Israeli air strike kills two Lebanese soldiers

An Israeli air strike killed two Lebanese soldiers and wounded three others, hours after Israeli troops again wounded United Nations peacekeepers at their headquarters in southern Lebanon.
The Lebanese army said the air strike hit a building near a military checkpoint in Kafra, Bint Jbeil province in southern Lebanon.
Hours earlier, Israeli troops were accused of injuring blue helmet peacekeepers for the second time in two days.
The international force said explosions struck near an observation tower at its headquarters in Naqoura. One of the injured peacekeepers was hospitalised in the nearby city of Tyre while the other received medical care on site, it said.
The injuring of two Indonesian soldiers on Thursday when their watchtower was hit by fire from an Israeli tank had already caused widespread diplomatic outrage and accusations Israel was breaking international law.
Israel’s ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which began three weeks ago, is drawing increasing international scrutiny and concern.
Joe Biden said he “absolutely” was asking Israel not to hit UN peacekeepers when asked by a reporter at the White House on Friday.
Two Israeli strikes on Thursday night meanwhile killed 22 people and injured more than 100 in central Beirut, Lebanese authorities said, as a senior Hezbollah official dodged an assassination attempt.
The strikes hit a densely packed residential neighbourhood of apartment buildings and small shops late on Thursday and were the deadliest attacks on the city since the start of the war.
The target was reported to be Wafiq Safa, the head of Hezbollah’s liaison and coordination unit responsible for working with Lebanese security agencies, but he survived, sources said. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television channel said he was not in the building at the time.
Rescue workers were still trawling through rubble at the scene in Beirut on Friday morning.
A three-storey building in the Burj Abi Haidar neighbourhood was flattened and one next door was badly damaged.
Ahmad al-Khatib, a postal worker, stood in the apartment of his in-laws where he, his wife, Marwa Hamdan, and their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Ayla, were injured.
“The world suddenly turned upside down and darkness prevailed,” the 42-year-old said.
He pulled his daughter from under the debris of a collapsed bedroom wall and fortunately, she suffered only minor injuries.
His wife was hit in the head by a piece of metal and remained in intensive care.
Israel has dramatically stepped up its air campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, saying it wants to secure its northern cities from barrages of rockets fired by Hezbollah across the border, so that residents it previously evacuated can return home.
Hezbollah began rocket barrages into Israel the day after the Hamas Oct 7 attacks, drawing air strikes in retaliation.
Israel’s military says more than 12,000 rockets, missiles, and drones have been launched at Israel from Lebanon in the past year.
More than 2,100 Lebanese have been killed in the same period by Israeli strikes, two-thirds of them in the past three weeks. Lebanese authorities do not disclose how many were combatants or civilians.
Lebanon’s civil defence units, which in peacetime fight fires, respond to road accidents and conduct rescues, are now each day pulling people from the rubble of collapsed buildings.
Saad al Ahmar who oversees a unit of 100 staff and 150 volunteers east of the capital and has been working in civil defence for 37 years, said his men had been working round the clock.
He said he had not slept in his own bed for at least three weeks, resting on a sofa in his office instead.
He told the Telegraph: “We work 24 hours. In the past three weeks, we haven’t been sleeping or eating and we haven’t had time for anything. After every air strike, we have to be there. We have to look for missing people, we have to move bodies and put out fires.”
As he spoke, clearly exhausted and with bags under his eyes, he was constantly interrupted by phone calls from his rescue teams.
He said civil defence units had evacuated their bases in Beirut’s southern suburbs where many of the Israeli strikes had landed, after telephone warnings from Israel to leave. They now based themselves outside the city and rush in after each strike, he said.
He insisted that “99 per cent” of those his men had pulled from the rubble were civilians.
He recalled one strike where his men had been unable to find the remains of a young woman missing in the rubble. Every few days he received a new voice message from her mother, pleading with him to send his men back to search again.
Thanks for following our live coverage. The key developments from the day were:
The United States has expanded sanctions against Iran’s petroleum and petrochemical sectors in response to Iran’s missile attack on Israel, the Treasury Department said.
“This action intensifies financial pressure on Iran, limiting the regime’s ability to earn critical energy revenues to undermine stability in the region and attack US partners and allies,” the Treasury Department said in a statement.
It adds the petroleum and petrochemical sector to an existing executive order that targets key sectors of Iran’s economy with the aim of denying the government financial resources to support its nuclear and missile program.
