Famine has been confirmed for the first time in an area of the embattled Gaza Strip, according to the international authority responsible for monitoring food security.
In a report released on Friday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said it has “reasonable evidence” that famine has been occurring in Gaza Governorate, an administrative region which includes Gaza City, since August 15.
“After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death,” the authority said.
Some 132,000 children under the age of five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition through June 2026 – double the IPC estimate from May – with 41,000 of them considered particularly vulnerable.
The IPC also projected that famine will expand to two other central governorates, Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, by the end of September.
Famine is formally declared when three criteria are met: At least 20% of households face extreme food shortages, at least 30% of children suffer from acute malnutrition, and at least two adults or four children per 10,000 inhabitants die every day from hunger or from a combination of malnutrition and disease.
“To prevent further loss of life and famine from spreading further, an immediate ceasefire and putting an end to the conflict is critical,” the IPC said.
Israel rejects report as ‘biased’
The Israeli Foreign Ministry rejected the IPC’s assessment, saying: “There is no famine in Gaza.”
The Israeli authority responsible for affairs in the Palestinian Territories, COGAT, also categorically rejected the report, writing on X: “Previous reports and assessments by the IPC have repeatedly been proven inaccurate and do not reflect the reality on the ground.”
COGAT accused the IPC of “deliberately” failing to take into account in the report “data that was provided to its authors in a meeting held prior to its publication,” though it did not specify the exact nature of the data.
Head of COGAT, Ghassan Allian, said: “The IPC report is based on partial and unreliable sources, many of them affiliated with Hamas, and blatantly ignores the facts and the extensive humanitarian efforts led by the State of Israel and its international partners.”
“Instead of providing a professional, neutral, and responsible assessment, the report adopts a biased approach riddled with severe methodological flaws, thereby undermining its credibility and the trust the international community is able to place in it,” he was quoted as saying.
Israeli troops are currently advancing on Gaza City after the government approved plans to capture the metropolis of some 1 million in a bid to destroy the remainders of the Palestinian extremist group Hamas.
The new offensive has sparked fears of further suffering for the civilian population, which has been largely lacking access to basic necessities including food since Israel imposed a near-total aid blockade on the territory earlier this year.
Last month, Israel partially lifted its blockade, allowing limited amounts of aid to trickle into the Gaza Strip, though aid organizations have said the amount is nowhere nearly enough to prevent famine.
Four famines around world in last 15 years
The IPC initiative, founded in 2004, includes nearly two dozen UN and aid organizations. It classifies food security according to five levels, with famine at level five being the most severe.
Until now, the entire Gaza Strip was classified as a level four “emergency.”
Four famines have been confirmed by the IPC in the last 15 years: in Somalia in 2011, in South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and most recently in Sudan in 2024.
The World Health Organization noted that Friday’s classification marks the first time that famine has been declared in a Middle Eastern country.
The Gaza Strip’s largest city is now gripped by famine, according to the world’s leading authority on food crises. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, said Friday that famine was occurring in Gaza City and that this was likely to spread to the southern cities of Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah without a ceasefire and an end to restrictions on humanitarian aid.
Aid groups and food security experts have warned for months that Gaza was on the brink of famine, but the IPC report is the first official declaration that the situation has reached this level. Israel immediately rejected the IPC’s assessment, with the foreign ministry repeating bluntly a claim it has made for months, that “there is no famine in Gaza.”
But the IPC — which is comprised of more than a dozen U.N. agencies, aid groups, governments and other bodies and was first set up in 2004 during the famine in Somalia — said it had concluded based on “reasonable evidence” that famine “is confirmed in Gaza Governorate.”
Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, Aug. 16, 2025.
Jehad Alshrafi/AP
“After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterized by starvation, destitution and death,” the group said, warning that 1.07 million more people in Gaza were currently in a slightly lower starvation risk category, and that the circumstances were likely to expand within the densely populated Palestinian territory.
“Between mid-August and the end of September 2025, conditions are expected to further worsen with Famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis. Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions (IPC Phase 5), while those in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) will likely rise to 1.14 million (58 percent). Acute malnutrition is projected to continue worsening rapidly.”
The IPC said for the next year at least, “at least 132,000 children under five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition — double the IPC estimates from May 2025. This includes over 41,000 severe cases of children at heightened risk of death.”
In a separate statement, Tom Fletcher, who heads the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said Israel’s “systematic obstruction” of aid had caused the famine in Gaza.
“It is a famine that we could have prevented if we had been allowed. Yet food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel,” Fletcher told reporters in Geneva, calling it “a famine that will and must haunt us all.”
Israel insists “there is no famine in Gaza”
In a statement, the Israeli foreign ministry categorically rejected the findings of the UN-backed report.
“There is no famine in Gaza,” the ministry said, accusing the IPC of presenting a report “based on Hamas lies laundered through organizations with vested interests.”
“Over 100,000 trucks of aid have entered Gaza since the start of the war, and in recent weeks a massive influx of aid has flooded the Strip with staple foods and caused a sharp decline in food prices, which have plummeted in the markets,” the ministry said.
While more humanitarian aid has been allowed into Gaza in recent weeks, as Israel has come under intense international pressure, aid organizations say it is nowhere near the amount required. A controversial new U.S.- and Israeli-backed aid distribution group has also come under sharp criticism over the killing of numerous civilians near its four distribution hubs in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also repeatedly denied that there is widespread hunger in Gaza, calling reports of starvation “lies” promoted by Hamas.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency in charge of transferring aid to Gaza, said the report was “false and biased.” It said that in recent weeks significant steps had been taken to expand the amount of aid entering the strip.
What does a famine classification mean?
Famine can appear in pockets, sometimes small ones, and so a formal classification requires caution, food security experts say. The IPC has only confirmed famine a few times — in Somalia in 2011, and South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and last year in parts of Sudan’s western Darfur region. This is the first confirmed famine in the Middle East.
The IPC rates an area as in famine when all three of these conditions are confirmed:
20% of households have an extreme lack of food, or are essentially starving.
