Live: Five Palestinian journalists killed, Gaza media office says

Three BBC Arabic employees suspended their work on Monday in protest over the news agency's report from South Lebanon, where its reporters were embedded with the Israeli army invading the area.

The employees said they would not return to their jobs unless the agency issued an apology or held the team that accompanied the Israeli army accountable.

"We do not comment on individual staffing matters. Our staff in Lebanon continue to report for the BBC despite the ongoing conflict in the region.," a BBC spokesperson told Middle East Eye.

Earlier today, Hezbollah released a statement condemning the BBC's report and called on Lebanon's Ministry of Information and other relevant authorities to take the necessary legal measures against the BBC and its team in Lebanon.

The UK has imposed sanctions against Iranian individuals and organisations afterIran's attack on Israel on Oct. 1, the country's Foreign Office said on Monday.

The sanctions target senior figures in Iran's army, air force and organisations linked to Iran's ballistic and cruise missile development.

"Despite repeated warnings, the dangerous actions of Iran and its proxies are driving further escalation in the Middle East," British Foreign Minister David Lammy said in a statement.

"Following its ballistic missile attack on Israel, we are holding Iran to account and exposing those who facilitated these acts."

Reporting by Reuters

Uzy Raby, a history professor, has been one of the most sought-after Middle East experts in Israeli media.

The senior lecturer at the department of Middle Eastern and African history at Tel Aviv University has unapologetically advocated the starvation of civilians in northern Gaza who do not follow the Israeli army’s order to evacuate south. 

"Anyone who stays there will be judged by law as a terrorist and will go through either a process of starvation or a process of extermination," he said during a TV interview last month.

Then, addressing a possible attack on Beirut, he reiterated the same reasoning. 

"You have to inflict it [the war] on the population," Raby said.

READ MORE: Israeli academics lead way in advocating 'process of extermination' of Palestinians

The Lebanese Red Cross said that Israel's attack on a building in Aitou in north Lebanon's Zgharta district killed at least 18 people.

It is the first town the Christian-majority town is hit during Hezbollah's current clashes with Israel.

Hezbollah has little to no presence in the area.

An Israeli strike hit the north Lebanon region of Aitou on Monday, residents and Lebanese broadcasters said, the first time the Christian-majority area has been attacked by Israel in a year of hostilities.

Reporting by Reuters

Survivors of the deadly fire caused by an Israeli strike on a Gaza hospital early on Monday are still in shock.

Speaking to Middle East Eye at the scene, some of them recalled harrowing scenes of their neighbours burning alive in the fire with no means of helping them. 

"As soon as we laid down [to sleep], the strike hit the hospital's courtyard and around seven minutes later there was a fire. We ran in a hurry," said Maha al-Sarsak, a survivor of the attack. 

"There were two people next to us from the al-Dalou family who couldn't leave in time and died in the fire. They came out charred skeletons," she added.

'I saw death with my own eyes'

- Maha al-Sarsak, displaced Palestinian

Sarsak said the fire grew bigger by the minute because it kept burning the tents alongside the mattresses and clothes inside them. 

"I don't know what to say. I saw death with my own eyes. It was frightening."

Sarsak, who is originally from Gaza City, has been seeking shelter at the hospital in Deir al-Balah, which has been struck by Israeli forces six times before in the past year. 

And even though she has seen a lot, nothing compared to the scene this morning. 

"I have never seen anything like this. I saw something burning inside the fire and thought it was a mattress but I then realised it was a woman," she told MEE as she broke into tears.

"I saw the woman and her children inside the fire and I couldn't help them. I then went inside the hospital and tried to tell people what I saw but I was losing my voice. No one could reach them.

"May God burn you in hell, Netanyahu."

Israel has attacked a prominent survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing over a comparison he made between the blast and the current assault on Gaza.

Toshiyuki Mimaki, a leader of the Nihon Hidankyo organisation that represents survivors of the US attack, compared the two after the group was announced as the recepient of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

“I thought for sure it would be the people working so hard in Gaza, as we’ve seen," he told reporters in Tokyo after the announcement.

“In Gaza, bleeding children are being held by their parents. It’s like in Japan 80 years ago.”

In response, Israel's ambassador to Japan attacked the comparison as "outrageous and baseless", and said such comparisons "distort history and dishonor the victims".

Rad more: Nobel winning Hiroshima survivor's Gaza comparison angers Israel 

Bilal Ezzat Khudari, who is originally from Gaza City but is now displaced in Deir al-Balah, was sleeping 300 metres away from the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital when an Israeli strike hit its courtyards at around 2am local time.  

"I rushed to the hospital to see what happened and saw the bombing had caused a fire, which then set off gas canisters used by people and led to a bigger inferno," Khadari told Middle East Eye correspondent Mohammed al-Hajjar.

"The fire was 10 to 15 metres tall. It was so big people couldn't help. It kept spreading, and every now and then something would blow up inside, pushing the rescuers back."

Khudari said he saw people inside the blaze being burned alive.

"I saw at least three charred bodies. One of them was a janitor. He had nothing to do with anything.

"There was a falafel vendor who worked and slept here. His wife and son both died in the fire. His son was a good guy, an engineer."

Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian teenager during a raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. 

The boy was identified by local media as 17-year-old Rayyan Ibrahim Sayyed. 

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday urged other members of the European Union to respond to Madrid and Ireland's request to suspend the bloc's free trade agreement with Israel over its was in Gaza and Lebanon.

For months, both Spain and Ireland have been in talks with other EU countries who want a review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement on the basis that Israel may be breaching the agreement's human rights clause.

Reporting by Reuters

Israeli forces raided Jenin on Monday and opened fire at resident as they surrounded a house in the northern occupied West Bank city.

At least one Palestinian pupil was wounded by Israeli gunfire, according to local media. 

Attacks by Israel on the United Nations' peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known as Unifil, are "unacceptable" and contrary to UN rules, Spain's Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said on Monday.

"It is contrary to what we expect from any member state of the United Nations, which is ultimately an organisation that protects world peace," he told reporters ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers held in Luxembourg.

EU countries, led by Italy, France and Spain, have thousands of troops in the 10,000-strong peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, which has said it has repeatedly come under attack from Israeli forces in recent days. Israel has called on the UN to move the troops out of the combat zone.

Albares said only UN can order the withdrawal of Unifil.

Reporting by Reuters

Gaza endured "another night of horror" after Israeli forces shelled a hospital courtyard, leading to a deadly fire in makeshift tents, and bombed a school designated as a polio vaccination site, killing 22 people, Unrwa said on Monday. 

"A strike hit a hospital courtyard, burning the tents where people were sleeping," the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on X. 

"Just before this, an Unrwa school sheltering families was hit in Nuseirat. That same school was going to be used as a polio vaccination site today."

Another night of horror in the #Gaza Strip.

A strike hit a hospital courtyard, burning the tents where people were sleeping. Just before this, an @UNRWA school sheltering families was hit in Nuseirat.

That same school was going to be used as a #polio vaccination site today. pic.twitter.com/EZt07HuKol

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) October 14, 2024

Israeli shelling on a food distribution centre killed 10 Palestinian aid seekers on Monday in the Jabalia refugee camp, which has been under an Israeli siege blocking the entry of food and water for nine days.

Ibrahim Rabea, a Jabalia resident, told Middle East Eye the attack targeted a gathering of people who arrived at the centre to collect the remaining aid there after they ran out of food in their homes.  

At least 10 were killed and 40 others wounded in the bombing, according to initial estimates. 

Those killed and wounded were left strewn on the streets "with no ambulances, no civil defence and no one able to rescue them," said Rabea.