The Treasury Department is also designating 16 entities and identifying 17 vessels as blocked property, citing their involvement in shipments of Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products in support of the National Iranian Oil Company, according to the statement.
Leaders of nine European Union member states in the Mediterranean on Friday called for an immediate ceasefire after a sharp escalation in conflict between Israel and forces of Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“Amid the backdrop of the conflict in Gaza in the broader region, we express our deep concern at the escalation of a military confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah,” a statement from EU leaders attending a summit, known as MED9, read after meeting in Cyprus.
“We seek an immediate ceasefire throughout the Blue Line and the timely dispatch of humanitarian aid to Lebanon,” leaders including France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal said in a joint statement, referring to a UN mapped demarcation line separating Lebanon from Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
US president Joe Biden said on Friday he is asking Israel to not hit UN peacekeepers in its conflict with Hezbollah after two peacekeepers were injured on Friday by an Israeli strike near their watchtower in south Lebanon. 
“Absolutely, positively,” Mr Biden said when asked by a reporter at the White House if he was asking Israel to stop.
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni condemned Israeli fire against UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, where Italy has more than 1,000 troops.
“Unifil mission headquarters and two Italian bases were hit by gunfire fired by Israeli forces… It is not acceptable, it violates what is established under UN resolution 1701” which governs the peacekeepers’ presence, Ms Meloni said at a summit of European and Mediterranean leaders in Cyprus.
Lebanon’s speaker of parliament Nabih Berri received a phone call from the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken on Friday, which lasted about 40 minutes, during which they discussed the situation in Lebanon, a statement from the speaker’s office said. 
Earlier this week, Mr Berri accused the US government of “doing nothing” to stop Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
During an interview with Saudi news outlet Asharq al-Awsat on October 9, he said:
“[The US] say they are in favour of stopping the war but are doing nothing to achieve that. The French are still with us in this position, as are the British. As for the Americans, they say they are with us, but they are doing nothing to stop the aggression.”
French president Emmanuel Macron said Friday that “stopping the export of weapons” used in Gaza and Lebanon was the only way to end fighting there, and also condemned “deliberate” targeting of UN peacekeepers.
“We all know it. It’s the unique lever that would end it,” Mr Macron said at a summit of European and Mediterranean leaders in Cyprus, where he also said it was “absolutely unacceptable” that UN peacekeepers in Lebanon are “deliberately targeted” by Israeli forces.
Thousands of people are trapped in Gaza’s Jabalia camp as Israeli forces attack the area, Doctors Without Borders said on Friday, a week after Israel began an offensive it says is aimed at stopping Hamas regrouping.
Israeli military strikes killed at least 34 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Friday, with nearly half of the fatalities occurring in Jabalia, the northern district which is the largest of Gaza’s historic refugee camps.
“Nobody is allowed to get in or out; anyone who tries is getting shot,” MSF project coordinator Sarah Vuylsteke said on X.
Five MSF staff were trapped in Jabalia, she said. “I don’t know what to do; at any moment we could die. People are starving. I am afraid to stay, and I am also afraid to leave,” she quoted Haydar, an MSF driver, as saying.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime pinister Najib Mikati has condemned the killings of the two Lebanese soldiers.
“This persistent Israeli crime against Lebanon did not spare today the brave soldiers who are carrying out their national duty in protecting the land and defending the people,” he said in a statement.
The Lebanese army has historically stayed out of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, focusing instead on maintaining order inside Lebanon.
US defense secretary Lloyd Austin said he had urged his counterpart in Israel to ensure the safety of Unifil forces in Lebanon, after the group said that two UN peacekeepers had been injured in the country’s south.
“I urged ensuring the safety of Unifil forces and coordinating efforts to pivot from military operations to a diplomatic pathway as soon as feasible,” Mr Austin said following his call with Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant.
The IDF has said it “inadvertently hurt during IDF combat against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon”. 
“The IDF expresses deep concern over incidents of this kind and is currently conducting a thorough review at the highest levels of command to determine the details,” its spokesperson LTC Nadav Shoshani said on social media.
In another statement, the IDF said that its soldiers had identified an immediate threat and responded with fire. 