At least 30% of children 6 months to 5 years old suffer from acute malnutrition, based on a weight-to-height measurement; or 15% of that age group suffer from acute malnutrition based on the circumference of their upper arm.
At least two people, or four children under 5, per 10,000 are dying daily due to starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease.
Gaza has posed a major challenge for experts because Israel severely limits access to the territory, making it difficult to gather and confirm data.
In a separate report Friday, the Famine Review Committee, or FRC, said it, too, had concluded there was famine in part of Gaza. The FRC is a group of independent international food security experts regularly consulted by the IPC.
The group acts as an added layer of verification when the data shows there could be famine.
The data analyzed between July 1 and August 15 showed clear evidence that thresholds for starvation and acute malnutrition have been reached, according to the IPC. Gathering data for mortality has been harder, but the IPC said it is reasonable to conclude from the evidence that the necessary threshold has likely been reached.
Most cases of severe malnutrition in children arise through a combination of lack of nutrients along with an infection, leading to diarrhea and other symptoms that cause dehydration, said Alex de Waal, author of “Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine” and executive director of the World Peace Foundation.
“There are no standard guidelines for physicians to classify cause of death as ‘malnutrition’ as opposed to infection,” he said.
Police officers arrested 18 people at worker-led protests at Microsoft headquarters Wednesday as the tech company promises an “urgent” review of the Israeli military’s use of its technology during the ongoing war in Gaza.
Two consecutive days of protest at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington called for the tech giant to immediately cut its business ties with Israel.
But unlike Tuesday, when about 35 protesters occupying a plaza between office buildings left after Microsoft asked them to leave, the protesters on Wednesday “resisted and became aggressive” after the company told police they were trespassing, according to the Redmond Police Department.
The protesters also splattered red paint resembling the color of blood over a landmark sign that bears the company logo and spells Microsoft in big gray letters.
“We said, ‘Please leave or you will be arrested,’ and they chose not to leave so they were detained,” said police spokesperson Jill Green.
Microsoft late last week said it was tapping a law firm to investigate allegations reported by British newspaper The Guardian that the Israeli Defense Forces used Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to store phone call data obtained through the mass surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
“Microsoft’s standard terms of service prohibit this type of usage,” the company said in a statement posted Friday, adding that the report raises “precise allegations that merit a full and urgent review.”
In February, The Associated Press revealed previously unreported details about the tech giant’s close partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, with military use of commercial artificial intelligence products skyrocketing by nearly 200 times after the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. The AP reported that the Israeli military uses Azure to transcribe, translate and process intelligence gathered through mass surveillance, which can then be cross-checked with Israel’s in-house AI-enabled targeting systems.
Following The AP’s report, Microsoft acknowledged the military applications but said a review it commissioned found no evidence that its Azure platform and artificial intelligence technologies were used to target or harm people in Gaza. Microsoft did not share a copy of that review or say who conducted it.
Microsoft said it will share the latest review’s findings after it’s completed by law firm Covington & Burling.
The promise of a second review was insufficient for the employee-led No Azure for Apartheid group, which for months has protested Microsoft’s supplying the Israeli military with technology used for its war against Hamas in Gaza. The group said Wednesday the technology is “being used to surveil, starve and kill Palestinians.”
Microsoft in May fired an employee who interrupted a speech by CEO Satya Nadella to protest the contracts, and in April, fired two others who interrupted the company’s 50th anniversary celebration.
On Tuesday, the protesters posted online a call for what they called a “worker intifada,” using language evoking the Palestinian uprisings against Israeli military occupation that began in 1987.
On Wednesday, the police department said it took 18 people into custody “for multiple charges, including trespassing, malicious mischief, resisting arrest, and obstruction.” It wasn’t clear how many were Microsoft employees. No injuries were reported.
Microsoft said in a statement after the arrests that it “will continue to do the hard work needed to uphold its human rights standards in the Middle East, while supporting and taking clear steps to address unlawful actions that damage property, disrupt business or that threaten and harm others.”
Relatives of the Israeli hostages held by the Palestinian militant group Hamas and other Islamist organizations demonstrated on Wednesday in the border area near the Gaza Strip for the release of their loved ones.
The march from Kibbutz Be’eri to the site of the Nova music festival led to two locations of the Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023 – on a day when, according to a military spokesman, the next phase of the war was initiated.
The relatives of the remaining 50 hostages, of whom at least 20 are believed to still be alive, fear the worst for their family members.
Military pressure does not save hostages but kills them, said Ofir Braslavski, the father of Rom Braslavski. Hamas had released a video of the young man in early August, showing him emaciated and severely weakened.
“42 hostages entered Gaza on their feet – and returned in body bags … I don’t want my child to be number 43!” said Braslavski. “My child is hungry, thirsty, scared, tortured, dying. And no one – no one! – has the right to sentence him to death.”
Macabit Mayer, the aunt of twin brothers Gali and Ziv Berman, accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of recruiting tens of thousands more reservists for “a mission without a purpose” that endangers their “precious ones.”
BOSTON — U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton is leading a group of House Democrats and veterans calling on Israel to allow more food and other aid to enter Gaza amid increasing warnings of a humanitarian disaster in the region.
In a letter to Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter, the lawmakers expressed “serious concern with the dire humanitarian aid situation in Gaza” and called on Israel to “flood Gaza with humanitarian aid” which they said would also help Israel deprive the terrorist group Hamas of the “leverage” it has gained in restricted aid to the region.
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The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said dozens of civilians were killed in an Israeli airstrike. CBS News senior foreign correspondent Holly Williams reports on the U.S. response and de-escalation efforts in the Middle East.
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An Israeli strike on a five-story building where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in northern Gaza killed at least 34 people early Tuesday, more than half of them women and children, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said.
The ministry’s emergency service said another 20 people were wounded in the strike in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, near the Israeli border.
The Reuters news agency, citing the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service, put the number of dead at 55 or higher, with dozens more wounded. The emergency service added that many people were believed to still be trapped under rubble.
