Live: Five Palestinian journalists killed, Gaza media office says

The United States is deploying an advanced, high-altitude missile system to Israel as well as around 100 American troops to operate it, the Pentagon announced in the first US military deployment to Israel since the war on Gaza began in October 2023.

Pentagon spokesperson Patrick Ryder said in a statement on Sunday that US President Joe Biden directed Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (Thaad) along with its operating crew to Israel.

The deployment places American troops inside Israel for the first time amid its war on Gaza, which has now escalated into an Israeli invasion of Lebanon and carries the potential for a large-scale war with Iran.

“This action underscores the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran,” the statement said.

“It is part of the broader adjustments the US military has made in recent months to support the defense of Israel and protect Americans from attacks by Iran and Iranian-aligned militias.”

Read more: US sending 100 troops and a missile defence system to Israel

Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory, shared a video from a anti-genocide protest outside the New York Stock Exchange, attended by Jewish Voices for Peace members.

In her post, she stated: “Each civic action is humanity in action. May the Gaza one be the last genocide in human history. May We the People have the strength to stop it.”

Israeli forces carried out an eight-hour raid on Jenin, killing two Palestinians, a 17-year-old boy, Rayan Ibrahim al-Sayed, and a 23-year-old man, Mahmoud Mamoun Abu al-Rub, according to the Palestinian Wafa news agency.

Four others were wounded and significant damage to public and private property was reported, including the destruction of part of a house and infrastructure in the Jenin refugee camp, in the occupied West Bank.

Since October 2023, Israel has killed over 750 Palestinians in the West Bank. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed accusations by the United Nations, European Union, Lebanon and the US that Israeli troops intentionally targeted the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), calling them “completely false”.

Netanyahu reiterated his demand for Unifil personnel to withdraw from combat zones to ensure their safety. There is no evidence that Hezbollah has attacked the UN peacekeepers force.

Netanyahu stated that while Israel strives to avoid harming peacekeepers, the best way to protect them is for Unifil to follow Israel's advice and stay out of harm's way while operations against Hezbollah continue. 

UN peacekeeping forces have reported that Israel has deliberately attacked their bases and over the last week injured several peacekeepers.

Hezbollah announced that it struck three Israeli Merkava tanks with missiles as they advanced toward Aita al-Shaab, a village in sourthern Lebanon on the border with Israel. 

Hezbollah claimed to have killed and injured the crews, Al Jazeera Arabic reported.

Additionally, the group reported launching missile attacks on Israeli forces at the radar site in the Shebaa Farms, an area under Israeli occupation. 

The Lebanese health ministry reported that 21 people were killed and eight wounded during an Israeli air raid on the town of Ayto in northern Lebanon.

Germany has joined other western nations in condemning Israeli army actions against UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, demanding "an urgent explanation" from Tel Aviv.

Since the start of Israel's ground campaign against Hezbollah, five peacekeepers have been injured, and Germany has labelled the attacks on UN personnel and base infiltrations as "completely unacceptable".

The Unifil mission involves over 10,000 troops from over 50 countries, including Germany.

Sky News has provoked outrage online after publishing a headline on Monday saying "Israel names teenage soldiers killed in Hezbollah attack - as '23 die' in Gaza school strike". 

The headline refers to the soldiers as teenagers and says they were killed by Hezbollah.

By contrast, it puts Palestinian deaths in quotation marks and does not clarify that the school strike was carried out by the Israeli military.

Read more: Outrage after Sky News describes Israeli soldiers as 'teenage victims'

Italy, Britain, France, and Germany issued a statement on Monday demanding Israel stop its attacks on the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (Unifil), calling the actions a violation of international humanitarian law.

The nations emphasised the critical role Unifil plays in maintaining stability in southern Lebanon and called for all parties to ensure the safety of peacekeepers.

Unifil reported multiple attacks from Israeli forces, despite calls for the protection of its personnel, many of whom are European soldiers.

The Israeli army reported that another soldier was killed in southern Gaza. His death occurred during a military assault in the area on Monday. 

The soldier's death comes after Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a drone attack on a military base in northern Israel which killed at least four soldiers and wounded scores of others.

The group said it fired a “swarm of drones” on a base in Binyamina belonging to the Israeli army’s Golani Brigade.

The attack has shown their continued capacity to inflict damage on Israel, even as the latter has continued relentlessly to bomb Lebanon and attempts to invade it on the ground.

According to Reuters, an Israeli air strike targeted Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, killing at least eight Palestinians and wounding many others.

The Guardian reported that officials from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) participate in daily meetings at an Israeli military base that also houses a notorious prison for Palestinians snachted from Gaza, where reports of torture, rape and murder are rampant.

At least 4,000 Palestinians have been detained from Gaza in Israel since October 2023. 

Torture, rape and murder have all been reported as rife at the facility, one of several facilities where Palestinians have been mistreated for decades.

“I can’t sleep at night knowing that it’s going on,” one US official told The Guardian. “It’s another form of psychological torture to make someone work there.”

Israel's Channel 12 reported that Air France has postponed the return of its flights to and from Israel for an additional week.

The number of journalists killed by the Israeli army in Gaza has risen to 177 following the death of photojournalist Ayman Muhammad Ruwaished.

“The Government Media Office condemns in the strongest terms the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation,” the statement said.

Israel's army has faced multiple accusations of targeting media workers during its ongoing war on Gaza since October 2023.

Last week, Palestinian journalist Hassan Hamad was killed in an Israeli air strike on his home in Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza, days after an Israeli officer threatened him to stop filming in the area.

Ziyad Mashhour al-Ghafari stood in the yard of his home in the Palestinian village of Sinjil, in the occupied West Bank, looking on at the olive grove his father planted decades ago and that was now destroyed. 

Eight months ago, Ghafari was informed that Israeli authorities were planning to build a section of the wall that would separate his village, Sinjil, north of Ramallah, from the main road. He was not given any details regarding the design of the wall, its path, or its proximity to his house, which is closest to the road.

At the end of September, Ghafari, like other villagers, was surprised by a large number of Israeli forces, accompanied by military bulldozers, at the village’s main entrance. They then proceeded to uproot olive trees and bulldoze the area around his home. Every time he tried to approach them to ask what was happening, he was threatened at gunpoint and ordered to return to his house.

"Suddenly, our lives turned into a nightmare. The house is no longer safe; there’s no privacy, no freedom of movement, and we don’t know when or how this nightmare will end," Ghafari told Middle East Eye.

Read more: Israel's new tactic to seizing West Bank lands: Settlement 'buffer zones'