“An initial examination indicates that during the incident, a hit was identified on a Unifil post, located approximately 50 meters from the source of the threat, resulting in the injury of two Unifil personnel. Hours before the incident, the IDF instructed Unifil personnel to enter into protected spaces and remain there. This instruction was in place at the time of the incident,” the statement said.
It added that Hezbollah “deliberately operates from civilian areas and near Unifil posts”.
The IDF has been notified that two @UN peacekeepers were inadvertently hurt during IDF combat against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The IDF expresses deep concern over incidents of this kind and is currently conducting a thorough review at the highest levels of command to…
Two UN soldiers in southern Lebanon have been injured after the United Nations Interim Force (Unifil) headquarters in Naquora were impacted for the second time in 48 hours, the international peacekeeping force has said.
Unifil said the attacks were a “grave violation of international humanitarian law” and said in a statement:
“Several T-walls (concrete blast barriers) at our UN position 1-31, near the blue line in Labbouneh, fell when an IDF caterpillar hit the perimeter and IDF tanks moved in the proximity of the UN position. Our peacekeepers remained at the location, and a Unifil quick reaction force was dispatched to assist and reinforce the position.
These incidents put again UN peacekeepers, who are serving in south Lebanon at the request of the security council under resolution 1701 (2006), at very serious risks.
This is a serious development, and Unifil reiterates that the safety and security of UN personnel and property must be guaranteed and that the inviolability of UN premises must be respected at all times.
Any deliberate attack on peacekeepers is a grave violation of international humanitarian law and security council resolution 1701 (2006).”
Hezbollah’s priority right now is defeating Israel militarily but it is open to any efforts to stop “the aggression”, the head of Lebanese group’s media office, Mohammad Afif, said in a televised press conference.
Lebanon’s army said two people were killed and three others injured after Israeli forces targeted one of its military posts in southern Lebanon’s Kafra. 
The Israeli military is conducting a thorough review after being notified that two UN peacekeepers were “inadvertently” hurt in southern Lebanon, the Israeli army said in a statement on Friday. 
Thai workers have been an integral part of the Israeli economy in recent years, amounting to some 30,000 prior to October 7.
A majority of them worked in agriculture across Israel, of whom roughly 5,000 were the Gaza border communities.
Twenty-one Thai workers were killed on October 7 and 11 kidnapped by terrorists who brought them to Gaza. Six Thai workers are still believed to be held hostage.
In the weeks following the massacre, some 9,000 left Israel, causing great damage to the Israeli agriculture economy.  
With the Israeli economy in dire need of foreign workers, Thailand is expecting to send some 10,000 workers back to Israel by the end of the year.
The director-general of Thailand’s Department of Employment, Somchai Morakotsriwan, told the Bangkok Post in June that he asked Israel to allow 20,000 Thai workers into the country per year, in addition to 25,000 Thai construction workers. 
A 27-year-old tractor driver from Thailand has been killed after Hezbollah attacked northern Israel on Friday.
Multiple other people were reportedly injured in the attack.
The Israeli Defence Forces said that the injuries were the result of fallen munitions, which were fired at an agricultural area and, after exploding, hit Kibbutz Yaroun in the Upper Galilee.
It follows the death of two more people in northern Israel this week, a couple who were also killed by a barrage of rockets launched from Lebanon. The pair, who were both in their forties, sustained fatal wounds due to falling shrapnel while walking their dogs, Ynet reported.
The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted one year ago when the Iranian-backed group opened fire in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war.
It has intensified dramatically in recent weeks, with Israel bombing Beirut’s southern suburbs, the south and the Bekaa Valley, killing many of Hezbollah’s top leaders, and sending ground troops into areas of southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah firing rockets deeper into Israel.
France summoned Israel’s ambassador on Friday to seek an explanation after Israeli troops fired at positions held by UN peacekeepers, including at the Naqoura base in southern Lebanon, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
“These attacks constitute serious violations of international law and must stop immediately,” the ministry said.
France has about 700 troops as part of the UNIFIL mission. None of its troops has been wounded so far.
The ministry said that all sides in the conflict had an obligation to protect peacekeepers.
Dozens of Palestinians have been wounded by Israeli quadcopter fire at a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee Camp, the Civil Defence said on Friday.
It said crews were transferring the wounded to a nearby hospital.
Two more United Nations peacekeepers were wounded on Friday, only a day after a direct hit on a watchtower by an Israeli tank caused diplomatic outrage.