Palestinians gather at the site of Israeli strikes on houses and residential buildings, amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip October 20, 2024.
Abdul Karim Farid / REUTERS
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has been waging a large-scale operation in northern Gaza for more than three weeks, targeting what it says are pockets of Hamas militants who have regrouped there.
The dead included a mother and her five children, some of them adults, and a second mother with her six children, according to an initial casualty list provided by the emergency service.
Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya, the director of the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, said it was overwhelmed by the wave of wounded people from the strike.
Israeli forces raided the medical facility over the weekend, detaining dozens of medics, the latest in a series of raids on hospitals since the start of the war. The military said it detained scores of Hamas militants in the raid on Kamal Adwan.
The Israeli military has repeatedly struck shelters for displaced people in recent months, saying it carried out precise strikes targeting Palestinian militants and tried to avoid harming civilians. The strikes have often killed women and children.
The Reuters news agency put the number of dead in the strike 55 or more, with dozens injured at At least 55 Palestinians were killed and dozens others wounded in an Israeli strike on a residential building in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya on Tuesday, the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said.
It added that many victims were believed to still be trapped under the rubble.
Israel’s latest major operation in northern Gaza, focused on the Jabaliya refugee camp, has killed hundreds of people and driven tens of thousands from their homes in another wave of mass displacement more than a year into the war in the tiny coastal territory.
Israel has also sharply restricted aid to the north this month, prompting a warning from the United States that failure to facilitate greater aid efforts could lead to a reduction in military aid.
Palestinians fear Israel is enacting a plan proposed by a group of former generals who suggested the civilian population of the north should be ordered to evacuate, aid supplies should be cut off, and anyone remaining there should be considered a militant.
The military has denied it’s carrying out such a plan, while the government hasn’t said clearly whether it’s conducting all or part of it.
On Monday, Israel’s parliament passed two laws that could prevent the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees – the largest aid provider in Gaza – from operating in the Palestinian territories. It was the culmination of a long-running campaign against UNRWA, which Israel contends has been infiltrated by Hamas, allegations denied by the agency.
The move prompted a growing international outcry, according to Agence France-Presse, with even such staunch supporters of Israel as Britain and Germany voicing displeasure.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Britain was “gravely concerned.” Germany said it would “effectively make UNRWA’s work in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem impossible … jeopardizing vital humanitarian aid for millions of people.”
Hamas said it was an act of “Zionist aggression” while its ally Islamic Jihad depicted it as “an escalation in the genocide.”
The U.N. and UNRWA also voiced strong objections.
But Israel lawmaker Yuli Edelstein said in parliament that, “There is a deep connection between the terrorist organization (Hamas) and UNRWA, and Israel cannot put up with it,”
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. Around 90% of the population of 2.3 million have been displaced from their homes, often multiple times.
A defense official told CBS News that the U.S. was given a heads-up in advance of Israel’s retaliatory attack against Iran. The U.S. is not involved in the strikes, but President Biden has been briefed on the situation. Ed O’Keefe, CBS News senior White House and political correspondent, and Sam Vinograd, CBS News national security contributor, have more.
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In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said its retaliatory attack on Iran was limited to “precise strikes on military targets.” CBS News national security contributor Sam Vinograd CBS News and chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan join to break down what it means.
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Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon — Israel’s military said Tuesday that it had killed Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council who’d been seen as a possible next leader of the group, in an airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiya three weeks ago. That was just days after the Israel Defense Forces killed the Iran-backed, U.S. and Israeli-designated terrorist group’s long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah in a different airstrike in Lebanon.
Many of the group’s leaders have been killed over the last month and a half, including three more commanders just this week, but the fighting still rages in Lebanon. The Lebanese health ministry says almost 2,000 people have been killed since Israel dramatically ramped up its assault on Hezbollah in mid-September.
There were more airstrikes on Beirut overnight, and with each one, teams of first responders jump into ambulances and head straight for the buildings reduced to rubble. CBS News met some of the medical workers who risk their own lives to save people in the war zone.
While rushing into danger is second nature to them, Hussein Fakih, who leads the rescue team in the southern town of Nabatiyeh, less than 10 miles from the Israeli border, claims he and his fellow medics are being deliberately targeted by Israeli forces. He was seriously wounded by an Israeli missile that struck next to their base.
Hussein Fakih, who leads the Lebanese Civil Defense rescue team in the southern town of Nabatiyeh, is seen in a file photo at the scene of an Israeli airstrike.
Courtesy of Nussein Fakih/Lebanese Civil Defense
He said that for months after Oct. 8, 2023, when Israel started bombing Hezbollah targets in response to the group’s incessant rocket and drone launches against Israel — more than 13,000 over the last year, according to the IDF — his team did not feel directly threatened. But Fakih said that changed more recently, and the IDF “started targeting directly the places the teams are working. More than once.”
“Our vehicles are clearly marked with the internationally recognized symbols for rescue workers,” he said it seems to provide no protection.
Fakih’s nephew Hussein Jaber is also a first responder. Seeing so much death up close has been tough for him, and harder still when it was one of his own.
The “worst day,” he said, was just last week, when an Israeli strike hit next to their base, wounding his colleague Naji Fahs.
“He was married and had two children. Was about 50 years old,” said Jaber. “He was a few meters away from me. Unfortunately, he was wounded in an airstrike that was right next to our station and he died. May he rest in peace.”
Fakih told CBS News that eight members of his team had been killed and 35 wounded over the last month alone, “plus 90% of our equipment was hit and was broken.”
“Our job is to help people,” Jaber said. “To keep them safe… Our colleagues died and our friends are wounded, and we were wounded, too, but we will continue to help the people and protect their livelihoods. In fact, this gives us greater incentive to continue our humanitarian mission.”
Lebanese Civil Defense first responder Hussein Jaber and CBS News correspondent Debora Patta react to the sound of an Israeli airstrike nearby as they speak in Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon, in late October 2024.
CBS News
As CBS News finished interviewing Jaber, there was a strike nearby. Duty called, and just like that, Jaber was off.
Two hours later, he raced to yet another emergency scene.
