Middle East crisis live: Blinken heads for Israel as US push for ceasefire negotiations; Israel launches strikes across Lebanon

Israel carried out a series of airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut, south Lebanon and the Bekaa valley early on Monday morning, striking buildings belonging to the Hezbollah-run banking institution Al-Qard Al-Hassan.

At least 10 airstrikes were carried out in the southern suburbs of Beirut, with an entire building collapsing and a jet of fire streaming into the air in the Chiyah neighbourhood of greater Beirut. A building close to Lebanon’s only commercial airport was also struck, video footage showing a smoke plume billowing while a nearby airplane sat on the runway.

“They struck empty buildings in residential neighbourhoods, and destroyed those surrounding neighbourhoods. These weren’t military centres or weapons caches,” Ma’an Khalil, the mayor of Ghobeiry municipality in the southern suburbs of Beirut, said.

Flames and smoke rise form an Israeli airstrike on Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, on Sunday.

Israel issued several warnings via X prior to the bombings, pinpointing buildings belonging to Al-Qard Al-Hassan in the southern suburbs of Beirut and across Lebanon, warning people to move at least 500 metres away from these buildings. Streets from the affected areas were soon choked with traffic as people fled in anticipation of Israeli bombing.

Al-Qard Al-Hassan has branches across Lebanon, with 15 in greater Beirut alone.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken will depart for the Middle East on Monday, the state department said, as Washington is pushing to kickstart ceasefire negotiations to end the Gaza war after the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

The top US diplomat’s latest trip to the region, his eleventh since the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas that triggered the Gaza war, comes even as Israel has intensified its military campaign in Gaza and in Lebanon against Iran-aligned militia Hezbollah.

Blinken will discuss with regional leaders the importance of ending the Gaza war, ways to chart a post-conflict plan for the Palestinian territory, as well as how to reach a diplomatic solution to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the state department said in a statement.

The top diplomat’s trip will start with Israel, the state department said, but did not provide the other exact destinations.

“Throughout the region, secretary Blinken will discuss the importance of bringing the war in Gaza to an end, securing the release of all hostages, and alleviating the suffering of the Palestinian people,” the state department said in a statement.

Up to 1,000 women and children needing medical care will shortly be evacuated from Gaza to Europe, the head of the World Health Organization’s Europe branch said in comments published on Monday.

Israel, which is besieging the war-devastated Palestinian territory, “is committed to 1,000 more medical evacuations within the next months to the European Union,” Hans Kluge said in an interview with AFP.

He said the evacuations would be facilitated by the WHO – the United Nations health agency – and the European countries involved.

On Thursday, UN investigators said Israel was deliberately targeting health facilities in Gaza, and killing and torturing medical personnel there, accusing the country of “crimes against humanity”.

Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in May that about 10,000 people needed evacuating from Gaza for urgent medical care.

The WHO Europe has already facilitated 600 medical evacuations from Gaza to seven European countries since the latest war began there in October 2023.

“This would never have happened if we did not keep the dialogue [open],” Kluge said.

“The same [is true] for Ukraine,” he added. “I keep the dialogue [open] with all partners.

Iran has warned the UN nuclear watchdog about Israel’s threats against its nuclear sites, foreign ministry, spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday at a weekly news conference.

Israel has vowed to attack Iran in retaliation for a volley of Iranian missiles launched on 1 October, leading to widespread speculation that Iran’s nuclear sites could be among Israel’s targets.

“Threats to attack nuclear sites are against UN resolutions …. And are condemned … we have sent a letter about it to … the UN nuclear watchdog,” Baghaei said in the televised news conference.

Ali Daher first heard the explosion and then he felt the pain. An Israeli aircraft loitering high above had shot two rockets at the building next door, collapsing the top two floors and showering him and his two sons with a deadly spray of concrete and jagged metal.

The target of the strike was the Dar al-Salaam hotel – Arabic for “house of peace” – in the southern Lebanese town of Wardaniyah, converted in the last weeks into a government displacement centre for 24 families forced to flee their homes under Israeli bombing. Originally a German-Lebanese centre set up to promote cultural understanding, bronze statuettes and pieces of Lebanese antiquities had been pushed to the side to make room for mattresses and boxes of aid.

The strike on 9 October killed five people and injured 12. It was the first time that Wardaniyah had been targeted by Israel, but was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on buildings hosting displaced people in parts of Lebanon thought to be safe and that have otherwise not seen any fighting.

“We wanted to go somewhere safe, where there is no bombing, war or [militias], so we came here. Why did they strike here? We don’t know,” said Ali Daher, a 36-year-old mine clearance operator who was displaced from Tyre, south Lebanon, on 30 September. He held out his fractured wrist and pointed to his one-year-old son Kareem’s arm, which had been bandaged after a piece of debris tore it open.