The UN mission to monitor the ‘Blue Line’ between Lebanon and Israel, called Unifil, also said an Israeli earthmover had knocked down fortified concrete walls when it hit the perimeter of another UN base.
The two incidents had put blue helmet peacekeepers at “very serious risks”, the mission said.
In the first incident, soldiers were wounded by explosions close to a watchtower at Unifil’s Naqoura headquarters.
One injured peacekeeper was taken to a hospital in Tyre, while the second is being treated in Naqoura.
Unifil also said on Friday that an Israeli military bulldozer knocked over barriers at UN position 1-31 near the Blue Line in Labbouneh, and IDF tanks moved into the proximity of the UN position. 
The IDF’s Central Command, responsible for overseeing the military’s operations in the West Bank, said it will bolster its presence in the region with several additional combat platoons.
In a statement, the military said that the additional troops will ensure the “defense of the settlements in the area and the security barrier, and prepare the forces for various scenarios in the sector.”
A campaign starting next week to give hundreds of thousands of children in war-stricken Gaza the necessary second dose of polio vaccine will be “more complicated” than the first round, the UN said Friday.
The United Nations agencies for health and for children said they were gearing up to start providing follow-up doses to some 591,700 children under the age of 10 across Gaza from Monday.
That follows a first vaccination round implemented from September 1 to 12, which Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organisation’s representative for the Palestinian territories, hailed Friday as “a massive achievement”.
The vaccination campaign began after the first confirmed polio case in 25 years was reported in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Like the last round, the upcoming campaign will take part in three phases, aided by localised “humanitarian pauses” in fighting: first in central Gaza, then in the south and finally in the hardest-to reach north of the territory.
Mr Peeperkorn told reporters he had “confidence” in the hundreds of teams ready to roll out the second stage of the campaign.
But he acknowledged he was “concerned about the developments in the north”, where Israel has dramatically escalated its operations and has issued a string of evacuation orders.
“We are concerned,” agreed Jean Gough of UNICEF. “The conditions on the ground are really more complicated this time.” 
German chancellor Olaf Scholz will visit Turkey next week to meet president Recep Tayyip Erdogan with the escalating conflict in the Middle East and migration on the agenda, officials said Friday.
Mr Scholz will hold talks with Mr Erdogan on October 19 in Istanbul.
The German chancellor last visited Turkey in March 2022, a few months after taking office.
“The war in Ukraine will be the subject of the talks, as will the situation in the Middle East. Migration and bilateral and economic policy issues will also be on the agenda,” a government spokesperson said.
Mr Erdogan has frequently attacked Israel over its actions in Gaza, labelling them “genocide”. Berlin meanwhile is a strong supporter of Israel and has defended the country’s right to self-defence, although it has also increasingly called for restraint.
Israeli strikes killed 22 people and injured more than 100 in central Beirut, Lebanese authorities said, as a senior Hezbollah official evaded an Israeli assassination attempt in the city.
Wafiq Safa, the head of Hezbollah’s liaison and coordination unit, which is responsible for working with Lebanese security agencies, was targeted by Israel on Thursday night but survived, three security sources told Reuters.
The Israeli strikes hit a densely packed residential neighbourhood of apartment buildings and small shops in the heart of Beirut, marking the deadliest attacks on the city since the start of the war.
Israel did not issue evacuation warnings ahead of the strikes and had not previously attacked the area, which is removed from Beirut’s southern suburbs where Hezbollah’s headquarters have been repeatedly bombed by Israel.
Lebanon’s health ministry reported that 22 people were killed and 117 were wounded. Among the dead was a family of eight, including three children, who had evacuated from the south.
Israeli strikes have killed at least 2,169 people in Lebanon over the last year, the Lebanese government said in its daily update. The majority have been killed since Sept 23, when Israel expanded its military campaign. The toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Downing Street is “appalled” by reports that Israel deliberately fired on peacekeepers in Lebanon.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon has said an Israeli tank fired on its headquarters in the town of Naqoura in southern Lebanon, hitting an observation tower and wounding two peacekeepers.
A Downing Street spokeswoman said: “We were appalled to hear those reports and it is vital that peacekeepers and civilians are protected.
“As you know, we continue to call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to suffering and bloodshed. This is a reminder of the importance of us all renewing our diplomatic efforts.”
Ireland will have found a willing listener in President Biden when Taoiseach Simon Harris complained about Israel’s attack on UN peacekeepers.
