phone. Was it from a cellphone place in Beirut, the kind where explosions are now going off as the merchandise ignites? Or did I order it directly from abroad? Is it safe or suspect?

No matter: I have to pick up my phone, this potential murder weapon, to reach my friends and family, to make sure they’re OK, forcing them to pick up a potential murder weapon to answer.

To read the full op-ed, click below.

Israel's war on Lebanon: The trauma of watching the 'Hollywood movie' from afar

After announcing it fired 50 missiles towards Israel's Dado military base, Hezbollah sent another message on its Telegram channel saying it targeted the base with an additional 40 missiles.

The Dado base is located 29 km away from Lebanon's southern borders.

Multiple news outlets are reporting that an Israeli bombing in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza has killed several Palestinians.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters that the killing of women and children in Lebanon was "extraordinarily concerning" and called on Israel and Hezbollah to de-escalate.

"The violence needs to stop. The women, the children killed in Lebanon is extraordinarily concerning," Trudeau said while in New York for the UN General Assembly.

Israeli air strikes have killed more than 50 children, as the death toll from the strikes has reached more than 550 people in total.

Reporting by Reuters

Lebanon's state-run news station, the National News Agency, is reporting several Israeli raids in towns across the country. One Israeli strike on the town of Douair in southern Lebanon killed four Lebanese citizens and a Syrian refugee.

Another strike on the town of Sharqiya killed two people, and a third bombing in the town of ​​Nabatieh al-Fawqa killed six people.

Hezbollah announced that it targeted Israel's Dado military base, 29 km away from the Lebanese southern borders, with 50 missiles.

Israel's military has yet to comment on this, but Israel's Channel 12 News stated that Hezbollah launched around 300 rockets towards Israel since Tuesday morning.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave his UN General Assembly address, in which he lambasted the global community for the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza.

"Along with children in Gaza, the United Nations system is also dying, the truth is dying, the values that the West claims to defend are dying, the hopes of humanity to live in a fairer world are dying one by one," Erdogan said.

"Those who are supposedly working for a ceasefire continue to send weapons and ammunition to Israel behind the stage, so that it can continue its massacres. This is inconsistency and insincerity," Erdogan said in an apparent reference to the US, Turkey's Nato ally.

Hezbollah announced that it fired salvos of rockets towards several areas in northern Israel, including Gesher Haziv, near northern Israel's coastal city of Nahariya, and the Hagoshrim kibbutz.

The Lebanese movement also said it targeted Katzrin, an Israeli settlement in the occupied Golan Heights.

Lebanon's civil defence said that at least five people were killed in an Israeli strike on a residential building in the Beqaa Valley, the country's state-run news agency reported.

Six others were wounded in the strike, with the civil defence also conducting a missing persons search.

US President Joe Biden gave his address to the UN General Assembly, where he again reiterated Washington's stance that Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas.

“Any country, any country, would have the right responsibility to ensure that such an attack could never happen again,” Biden said, referring to the 7 October attacks led by Hamas.

In the same speech, the US president said he was “determined to prevent a wider war that engulfs the entire region”, as Israel launched a major escalation in Lebanon, with hundreds of air strikes that have so far killed more than 500 people.

Hezbollah has begun releasing statements to accompany its attacks that sign off with the "defence of Lebanon and its people" in addition to solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.

In an initial statement released on Telegram on Tuesday afternoon, the Lebanese group added the new sign-off in large red lettering:

"In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Permission [to fight] has been granted to those who are being fought, because they were wronged. And indeed, Allah is competent to give them victory. This is the truth of Allah, the Most High, the Almighty," read the statement.

"In support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and in support of their brave and honorable resistance, and in defense of Lebanon and its people."

Journalist Zeina Khodr suggested that the change in sign-off was made by Hezbollah to indicate that the fight "against Israel is no longer just to help the people of Gaza but to defend Lebanon and the Lebanese people."