More than 1,000 people killed in Lebanon and one million displaced by Israeli strikes, Lebanese minister says
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the conflict in the Middle East.
Israel has continued its attacks on Lebanon, with its military claiming to have hit dozens of Hezbollah targets in the past hours, a day after the Lebanese militant group confirmed its leader
Hassan Nasrallah
had been killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut.
More than 1,000 people have been killed in Lebanon and more than 6,000 wounded as a result of Israeli attacks in the past two weeks, the health ministry said, and about one million Lebanese people have been displaced by the strikes, including hundreds of thousands since Friday,
Nasser Yassin, the minister coordinating the government’s crisis response, has told Reuters.
The Lebanese ministry of public health reported last night that the Israeli attacks across Lebanon yesterday killed 33 people and injured 195 others, according to Wafa, the Palestinian news agency
.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has confirmed the death of
Brig Gen Abbas Nilforoushan, deputy commander of IRGC operations
. He was killed in the Israel’s air strikes on Lebanon on Friday which also killed other senior Hezbollah figures, including the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. In its statement mourning Nilforoushan’s killing, the IRGC condemned “crimes of the Zionist regime” in Lebanon and praised his role in defending the “resistance front” and Iran. It didn’t vow revenge against Israel.
The Turkish president,
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
, has said Lebanese people are the new target of “Israel’s policy of genocide, occupation and invasion.”
The Turkish leader, who has been highly critical of Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, said children were among Lebanese civilians who have been “murdered” by “brutal” Israeli strikes conducted on
Lebanon
this week.
“By the grace and power of God, the blows struck by the Resistance Front on the worn-out, deteriorating body of the Zionist regime will become even more crushing,” said Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei about
Hezbollah
chief Hassan Nasrallah.
He went on to add: “The foul-natured Zionist regime has not become victorious by carrying out this atrocity.”
Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, commenting on the killing of Nasrallah, said on Sunday that what Iran terms “resistance groups” will continue to confront Israel with the help of Iran, according to Iranian state media
. Iran has called for the UN security council to meet over Israel’s assault on Lebanon and across the region.
Joe Biden
ordered the Pentagon to enhance America’s defence posture in the region.
He said:
“The United States fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and any other Iranian-supported terrorist groups.”
UN secretary general António Guterres said he is “gravely concerned by the dramatic escalation of the events in Beirut in the last 24 hours”.
He went on to add: “This cycle of violence must stop now. All sides must step back from the brink.”
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