Joe Biden is the most Irish president since John F Kennedy and the second Catholic in the White House after him in a country where Irish-Americans wield considerable influence.
Dublin has not been slow to use its influence in Washington, as Britain found out when President Biden intervened in the rows over post-Brexit trading arrangements  for Northern Ireland.
Mr Biden’s outspoken love for Ireland is such that he has published a family tree of his Irish ancestors and goes by the secret service codename “Celtic”.
His ancestors fled a famine-ravaged Ireland for a better life in the US in around 1851 because of, in his words,“what the Brits were doing”.
In April 2023, he was given a rapturous welcome on a visit to Ireland.
Irish soldiers are among the troops stationed in southern Lebanon, although none were hurt in the attack
Israel’s military chief and the head of its Shin Ben security agency held a security assessment inside southern Lebanon on Thursday, the military said on Friday.
“We continue to operate against the enemy and will not stop until we ensure that we can safely return the residents (evacuated from the north), not just now, but with a future outlook,” said Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, Chief of the General Staff, in a video of the gathering released by the military.
“If anyone considers rebuilding these villages again, they will know that it’s not worth constructing terrorist infrastructure because the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) will neutralize them again.”
UN officials on Friday voiced concerns that Israeli evacuation orders in northern Gaza might affect its polio vaccination campaign set to start next week.
“I am of course, concerned about the developments in the north, and specifically with these evacuation orders,” Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territory, told reporters in Geneva.
Jean Gough, Unicef Special representative in the State of Palestine, also voiced concerns and described the conditions as “more complicated” than in the first phase of the vaccination campaign last month.
An Israeli strikes killed 22 people and injured more than 100 in central Beirut, Lebanese authorities said, as a senior Hezbollah official evaded an Israeli assassination attempt in the city.

Wafiq Safa, the head of Hezbollah’s liaison and coordination unit, which is responsible for working with Lebanese security agencies, was targeted by Israel on Thursday night but survived, three security sources told Reuters.

The Israeli strikes hit a densely packed residential neighbourhood of apartment buildings and small shops in the heart of Beirut, marking the deadliest attacks on the city since the start of the war.

Italy has issued strongly worded protests over the IDF attacks on UN bases in southern Lebanon, reports Nick Squires, in Rome.  
The foreign minister said in an interview published on Friday that they were totally unacceptable.
“What happened to the Unifil bases is unacceptable,” Antonio Tajani, who is also deputy prime minister, told Corriere della Sera newspaper. “Whether by mistake or, much worse, intentionally, it is unacceptable. For two weeks the Italian government has been warning the Israelis of this danger. I myself in the last few days called my Israeli counterpart Israel Katz three times. And I called president Herzog two times.
“Israel has the right to defend itself and to respond to the barbaric October 7 attacks. But their operations must respect international law at all times.”
Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish prime minister, on Friday urged the international community to stop selling weapons to Israel as he condemned attacks by Israel’s armed forces against the United Nations’ peacekeeping force in Lebanon.
Israeli forces fired at an observation post used by UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Friday, injuring two, a UN source said, the third day in a row peacekeepers have reported Israeli fire at their positions as Israel wages war on Hezbollah.
None of the Spanish soldiers who were part of the mission were hit, the Spanish Defence Ministry said on Friday.
Spain has deployed 650 peacekeepers in Lebanon and a Spanish general leads the mission. 
Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian President, said on Friday that Israel should “stop killing innocent people”, and that its actions in the Middle East were backed by the United States and the European Union.
Mr Pezeshkian was speaking to a Russian state TV reporter on the sidelines of an international meeting in Turkmenistan.
An Israeli strike late on Thursday in the heart of Beirut killed 22 people and injured more than 100, Lebanese authorities said.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it launched a drone attack Friday on a military base in north Israel’s Haifa, a day after deadly strikes in Beirut and as the group battles Israeli forces on the border.
Hezbollah launched “an air attack with a group of explosive-laden drones” towards the “air defence command base” in Haifa, “responding to” Israeli attacks on “cities and villages and civilians”, the Iran-backed group said in a statement.
Lebanon’s foreign ministry condemned an Israeli attack that it said wounded United Nations peacekeepers in the country’s south, after Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported a new attack on Friday.