“Anyone there?” he called out into the pile of rubble. He and his colleagues pulled 12 bodies from the rubble.
Shortly after carrying out that grim work, Jaber was wounded in another Israeli strike.
Lebanese Civil Defense team member Hussein Jaber is treated for injuries sustained in an Israeli airstrike near Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon, in late October 2024.
CBS News
His injuries were minor, and the team is so short-staffed that he went straight back to work.
According to United Nations humanitarian agencies, at least 87 health care workers had been killed in the country as of Oct. 10, and ambulances and relief centers had been “targeted or hit in Lebanon, causing further casualties.” According to CBS News’ own count, that death toll has risen to at least 120.
87 #healthcare workers were killed so far & 98 health facilities closed across #Lebanon.
CBS News asked the IDF about the civil defense teams’ claims that they’re being directly targeted. In a statement, the military said it “operates in strict accordance with international law. It must be emphasized, however, that Hezbollah unlawfully embeds its military assets into densely populated civilian areas, and cynically exploits civilian infrastructure for terror purposes.”
The IDF said, as it has many times about its operations in both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, that it makes “all feasible efforts to mitigate harm to civilians during operational activity,” including by giving “advanced warnings to civilians in Lebanon where Hezbollah embedded its military assets and weapons.”
While the IDF does often issue evacuation orders ahead of strikes, Lebanese rescuers and civilians have told CBS News that such warnings are not always issued before missiles slam into residential areas.
Debora Patta is a CBS News foreign correspondent based in Johannesburg. Since joining CBS News in 2013, she has reported on major stories across Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Edward R. Murrow and Scripps Howard awards are among the many accolades Patta has received for her work.
The U.S. is once again trying to secure a cease-fire deal in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Tel Aviv, also pushing for a deal between Israel and Hezbollah. It comes as Israel’s military says Hezbollah fired about 20 projectiles at northern and central Israel. Meanwhile, to the south, Israel’s latest offensive with Gaza has intensified.
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Israeli strikes on multiple homes in northern Gaza overnight and into Sunday left at least 87 people dead or missing, the territory’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said.
It said another 40 people were wounded in the strikes on the town of Beit Lahiya, which was among Israel’s first targets nearly a year ago.
Israel has been carrying out a large-scale operation in northern Gaza for the last two weeks, saying Hamas has regrouped there. Palestinian officials say hundreds of people have been killed and that the health sector in the north is on the verge of collapse.
Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli airstrike the previous night in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip on October 20, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas militant group.
ISLAM AHMED/AFP via Getty Images
Meanwhile, the U.S. is urging Israel to press for a cease-fire in Gaza following the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week. Neither Israel nor Hamas has shown any renewed interest in such a deal. Months of negotiations led by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar sputtered to a halt in August.
Iran supports Hamas and the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, where a year of escalating tensions boiled over last month. Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon at the start of October.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had a call with Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant on Saturday, the Pentagon said in a statement, during which they discussed “regional security developments” including the recent deployment of a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system. During the call, Austin told Gallant that he was “relieved” Netanyahu was safe after the drone attack.
Former President Donald Trump said during a rally on Saturday that he spoke with Netanyahu.
In a statement to CBS News, the prime minister’s office confirmed the conversation took place and said Netanyahu “reiterated what he has also said publicly: Israel takes into account the issues the U.S. administration raises, but in the end, will make its decisions based on its national interests.”
Israel has meanwhile ramped up strikes on southern neighborhoods of Beirut known as the Dahiyeh, a crowded residential area. Hezbollah has a strong presence there, but it is also home to large numbers of civilians and people unaffiliated with the militant group.
Austin has called civilian casualties in Lebanon “far too high” in the Israel-Hezbollah war and urged Israel to scale back some strikes, especially in and around Beirut.
There was no immediate comment on the strikes in Beit Lahiya from the Israeli military, which said it was “continuing to operate across Gaza in both aerial strikes and ground operations.”
Among the dead were two parents and their four children, and a woman, her son and her daughter-in-law and their four children, according to Raheem Kheder, a medic. He said the strike flattened a multi-story building and at least four neighboring houses.
A Palestinian boy receives treatment at the Kamal Adwan Hospital after an Israeli airstrike in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip on October 19, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas militant group.
ISLAM AHMED/AFP via Getty Images
Doctors Without Borders, the international charity known by its French acronym MSF, called on Israeli forces “to immediately stop their attacks on hospitals in North Gaza” after the Health Ministry said Israeli troops had fired on two hospitals over the weekend.
The military said it was operating near one of the hospitals but had not fired directly at it, and that it was looking into the other incident.
“The ever-worsening escalation of violence and non-stop Israeli military operations that we have been witnessing over the past two weeks in northern Gaza have horrifying consequences,” said Anna Halford, an emergency coordinator for MSF.
“When hospitals are attacked, their infrastructure destroyed, and the electricity cut off, the lives of patients and medical staff are under threat.”
The north has already suffered the heaviest destruction of the war and has been encircled by Israeli forces since late last year, following the deadly Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Most of the population fled last year, but around 400,000 people are believed to have remained in the north.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish combatants from civilians. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people.
A drone was launched from Lebanon Saturday toward the private residence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli government said. It was unclear where the drone landed, or whether it was intercepted. Neither Netanyahu or his wife were home at the time, and there were no injuries. Ramy Inocencio reports from Tel Aviv.
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new video loaded: Why Israel Targeted Yahya Sinwar
By Ronen Bergman, Nikolay Nikolov, James Surdam, Laura Salaberry, Farah Otero-Amad and Dave Horn•October 18, 2024
What does the killing of Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack, mean for Israel and Gaza? Ronen Bergman, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine who is based in Tel Aviv, explains.
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Ronen Bergman, Nikolay Nikolov, James Surdam, Laura Salaberry, Farah Otero-Amad and Dave Horn
Palestinians in northern Gaza described heavy Israeli bombardment Saturday in the hours after airstrikes killed at least 22 people, as Israel warned people there and in southern Lebanon to get out of the way of offensives against the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups.
