Live: Strike announced in Israel amid mounting anger at Netanyahu

Lebanon's prime minister, Najib Mikati, has said that he is working to “stop the escalation”, adding that “what is required is to stop the Israeli aggression first”.

Mikati made the comments following a ministerial meeting to discuss the overnight attacks by Hezbollah and Israeli forces.

Air France, the UAE's Etihad Airways and Greece's Aegean Airlines have announced the cancellations of flights to and from Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Haaretz is reporting.

Haaretz reported that the airlines joined 16 others that have announced the discontinuation of flights to and from Israel, including some until Monday and others until further notice.

Israeli forces have detained at least 35 Palestinians, including children and former prisoners, from across the occupied West Bank in last two days, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) and the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said in a statement.

The advocacy groups said that Israeli forces attacked the detainees and their families, in addition to vandalising and destroying their homes.

According to the statement, Israeli forces have detained over 10,200 Palestinians in the West Bank since October.

A young Palestinian man succumbed this morning to injuries sustained from an attack by Israeli forces at the Jalameh military checkpoint, north of Jenin, Wafa news agency is reporting.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces open fired on three young men who were in a vehicle near the same checkpoint, according to local sources.

The sources also reported that troops barred ambulances from accessing the area, and detained the three people in the vehicle.

Palestinian security sources later confirmed that one of the three young men had died from his injuries, while the condition of the other two remains unclear.

The Israeli military said that its fighter jets had conducted more attacks against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon hours after it announced its preemptive strike.

In a statement, it said that the additional attacks were intended to "remove threats".

Five Palestinians have been killed and others injured in a series of "intense" Israeli strikes across Gaza on Sunday, Wafa news agency is reporting.

According to local sources, Israeli forces launched renewed assaults on Deir el-Balah and Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. In Deir el-Balah, Israeli drones targeted people near the al-Anan stadium, killing three and injuring dozens.

A child succumbed to injuries sustained following an Israeli attack on a group of civilians in the al-Batn al-Sameen area south of Khan Younis 10 days ago.

Meanwhile, rescue teams have recovered the body of a Palestinian from al-Qarara, north of Khan Younis.

The agency also reported that another Israeli strike targeted a home in the Zeytoun neighbourhood in Gaza City.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry has warned against the dangers of opening a new war front in Lebanon.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the ministry called for stability in the region following exchanges of fire on the Lebanese-Israeli border this morning.

Reporting by Reuters

The chairman of the Israeli right-wing New Hope party, Gideon Sa'ar, has denounced the Israeli government for its handling of Hezbollah, saying that the dawn strikes were "the less corrective decision" and the "continuation of the policy of containment".

"This decision has one outcome: only our enemies will determine the timing and scale of the escalation," Sa'ar wrote in a post on X.

"This opportunity should have led to a decision on a general preemptive attack to change the reality in the North. Whoever runs away from war - war will chase him," he added.

אל מול החלטת חיזבאללה לירות אלפי טילים ורקטות - שוב בחרה הממשלה בחלופה האסטרטגית הפחות נכונה. הבחירה לסכל את המתקפה בלבד אחרי עשרה וחצי חודשים של מתקפת חיזבאללה על ישראל - היא המשך מדיניות ההכלה. להחלטה זאת יש משמעות אחת: רק אויבינו יקבעו את עיתוי ורמת ההסלמה. הזדמנות זאת היתה…

— Gideon Sa'ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) August 25, 2024

Opposition leader Yair Lapid has backed the Israeli strikes on Lebanon this morning, claiming that they were a "justified and necessary act of self-defence against a terrorist organisation".

“The world should offer its unequivocal support for Israel’s right to defend itself,” he said in a post on X.

The actions of the Israeli Air Force this morning are a justified and necessary act of self-defense against a terrorist organization which planned to fire indiscriminately at Israeli civilians.

The world should offer its
unequivocal support for Israel’s right to defend itself.

— יאיר לפיד - Yair Lapid (@yairlapid) August 25, 2024

The Israeli military is claiming that Hezbollah aimed to strike military intelligence and Mossad bases in central Israel overnight, Israeli media is reporting.

Eight Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed in an overnight Israeli strike in the eastern part of Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera is reporting, citing medical sources.

Six of the fatalities are reported to be from the same family.

Good morning, Middle East Eye readers.

Here are the latest updates:

• Israeli forces launched air strikes across southern Lebanon at dawn, in one of the biggest attacks carried out by the military since October.

• The Israeli military claimed the attacks were "preemptive" and intended to "thwart" the Hezbollah "threat".

• It added that its fighter jets had destroyed "thousands" of Hezbollah rocket launcher barrels that they said were aimed for immediate fire toward northern and central Israel.

• Most of the strikes were reportedly concentrated on Lebanon's border area, which is now a military zone and evacuated of citizens.

• In response, Lebanon's Hezbollah announced it had fired 320 Katyusha rockets at 11 Israeli military bases and barracks, including the Meron base and four sites in the occupied Golan Heights.

• The group said the retaliatory strikes were the "first phase" of its response to the Israeli assassination of its top commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut in July.

• Lebanese media is reporting that one person was killed in an Israeli strike on a car in the town of Khiam, while a Lebanese man suffered minor injuries and a Syrian man sustained moderate injuries in the attacks.

• Israeli media is reporting that one woman was lightly injured by shrapnel.

• Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has declared a 48-hour "emergency situation" in the country, with Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv briefly suspending flights after the attack.

• The US said in response to the strikes that it would keep supporting Israel's "right to defend itself".

Our live coverage from Gaza will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.

Here are some of the day's key developments:

• At least 40,334 people have been killed and another 93,356 wounded by Israeli forces since 7 Octover, Gaza's Health Ministry said on Saturday

• Medical sources confirmed to Al Jazeera Arabic that Israeli raids on various areas in the central and southern Gaza Strip today resulted in the deaths of at least 71 Palestinians

• At least 100,000 people have been displaced from Deir el-Balah in two days, following Israel's latest evacuation orders for the central city, according to the Deir el-Balah municipality

• Gaza's health ministry has warned of an "unprecedented crisis in medicine and medical supplies", reporting on Telegram that 60 percent of essential medicines and 83 percent of medical consumables have run out in the ministry's warehouses

• A Hamas source told the Lebanese news outlet Al-Mayadeen that the Cairo talks did not achieve clear progress, as Israel demands on maintaining a presence along the Egyptian-Gaza border during the first phase of the deal

• There are an estimated 19,000 unaccompanied children in Gaza as a result of the ongoing Israeli aggression in the enclave, a Unicef spokesperson said on Saturday

• The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has called on a panel of pre-trial judges to “urgently render its decisions” on arrest warrants he requested in May for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar

• Israeli forces have issued evacuation orders over the last month at an "unprecedented pace", with 13 issued since 22 July,  according to a report by AP news agency

• The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation in the United States, demands that the administration of US President Joe Biden condemn the recent burning of Quran copies and destruction of mosques by Israeli soldiers in Gaza

An eight-month-old girl and her mother were killed when Israeli forces shelled their home in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported.

Medics at al-Awda Hospital confirmed their deaths. Since dawn on Saturday, at least 71 Palestinians have been killed across Gaza by the Israeli army.

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that Israeli authorities blocked a rescue operation at a bombed building in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, for three days.

According to Scott Anderson, OCHA’s deputy humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, ten people were inside the destroyed building, including five children aged four to six.

“So, it’s a lot of people that were innocent, just trying to find shelter from the conflict and lost their lives here. And the worst part of this is that some of these lives could have been saved,” he said.