The ministry condemned “the targeting… carried out by the Israeli army” on the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, most recently “the bombing that targeted watchtowers and the main Unifil base in Ras Naqura, and on the Sri Lankan battalion’s base, which led to a number of wounded”, a statement said.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency earlier Friday reported that “an enemy Merkava tank targeted one of the UNIFIL towers on the main road linking Tyre and Naqura… which wounded personnel from the Sri Lankan battalion.”
🔴Araeb el Shoga, a commander in the Hezbollah Radwan Forces’ Anti-tank Missile Unit in the Area of Meiss El Jabal in southern Lebanon, was eliminated. El Araeb was responsible for numerous anti-tank missile attacks in northern Israel.Additionally, the IAF struck terrorists… pic.twitter.com/7xWpbwIhEW
Iran said it is “fully prepared to defend its sovereignty” if its Israel attacks as it has threatened to do in response to a barrage of about 200 missiles.
The Islamic republic launched the missiles at Israel on Oct 1 in retaliation for the killing of two of its closest allies, Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, and Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, along with an Iranian general.
Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, vowed this week that his country’s response would be “deadly, precise and surprising”.
In an address to the UN Security Council on Thursday, Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations, said the Islamic republic “stands fully prepared to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity against any aggression targeting its vital interests and security”.
Iran, he said, was not seeking “war or escalation” but would exercise its “inherent right to self-defence fully in line with international law and will notify the Security Council of its legitimate response”.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, has voiced hope for a diplomatic solution in Lebanon and has backed efforts by the fragile state to assert itself against Hezbollah.
“We continue to engage intensely to prevent broader conflict in the region,” Mr Blinken told reporters after an East Asia Summit in Laos.
“So Israel has a clear and very legitimate interest in doing that. The people of Lebanon want the same thing. We believe that the best way to get there is through a diplomatic understanding, one that we’ve been working on for some time, and one that we focus on right now.”
He said the US would work to support the Lebanon to build itself up after Hezbollah’s long-held sway.
“It’s clear that the people of Lebanon have an interest – a strong interest – in the state asserting itself and taking responsibility for the country and its future,” he said.
Ireland’s Taoiseach has accused Israel of “an extremely egregious breach of international law” after its forces fired on UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon in an “utterly unacceptable” attack.
Simon Harris said he had raised the incident with Joe Biden, the US president, during his visit to the White House. 
Speaking in Washington, Mr Harris said: “The conversation I had with the president left me in no doubt of the significance of what he had discussed with the prime minister of Israel.”
He added: “Israel will have to be judged on what it does and not what it says.
“The loss of civilian life is concerning, the incursion into Lebanon, the bombing of Gaza is beyond concerning, it is despicable. And I think the intimidatory behaviour towards peacekeepers is utterly unacceptable and must be protested at the highest level.”
Irish defence forces in Lebanon were unharmed in the attack but two UN soldiers were injured. The Irish Independent reported plans were in place to withdraw peacekeepers from Lebanon if the threat to them increases. 
An Israeli airstrike killed the leader of a local Islamic Jihad group in the West Bank. 
The IDF said an aircraft struck and killed Muhammad Abdullah, the head of the Islamic Jihad’s terror network in the Nur Shams camp. 
Abdullah was responsible for organising “terrorist activities” in the area of Tulkarm in the northern West Bank and was involved in numerous terror attacks. 
“He was also active in deploying explosives against IDF soldiers operating in the area of Tulkarm,” the IDF added. 
Israel killed Abdullah’s predecessor, Muhammad Jabber (Abu Shujaa), in an operation in the West Bank on Aug 29. 
Israel has worked systematically to eliminate and arrest members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terror groups in the West Bank over the last year, leading to thousands of arrests and some 600 killed, most of whom Israel says were terrorists.
More countries have been condemning Israel for the wounding on Thursday of two United Nations peacekeepers when a tank shot their watchtower in southern Lebanon.
Indonesia confirmed two of its peacekeepers with the 10,000-strong Uniful mission were lightly hurt and called the incident a violation of international law.
Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the UN’s peacekeeping chief, told the security council that the safety of the blue helmets in Lebanon was “increasingly in jeopardy”. Operations, where the troops are supposed to monitor the ‘Blue Line’ between Lebanon and Israel, had virtually halted since late September, he said.
Israel at the weekend asked Unifil to remove troops from some outposts. The UN refused.
We’re bringing you the latest updates from the Middle East.