In Lebanon, the U.N. peacekeeping force said its headquarters in Naqoura was hit again, with a peacekeeper struck by gunfire late Friday and in stable condition. It wasn’t clear who fired. It occurred a day after Israel’s military fired on the headquarters for a second straight day, wounding two peacekeepers. Israel, which has warned peacekeepers to leave their positions, didn’t immediately respond to questions.
Palestinian children sit atop their family’s belongings as they flee areas north of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on October 12, 2024.
OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP via Getty Images
In a statement Saturday night, Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant Saturday and “expressed his deep concern about reports that Israeli forces fired on UN peacekeeping positions in Lebanon as well as by the reported death of two Lebanese soldiers.”
Israel’s military renewed its offensive in northern Gaza almost a week ago while escalating its air and ground campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Amid Israel’s war with Hezbollah, a top U.N. official, Carl Skau, told The Associated Press he’s concerned that Lebanon’s ports and airport might be taken out of service. More than one million people have been displaced.
Israel’s military said Hezbollah fired more than 300 projectiles over Yom Kippur, the holiest and most solemn day on the Jewish calendar. The military also said it killed 50 militants in Lebanon. Claims on either side couldn’t be verified.
Gaza facing major food shortages
Hunger warnings emerged again in northern Gaza as residents said they hadn’t received aid since the beginning of the month. The U.N. World Food Program said no food aid had entered the north since Oct. 1. An estimated 400,000 people remain there.
The World Food Program said it was unclear how long the limited food supplies it distributed in northern Gaza earlier will last.
The U.N.’s independent investigator on the right to food last month accused Israel of carrying out a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians, which Israel has denied.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza started after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, when militants stormed into Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, which doesn’t specify between combatants and civilians. Gaza’s Health Ministry said that hospitals had received the bodies of 49 people killed over the past 24 hours.
Palestinians carry their belongings as they flee areas north of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip on October 12, 2024.
OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP via Getty Images
Israel launches new round of strikes on Lebanon
Israeli airstrikes on Saturday hit multiple areas in southern and eastern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Nine were killed in Maisra village in the northeast. Four were killed in an apartment building on the edge of Barja south of Beirut. Rayak and Tal Chiha hospitals in the Bekaa Valley were damaged. In Nabatieh, eight people were wounded.
The total toll in Lebanon over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is now 2,255 killed, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. More than 1,400 people have been killed since mid-September. It isn’t clear how many were fighters.
“We will keep standing with the Lebanese people during these difficult circumstances and also with the Palestinian people,” the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said Saturday while touring the scene of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.
Northern Gaza residents trapped in homes, shelters
In northern Gaza, residents told the AP many were trapped in their homes and shelters with dwindling supplies while seeing bodies uncollected in the streets as the bombing hampered emergency responders.
Those who rushed to the scene of the latest deadly airstrikes in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya found a hole 20 meters deep where a home once stood.
At least 20 bodies were recovered while others likely were under rubble, emergency service officials said.
Elsewhere in Jabaliya, a strike on a home killed two brothers and wounded a woman and newborn baby, the officials said. An afternoon strike on a home killed at least four people, including a woman, said Fares Abu Hamza, an official with the emergency service.
Israel’s military said it killed more than 20 militants in the Jabaliya area over the past day.
Military spokesperson Avichay Adraee told people in parts of Jabaliya and Gaza City to evacuate south to an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone as Israel plans to use great force “and will continue to do so for a long time.”
Israel has repeatedly returned to parts of Gaza as Hamas and other militants regroup. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
Once again, some families moved south on foot, in donkey carts or crowded in vehicles that navigated piles of rubble. Others refused to go.
“It’s like the first days of the war,” said a Jabaliya resident, Ahmed Abu Goneim. “The occupation is doing everything to uproot us. But we will not leave.”
The 24-year-old said Israeli warplanes and drones struck many neighboring houses in the past week. He counted 15 relatives and neighbors, including four women and five children as young as 3, killed in neighboring homes. He said that there were dead in the streets.
Hamza Sharif, who stays with his family in a school-turned-shelter in Jabaliya, described “constant bombings day and night.”
He said the shelter hasn’t received aid since the beginning of the month and that families “will run out of supplies very soon.”
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, said Thursday that Israeli forces had opened fire on several of its installations in the area, as tension between the global body and Israel mounted amid escalating Israeli military operations against the Iran-backed group Hezbollah.
“UNIFIL’s Naqoura headquarters and nearby positions have been repeatedly hit. This morning, two peacekeepers were injured after an IDF [Israel Defense Forces] Merkava tank fired its weapon toward an observation tower at UNIFIL’s headquarters in Naqoura, directly hitting it and causing them to fall,” the UNIFIL mission said in a statement posted on social media. “The injuries are fortunately, this time, not serious, but they remain in hospital.”
In a statement, the IDF said Hezbollah “operates from within and near civilian areas in southern Lebanon, including areas near UNIFIL posts” and the IDF “maintains routine communication with UNIFIL.”
“This morning (Thursday), IDF troops operated in the area of Naqoura, next to a UNIFIL base,” the statement said. “Accordingly, the IDF instructed the UN forces in the area to remain in protected spaces, following which the forces opened fire in the area.”
“We remind the IDF and all actors of their obligations to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and property and to respect the inviolability of UN premises at all times,” UNIFIL said Thursday.
United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) armored personnel carriers depart a base to patrol in southern Lebanon, near the Lebanon-Israel border known as the Blue Line, on Oct. 5, 2024.
Carl Court/Getty
Several hundred of the UNIFIL forces deployed across southern Lebanon are Irish, but the country’s military said Thursday that none had been injured by IDF fire, and none of their positions targeted. Ireland’s leader, Simon Harris, released a statement, nonetheless, saying he was “deeply concerned by reports that the Israeli Defence Forces have fired at UNIFIL positions at its headquarters in Naqoura.”
