Live Updates: Israel says it killed two Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon; U.S. calls out ‘catastrophic conditions’ in Gaza

Israel should take urgent steps to address conditions in Gaza and allow “desperately needed” humanitarian aid to reach civilians, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. told the organization’s Security Council on Wednesday.

“Conditions are catastrophic and will further deteriorate if additional steps are not taken,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield said.

“We are particularly concerned that Palestinian civilians have nowhere safe to go,” she added. “That must change, and now.”

“The U.S. expects Palestinian civilians to be permitted to return home,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “There must be no demographic or territorial change in the Gaza Strip.”

The Israeli military said Thursday that nearly 40 rockets were launched from Lebanon towards Israel. The Israeli Defense Forces said that some of the rockets were intercepted, while others fell in the area.

The IDF said it continued targeting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, with a number of close-quarters encounters and aerial strikes occurring in the past the day. The Israeli military said it struck more than 110 targets in Lebanon.

A photograph taken shows debris covering wrecked Civil Defense vehicles, after an overnight Israeli airstrike in the early hours of Thursday morning hit its emergency center in the southern village of Derdghaiya.

The Israeli military said Thursday that it killed Moustafa al-Haj Ali, a commander of the Houla Front in Hezbollah in strikes. Ali was responsible for hundreds of missile attacks towards northern Israel, the Israeli Defense Forces added.

The IDF also killed Mohammad Ali Hamdan, a Hezbollah anti-tank unit commander, adding that its air force had also struck ammunition depots in the Dahiyeh suburb of the capital Beirut and weapons storage depots and other military infrastructure in souther Lebanon on Wednesday.

New divisions sent to join an expanding ground invasion, troops raising a flag outside a border village and an unmistakable warning to Lebanese civilians: Israel is sending increasingly mixed signals about the goals of a military operation it had insisted was limited.

Concerns over the country’s plans mounted Wednesday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested that Lebanese people either rise up against Hezbollah or face destruction like the Gaza Strip.

For many observers, this amounted to a choice between civil war or the same fate as that of Palestinians in the besieged and bombarded enclave.

“You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza,” Netanyahu said in a video address Tuesday delivered in English. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

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