The effects are also being felt in Lebanese society, where local officials have said the fear of strikes have inflamed tensions between members of the country’s many sects and the largely Shia Muslim displaced, who they are afraid to welcome. Unconfirmed rumours of Hezbollah fighters hiding among the displaced have proliferated, despite the vast majority of displaced them being civilians.

More than 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon over the last year, most of them since 23 September, when Israel escalated its aerial campaign over wide swathes of the country. Many have sought shelter in Christian and Druze-majority areas that had previously been spared Israeli bombing.

The US military has rushed its advanced anti-missile system to Israel and it is now “in place”, defence secretary Lloyd Austin said.

THAAD, or the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, is a critical part of the US military’s layered air defence systems and adds to Israel’s already formidable anti-missile defences.

“The THAAD system is in place,” Austin said, speaking to reporters before his arrival in Ukraine on Monday.

He declined to say whether it was operational, but added: “We have the ability to put it into operation very quickly and we’re on pace with our expectations.”

President Joe Biden said the THAAD’s deployment, along with about 100 US soldiers, was meant to help defend Israel, which is weighing an expected retaliation against Iran after Tehran fired more than 180 missiles at Israel on 1 October.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the conflict in the Middle East.

Israel launched a wave of attacks on buildings belonging to al-Qard al-Hassan, a US-sanctioned financial organisation that has more than 30 branches across Lebanon including 15 in densely populated parts of central Beirut and its suburbs.

Lebanon’s national news agency reported 11 strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Sunday. Other strikes hit the association in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa valley and in the country’s south, NNA added. One strike hit close to Beirut’s airport.

The Israeli military had earlier issued a warning that it would begin attacks on infrastructure belonging to the association and ordered people to evacuate those areas, causing panicked crowds and traffic jams to clog the streets of the Lebanese capital.

Meanwhile, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) warned that Israel may be causing the “destruction of the Palestinian population in Gaza’s northernmost governate through death and displacement” with its latest military campaign there.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has made life in north Gaza “impossible” for Palestinians, many of whom were already facing starvation, while also ordering their displacement and preventing supplies from entering, it said in a statement.

Israel has “continued to relentlessly bomb and attack the area” making it “extremely dangerous” for civilians to flee, the body wrote, adding that it had received reports of civilians being deliberately targeted. It added:

Many Palestinians in the north have also expressed fears that should they flee; they will never be allowed to return to their homes in north Gaza.

Israel has attacked two of the three main hospitals in the area – which were already damaged in previous attacks – and also bombed schools serving as shelters for displaced people, with many casualties appearing to be women and children, the OHCHR said.

The statement ended by reminding Israel of the provisional measures ordered by the international court of justice in January, which said Israel must ensure it did not commit acts of genocide in Gaza and reminded it that as an occupying power, it has a duty to ensure the provision of food, medicine and shelter to the population.

The IDF have nominally held complete control of northern Gaza since January, but launched a new assault on the area two weeks ago that they said was aimed at stopping Hamas militants from regrouping.

In other developments:

• Several Palestinians were reportedly killed and others injured late on Sunday when Israeli airstrikes hit two schools housing displaced people in Jabalia, the area in northern Gaza that Israel has placed under siege for more than two weeks. Other deadly Israeli attacks took place in Beit Lahia and Gaza City’s al-Tuffah neighbourhood, both in northern Gaza, and in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa.

• Israeli forces have “deliberately demolished an observation tower and perimeter fence of a UN position in Marwahin,” Unifil said on Sunday. The UN peacekeeping mission added: “Yet again, 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.”

• The commander of the Israeli armoured brigade that was leading the Israeli offensive on Jabalia has been killed in northern Gaza, the Israeli military (IDF) has said. Col. Ehsan Daxa, the commander of the 401st Armored Brigade, is the highest ranking Israeli officer to have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war on the Palestinian territory last year, according to Israeli media.

• The US government is investigating an unauthorised release of classified documents that assess Israel’s plans to attack Iran. The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, confirmed the investigation in remarks to CNN’s State of the Union program on Sunday, saying “the leak is very concerning.”

• Médecins Sans Frontières has condemned Israel’s siege on the last remaining hospitals in Gaza, saying: “This is purely and simply a collective punishment imposed on Palestinians in Gaza, who must choose between being forcibly displaced from the North or killed. We fear that this will not stop.”

• Hezbollah said on Sunday that it launched rockets at Haifa in Israel after the latest Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon, Agence France-Presse reports. According to the group, its fighters launched a “rocket salvo” at the “city of Haifa,” adding that it was “in response to the aggressions on [Beirut’s] southern suburbs” from Sunday morning.