“Firing on peacekeepers can never be tolerated or acceptable,” said Harris. “The Blue Helmet worn by UN peacekeepers must be sacrosanct. They are serving on behalf of the international community in some of the most challenging places in the world. They are not combatants, and their role must be respected at all times.”
Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said reports about UNIFIL being targeted “are concerning,” but did not comment on it further at a briefing Thursday.
UNFIL said among the incidents in recent days, “IDF soldiers deliberately fired at and disabled” perimeter-monitoring cameras operated by the peacekeeping mission, and “they also deliberately fired on UNP 1-32A,” a military facility in Naqoura, where it said “regular Tripartite meetings were held before the conflict began,” damaging lighting and a relay station.”
Italy also protested to Israel about its troops firing on U.N. forces, the Reuters news agency said, quoting Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto as saying any fire at UNIFIL bases was “totally unacceptable” and a clear violation of international law.
The French foreign ministry also issued a statement Thursday voicing its “deep concern following the Israeli shots that hit” the UNIFIL forces, saying it “condemns any attack on the security of UNIFIL” and was waiting for “explanations from the Israeli authorities.” The ministry said none of the 700 French peacekeepers deployed with the mission were among those wounded.
The UNIFIL mission has been deployed in southern Lebanon for more than 45 years, but tension between Israel and the peacekeeping force has increased as the IDF has stepped up its assault on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The U.N. force has been tasked since 1978 with ensuring security on the Lebanese side of the so-called Blue Line, the de-facto border established by U.N. resolutions to end a previous war between Israel and Hezbollah, when the IDF pulled out of Lebanon. Israeli officials have recently accused UNIFIL of failing in its mission, allowing Hezbollah to entrench for decades along the border.
IDF operations — both devastating airstrikes and ground operations, have increased dramatically over the last two weeks, with thousands of Israeli forces deployed to the northern border. At least 10 IDF soldiers have been killed in the operations. The airstrikes have also hit the southern Beirut suburbs, which, along with the south, have long been considered Hezbollah strongholds, and the Bekaa Valley east of the capital.
A standoff between UNIFIL and Israel has been playing out for weeks, since the IDF sent in ground forces. UNIFIL forces have remained in their posts across southern Lebanon during the escalating operations, despite warnings to pull back.
Getty/iStockphoto
The U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon, and the head of UNIFIL, called on Tuesday for an urgent negotiated solution to the crisis along the Israel-Lebanon border. The statement from Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert and UNIFIL commander Lt. Gen. Aroldo Lázaro came exactly one year after Hezbollah started launching rockets and drones at northern Israel in support of its Hamas allies in the Gaza Strip.
At the end of September, with its war against Hamas in Gaza still raging, Israel dramatically ramped up its fight against Hezbollah — a powerful, well-armed Iranian proxy group deeply embedded in Lebanon’s politics — in response to the group launching more than 10,000 rockets at Israel in support of Hamas over the last year.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the objective of the operations across the Blue Line is to drive Hezbollah fighters and weapons back far enough from Israel’s northern border to stop the hail of rocket fire, to enable tens of thousands of Israelis to return to their deserted homes in the region. The IDF said the cross-border ground operations, launched at the end of September in southern Lebanon, would be “limited, localized, and targeted ground raids based on precise intelligence.”
Lebanese officials say Israel’s military has killed at least 2,141 people in the country since Oct. 8, 2024 – about half of them since the assault escalated less than two weeks ago, and at least 22 in strikes on Wednesday alone. More than 10,000 others have been wounded, according to the country’s health ministry.
“Too many lives have been lost, uprooted, and devastated, while civilians on both sides of the Blue Line are left wanting for security and stability,” the two U.N. officials said in their Tuesday statement. “Today, one year later, the near-daily exchanges of fire have escalated into a relentless military campaign whose humanitarian impact is nothing short of catastrophic…A negotiated solution is the only pathway to restore the security and stability that civilians on both sides so desperately want and deserve.”
What is UNIFIL?
UNIFIL is the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. The peacekeeping mission was established in 1978 as part of the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon. Its mission is to help the Lebanese government return to authority in the area, and restore international peace and security.
UNIFIL peacekeepers are also tasked with making sure their area of operation is free of hostile activities of any kind and to protect humanitarian workers and civilians under imminent threat of physical violence.
On October 1, Israel notified UNIFIL of its intention to begin limited ground incursions in southern Lebanon. The Irish military said previously that its troops deployed with UNIFIL “remain steadfast in their determination and resilence to fulfill the mission.”
UNIFIL has about 10,500 peacekeepers from 50 countries. IDF ground forces have been operating close to UN Post 6-52 recently, where about 30 Irish UNIFIL peacekeepers are stationed. Ireland’s leader said Thursday that all of the Irish forces in Lebanon were “continuing to carry out their mission with distinction, despite the extremely difficult circumstances.”
UNIFIL peacekeepers stand guard, holding the flag of the United Nations, by the border at the Kafr Shuba region, considered a disputed area between Lebanon and Israel, in the town of Kafr Shuba in Nabatieh Governorate, Lebanon, in an Aug. 28, 2023 file photo.
Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu Agency/Getty
Since Israel launched its incursion into southern Lebanon, there have been clashes between IDF troops and Hezbollah in the town of Maroun El-Ras, Yaroun and Naqoura, and UNIFIL has called the situation dangerous and unacceptable.
What is the Blue Line?
UNIFIL peacekeepers operate within the area marked by the 75-mile long Blue Line, in southern Lebanon. It is not an official international border, but has been intended for almost five decades to keep Lebanese and Israeli armed forces at a safe distance from each other.
Either side, Israel or Hezbollah, crossing or firing across the Blue Line without permission from the Lebanese government is a violation of U.N. Resolution 1701, though such crossfire has been a near daily occurrence since Oct. 8, 2023. The frontier is also sometimes crossed by Lebanese farmers and villagers, because it is not always clearly marked.
Tucker Reals is CBSNews.com’s foreign editor, based in the CBS News London bureau. He has worked for CBS News since 2006, prior to which he worked for The Associated Press in Washington D.C. and London.
