Middle East crisis live: dozens of rockets fired at northern Israel from Lebanon, IDF says | Israel-Gaza war

Hezbollah says it hit an Israeli observation post early on Saturday with 62 rockets as a “preliminary response” to the killing of Hamas’s deputy chief last week, Reuters reports.

Senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri was killed on 2 January in an Israeli drone strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs of Dahiyeh.

Hezbollah’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, has said the assassination changed the nature of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, warning that a response is “inevitable” and heightening fears of a regional escalation in fighting.

Washington’s top diplomat will discuss the Gaza war with Turkey’s mercurial leader on Saturday, Agence France-Presse reports.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, arrived in Istanbul late on Friday for the first leg of a trip that includes visits to Israel and West Bank, along with five Arab states.

Blinken’s fourth crisis tour since the start of the Israel-Hamas war three months ago comes with fears mounting that the conflict will engulf swathes of the Middle East.

Istanbul served as a base for Hamas political leaders until Hamas fighters raided Israel on 7 October, triggering the war. Turkey asked the Hamas chiefs to leave after some were captured on video celebrating the attack.

But the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has since turned into one of the Muslim world’s harshest critics of the scale of death and destruction in Gaza – and of Washington’s support for Israel.

Erdoğan has compared the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to Adolf Hitler and accused the US of sponsoring the “genocide” of Palestinians. He has also rebuffed US pressure to cut off the suspected flow of funding through Turkey to Hamas and defended the group as legitimately elected “liberators” fighting for their land.

The US State Department on Friday announced $10m rewards for information about five alleged Hamas foreign operatives – three of them believed to be based in Turkey – thought to be helping finance the Iran-backed group.

Turkey this week countered by detaining 34 people suspected of planning attacks against Palestinians and spying for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.

Blinken will travel to the Greek island of Crete on Saturday evening for talks with the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, to address Greek concerns about the looming sale of US F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.

About 40 rockets were fired from Lebanon at northern Israel on Saturday, the Israeli military said.

Sirens sounded in the north and the rockets later crossed into the Meron area, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said.

There were no reports of injuries. No rockets or drones were fired at other parts of northern Israel.

The IDF said it attacked a “terrorist squad” in Lebanese territory that took part in the launches.

Welcome to our continuing live coverage of the Middle East crisis. I’m Adam Fulton and here’s a rundown on the latest news as it turns 9am in Gaza City, Tel Aviv and Beirut.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is to discuss the war in Gaza with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Saturday amid mounting fears the conflict could widen to engulf other parts of the Middle East.

Washington’s top diplomat arrived in Istanbul late on Friday for the first leg of a week-long trip that includes visits to Israel and the occupied West Bank as well as five Arab countries.

Erdoğan has been one of the Muslim world’s harshest critics of the scale of death and destruction in the Gaza Strip and of US support for Israel.

Meanwhile, the European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, travelled to Lebanon on Friday for talks about the situation in Gaza and on the Israeli-Lebanese border and the importance of avoiding a regional escalation.

Israel continued to bomb Gaza on Saturday, with strikes reported in the southern city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter.

More on those stories shortly. In other key developments:

• Israeli officials are scrambling to head off mounting frustration in Washington in the run-up to a potentially difficult meeting between Blinken and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by offering a series of policy proposals on Gaza that critics say lack detail or commitment. The US has staunchly supported Israel in its war against Hamas but is keen to secure concessions from Netanyahu to lower regional tensions and help avert a wider conflict.

• The UN humanitarian chief says has described Gaza as now “uninhabitable” after relentless bombing by Israeli forces. Martin Griffiths said a “public health disaster is unfolding” in the territory as people faced “the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded”, adding: “Famine is around the corner.”

• The head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said the assassination of senior Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut has changed the nature of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. In a second nationally televised address within three days, Nasrallah warned that a response was “inevitable”, heightening fears of a dangerous escalation in the conflict. His comments came as Lebanon issued a formal complaint to the UN security council over al-Arouri’s killing and over Israeli incursions into Lebanon’s airspace to attack targets in Syria.

• Israel’s defence minister has warned that time is running out on diplomatic efforts to end tensions between Israel and Hezbollah. Yoav Gallant said that Israel would soon be left with no choice but to launch a military offensive against Hezbollah.

• Israel carried out an airstrike on a Hezbollah command centre in the southern Lebanese village of Blida on Friday in response to attacks on the border, the Israel Defence Forces said. It said Israeli tanks and artillery also shelled a number of areas along the Israel-Lebanon border, reportedly to foil planned Hezbollah attacks.

• At least 22,600 Palestinians have been killed and 57,910 wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Friday. About 162 Palestinians were killed and 296 wounded over the previous 24 hours, the ministry added. At least six people have been killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike on a home in the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight to Friday.

• The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it was “appalled” by what it called the continuous shelling of al-Amal hospital and the Palestine Red Crescent Society headquarters in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. The federation said the strikes had resulted in the loss of innocent civilian lives, including a five-day-old infant, and that one of its medics had been injured.

• The head of Unicef said time was running out for children in Gaza, who are “caught in a nightmare that worsens with every passing day”. Children in the territory face a “deadly triple threat” to their lives from the spread of diseases, plummeting nutrition and the escalation in fighting, Catherine Russell said.

• The governments of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda have denied a report they have been in talks with Israel over taking in thousands of Palestinians from Gaza. According to the report, the Israeli government has been conducting secret talks with multiple countries regarding a “voluntary” migration scheme for Palestinians. The report came as two far-right Israeli ministers earlier this week called for the resettlement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

• Jewish settlers have quietly carried out an “unprecedented surge” of unauthorised moves in the occupied West Bank while the world’s attention has been focused on war in Gaza, an Israeli watchdog group has warned. The result has been “not only physical harm to Palestinians and their lands but also a significant political shift in the West Bank”, the report said.

• Germany’s foreign minister warned against an Israeli occupation of Gaza as she called for more humanitarian pauses in the war. Israel “must do more for the protection of the civilian population” in its war against Hamas in Gaza, said Annalena Baerbock, who is expected to travel to Israel on Sunday for her fourth visit since the war broke out.

• Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, has urged the UK government to demand an end to Israel’s “indiscriminate attacks” that have killed thousands of children in Gaza. Yousaf said it was time the UK made clear to Israel that its actions in Gaza had gone “way beyond a legitimate response” to the 7 October Hamas attacks.

• The commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said at the funeral on Friday for the victims of twin bombings claimed by Islamic State that their deaths would be avenged. More than 84 people were killed at a memorial in the city of Kerman on Wednesday for former top commander Qassem Suleimani, who was assassinated in Iraq in 2020 by a US drone. Iranian security forces had detained 11 people suspected of links to Wednesday’s attack, Iran’s intelligence ministry said.

• A Turkish court has decided to formally arrest 15 people and deport eight others suspected of being linked to Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency. Turkey warned Israel last month of “serious consequences” if it tried to hunt down members of Hamas on Turkish soil.