Israeli military operations in Gaza have killed almost 42,000 people since Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory, the majority of them women and children.
In addition to lives lost, the United Nations estimates that the war has displaced 90% of Gaza’s roughly 2.3 million people. Many of them — unable to leave the embattled enclave — have been displaced multiple times within Gaza as they try to escape the Israeli airstrikes that have decimated its towns and cities.
As of January, the war had caused around $18.5 billion in damage to infrastructure in Gaza, according to the U.N. and the World Bank. That figure is almost equal to the entire combined GDP of the Palestinian territories (Gaza and the much larger Israeli-occupied West Bank) in the year before Hamas sparked the ongoing war with its Oct. 7 terrorist attack.
An aerial view shows the destruction of Jabalia refugee camp following Israeli attacks, in Gaza City, Gaza, Oct. 3, 2024.
Mahmoud ssa/Anadolu/Getty
Most of the damage and destruction has been to housing (72% as of January), but other, critical infrastructure has also been affected. The U.N. and World Bank said 84% of health facilities and 92% of primary roads had been damaged or totally destroyed by January, and the bombing has continued since then.
How to assess destruction in Gaza
It has not been possible to comprehensively map destruction in Gaza from the ground. International journalists have not been allowed inside Gaza, apart from on highly restricted tours offered by the Israeli military, since the war started.
Palestinian journalists covering the conflict have had minimal security and been subjected to evacuation orders and restrictions on their movements like everyone else in the enclave. At least 116 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since the war started, according to The Committee to Protect Journalists.
Given the difficulties of on-the-ground assessment, a team of researchers based in the U.S. have used data and other resources from the European Space Agency and NASA to map indicators of damage in conflict zones, including Gaza.
“The satellite data, specifically, is not a picture like you would think from a normal camera,” Corey Scher, at the City University of New York, explained to CBS News. “This is radar, so it shoots a burst of radar into the Earth that echoes back to the sensor, and we can get an idea of this three dimensional structure and arrangement of an area in a way that you don’t get with an optical image.”
The technique allows the team to track indicators of destruction more quickly than is possible by analyzing traditional satellite imagery, which can take many weeks, Scher said.
Mapping the situation on the ground
CBS News has used data provided by Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek, an Associate Professor of Geography at Oregon State University who’s also worked on the project, to map the indicators of destruction in Gaza over the course of the war in an effort to reveal the overall extent of the damage to infrastructure.
Scroll through the map below to see how the damage escalated over the course of the last 12 months.
“Over time, it becomes inevitable that people are displaced to areas where there are just – there is no safety, there is no shelter that can support… the population. The food insecurity, lack of access to water, just the constant uprooting on top of the background of damage is also extremely unique in this conflict,” Van Den Hoek said.
“The pace of the bombing, the breadth of the bombing, that resulted in this damage was extremely unique,” said Van Den Hoek, adding that it was the most destruction he had seen in any of the conflicts he’s looked at in his work with Oregon State’s Conflict Ecology lab.
“Over time, it becomes inevitable that people are displaced to areas where there are just – there is no safety, there is no shelter that can support… the population. The food insecurity, lack of access to water, just the constant uprooting on top of the background of damage is also extremely unique in this conflict,” said Van Den Hoek.
“It’s beyond the brick and stone”
“The damage has been colossal and also unprecedented and unheard of in the history of the U.N.,” Juliette Touma, communications director for UNWRA, the U.N. agency that supports Palestinian refugees, told CBS News.
Touma said that of the 190 buildings UNRWA had in Gaza before the war, two thirds had been either damaged or totally destroyed, with several being hit multiple times.
“It’s beyond the brick and stone,” Touma said. “It’s about what these buildings and structures used to represent — and the vast majority of these buildings were schools for children.”
Before Oct. 7, 2023, UNWRA provided education services for about 300,000 children across Gaza. By September 2024, Touma said all the school buildings still standing were being used as shelters for displaced people.
In January 2024, Israel accused 12 UNWRA employees of participating in the Oct. 7 attacks. After an internal U.N. investigation, the global body fired nine of its staffers, accepting that they may have taken part in the attacks. The agency employs some 13,000 people in Gaza and, as of September 2024, the U.N. said at least 222 of its team members had been killed in the war.
“What is the fate of these children who used to go to these buildings that are now either destroyed or severely damaged, or they continue to house people and continue to provide shelter for displaced families?” Touma said. “Even if there is a miracle and we have a cease-fire tomorrow, what will this mean for education? And how will children be able to go back to school? Because… 70% of our schools in Gaza cannot be used.”
The destruction and successive Israeli evacuation orders have forced many people to flee to increasingly difficult places to survive, including hundreds of thousands crammed into the coastal area of al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis. Israel’s military has designated al-Mawasi a humanitarian zone, but before the war, it had “no facilities for human beings,” Touma said.
“People just started setting up shop there, meaning putting these plastic sheeting with, you know, wooden boards and living anywhere and everywhere,” she told CBS News. “At some point, Mawasi had a million people.”
But even al-Mawasi has been bombed. The most deadly attack was in July, when 90 people were killed and 300 wounded. Israel said it targeted and killed Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’ military wing, with the strike.
“A damaged building is a proxy for a displaced family, a displaced group of, you know, a school or a bakery,” Scher said. “It’s also an indicator of a potential hazard for an unexploded ordnance… It’s a proxy for everything that’s happening on the ground.”
MINNEAPOLIS — As the world reflects on the first anniversary of the deadly attacks of Oct. 7, a Minneapolis woman, born in Israel, is lending a hand to her home country.
Noa Rosenzweig is a native of northern Israel and now decade-long Minnesotan. She wears the symbolic yellow ribbon as a way to remember the hostages.
“We woke up and I saw on Instagram something about the Nova party,” Rosenzweig said.
The day is now etched in Rosenzweig’s memory.
“I remember driving in my car and starting to see the videos of people getting kidnapped,” she said.
Keeping up to date from Minnesota, Rosenzweig looked on as the reports of deaths went from tens and ended up in the thousands.
“I think that’s when it hit me that something so, so big happened,” Rosenzweig said.
Rosenzweig’s father, Avi Dangoor, was evacuated from his home.
“I immediately called my dad and he said we had to leave and it was a shock,” she said.
Rosenzweig, who works as the Israel program manager for the Minneapolis Jewish Federation in St. Louis Park, had the opportunity to travel to her home country two times this year. One of those trips was to Kibbutz Holit, one of the sites of the Oct. 7 attack. Fifteen people were killed there.
“We did physical labor we went and supported places that had evacuated people,” Rosenzweig said. “We helped pack food. We barbecued for soldiers. We went to visit soldiers that got injured.”
Rosenzweig says her work strengthening community will continue as she works for a better world for her two children.
“To feel like I’m making it stronger for them is everything to me,” she said. “Their mother got murdered in their house.”
Her focus now remains on the hostages and a safe path home.
Beirut, Lebanon — Israel expanded its airstrikes on Iran-backed groups in Lebanon and beyond over the weekend, launching raids thousands of miles away on Yemen’s Houthi rebels. The Israeli attack on Houthi targets in the Yemeni port city of Hodeida came after months of U.S. and British strikes against the group – a joint response to the rebels’ regular rocket, drone and missile attacks on international military and commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
The Israeli strikes also came, however, amid growing concern that Israel’s nearly-year-long war with the Houthi’s ideological allies Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon could spiral into a broad regional conflict, drawing in Iran and even the U.S. to back their respective allies.
Israel hit the Houthis just a couple days after it assassinated Hezbollah’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah with a massive airstrike on Friday.
After that strike, Israeli forces continued pounding purported Hezbollah and Hamas targets across Lebanon’s south and east all weekend, but the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, the Hezbollah stronghold where Nasrallah was killed along with another senior commander and two other high-ranking members of the group, has borne the brunt.
A man mourns people killed in an Israeli strike in the village of Ain Deleb, near the southern Lebanon city of Sidon, Sept. 30, 2024.
Aziz Taher/REUTERS
The well-armed group’s surviving deputy leader Naim Qassem vowed Monday that Hezbollah would carry on – despite its near decapitation via airstrikes, and before that exploding pagers and walkie talkies – “facing the Israeli enemy to support Gaza and Palestine.”
He accused the U.S. of offering Israel “limitless support” for Israel to carry out “massacres” in Lebanon and Gaza, and then claimed Hezbollah had fired even more weapons at Israel, and deep into the country, since Nasrallah was killed.
But Hezbollah’s incessant drone and rocket fire is virtually wiped out by Israel’s advanced air defenses before it reaches any targets. There have been civilians injured over the last couple weeks, but in Lebanon’s capital, entire residential buildings have been flattened.
CBS News went to see the aftermath of one Israeli strike Sunday on the edge of Dahiyeh. A five-storey-building was reduced to rubble. It was still smoldering as another massive boom reverberated in the distance, underscoring the unpredictable security situation for Lebanese civilians as Israel carries on, determined, it says, to push Hezbollah many miles away from its border to stop the cross-border attacks.
Getty/iStockphoto
Israel has assassinated at least five Hezbollah commanders over the past week alone, and 19 in just a few months — dealing a major blow to the U.S.-designated terrorist group. Hezbollah ramped up its attacks on Israel a day after Israeli forces launched their first airstrikes on its Hamas allies, in immediate response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre.
Hezbollah has acknowledged losing more than 30 operatives in recent weeks, including many of its senior leaders, but the ferocity and pace of the Israeli strikes in Lebanon has also taken a massive toll on Lebanese civilians. At least 1,000 people have been killed in just two weeks — 105 on Sunday alone.
According to Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati, the strikes have displaced almost 1 million people from their homes, most of them fleeing southern Lebanon for Beirut of other locations further north.
Some of those displaced families — including many with young children — have come to Beirut’s iconic Blue Mosque, desperate to find safety. The place of worship has become a refuge for people who told CBS News they’d rather sleep in the courtyard’s surrounding the building, out in the open, than go back to their neighborhoods amid Israel’s bombardment.
Samar al-Attrash is among those who have found sanctuary outside the mosque. She fled her home in Dahiyeh with her husband and their three children, and little more than the clothes on their backs.
CBS News correspondent Imtiaz Tyab (right) speaks with Samar al-Attrash as she sits with her husband and their three young children on the steps of Beirut’s Blue Mosque, to which they fled seeking shelter amid Israeli bombing near their home in the southern suburb of Dahiyeh, Sept, 28, 2024.
CBS News
“We have nowhere to go to but here,” the mother told us. “We are very scared and we can’t go back to Dahiyeh at all until the situation gets better.”
“I told my kids it’s scary and that we can’t go home,” she said. “I’m only telling [them] a little at a time so I don’t traumatize them.”
President Biden reiterated his warning on Sunday that an all-out regional war must be avoided, but as he spoke, CBS News correspondent Chris Livesay and his team reported that tanks and armored vehicles were massing on the Israeli side of the country’s northern border with Lebanon.
A photo provided by the Israel Defense Forces shows Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in black, meeting Israeli forces near the country’s northern border with Lebanon, Sept. 30, 2024.
IDF handout
On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant paid another visit to Israeli troops waiting for orders near the border, telling them killing Nasrallah was, “an important step, but it is not the final one.”
“We will employ all of our capabilities,” Gallant told the Israeli troops, “and this includes you.”
It was the latest clear signal that Israel is preparing for some kind of ground operation in Lebanon — a move that has the potential to spark fighting even deadlier than anything seen since Oct. 7.
Despite the body blows dealt by Israel, Hezbollah’s deputy leader claimed Monday that the group’s “military capabilities are solid,” that it “will continue along the same path” it has been on for months – and that it is ready for a war with Israel.
Imtiaz Tyab is a CBS News correspondent based in London and reports for all platforms, including the “CBS Evening News,” “CBS Mornings,” “CBS Sunday Morning” and CBS News 24/7. He has extensive experience reporting from major global flashpoints, including the Middle East and the war on terror.
