Live updates: IDF preparing for possible ground invasion in Lebanon as hundreds of thousands displaced by Israeli strikes

The French embassy in Lebanon said in a statement that an 87-year-old French citizen living near the coastal city of Tyre was killed on Monday after the building in which he was living collapsed following a “powerful explosion” nearby.

The statement said no other French citizens were known to have been killed.

Speaking today at meeting with G20 leaders, State Secretary Antony Blinken reiterated that the U.S. continues to push for diplomatic solutions in the Middle East.

“We’re intensely engaged with a number of partners to de-escalate tensions in Lebanon and to work to get a cease-fire agreement that would have so many benefits for all concerned,” he said.

The group was gathered at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, where Blinken also spoke about the growing conflict in the region. He said the Americans were “working tirelessly with partners to avoid a full blown war.”

“The best answer is diplomacy, and our coordinated efforts are vital to preventing further escalation and to paving the path to greater peace and stability,” Blinken said.

Videos show the impact of Hezbollah rockets in northern Israel, where a home was partially destroyed.

Roughly two miles away from the house in Safed, people shared video of a hillside that was peppered with explosions as other rockets struck close to a highway in the city of Rosh Pina.

A new round of sanctions from the U.S. will focus on “illicit trade to Syria and East Asia” that provides support to Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the State Department announced today.

These sanctions will target four entities and a Syrian national named Luay al-Mallah. According to the Treasury Department, al-Mallah has been assisting his brother’s shipping business, which allegedly transports crude oil and liquid petroleum gas to “support Iran’s malign activities.”

Additionally, four vessels connected to the sanctions have been blocked, both departments said.

Bradley T. Smith, acting undersecretary for the Treasury’s terrorism intelligence, said that the sale of fossil fuels are used to fund Iran’s IRGC and Hezbollah.

The IDF said that sirens are sounding in the city of Eilat, a port city in southern Israel, after it identified two unmanned aerial vehicles.

One of the drones was intercepted by the IDF, the military said, but another appeared to have fallen near Eilat.

Israel’s emergency services, the Magen David Adom, said one 28-year-old was treated for “abrasions to his hands.” His condition was mild and did not require hospitalization, the MDA added.

Middle Eastern countries want to have peace with Israel, President Biden said today during an appearance on ABC’s “The View.”

“An all-out war is possible, but I think there’s also the opportunity still in play to have a settlement that could fundamentally change the whole region,” Biden said.

Israel would have to make policy changes, Biden said, repeating his prior statements that he has many disagreements with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. One of those changes would be a deal on an independent Palestinian state.

“There needs to be a two-state solution, ultimately,” Biden said. “It needs to happen … we have a possibility, I don’t want to exaggerate it, but a possibility that if we can deal with a cease-fire in Lebanon that it can move into dealing with the West Bank.”

“Hundreds of thousands” of Lebanese residents are moving “in all directions,” the International Rescue Committee’s Global Emergency Director Bob Kitchen told NBC News.

Different numbers accounting for internally displaced civilians have emerged in the last few days, following the first day of heavy bombing in southern Lebanon. Earlier today, the International Organization for Migration estimated there were more than 90,000 “newly” displaced people, not accounting for the tens of thousands who had fled over the months of conflict.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib estimated yesterday that, since Israel’s latest offensive, the number of people displaced was likely “approaching half a million.”

While many have fled their homes to shelters, others are staying in hotels or with family and friends. The United Nations reported that among the displaced are thousands who have left Lebanon to seek shelter in Syria.

Laila Taha, the accountability coordinator for international NGO Mercy Corps, said it took her parents 17 hours to make the 70-mile drive from their hometown of Nabatieh, in southern Lebanon, to a city in the north, as they joined the thousands of Lebanese fleeing a barrage of Israeli airstrikes.

“I heard from my friends, from my family, they were bombing on the highway, like it was smoke everywhere, and they couldn’t even at some point see,” Taha said. “It was very bad on the highways, and very risky for them.”

Her family and friends were among the lucky ones. She heard stories that some people had heart attacks or car accidents on the way north. Taha added, “it was terrible for most people.”

Her family is now in a hotel in the northern city of Jbeil, also known as Byblos, while they look for housing in nearby Beirut. Taha said that people she knows still in the south tell her the streets look unrecognizable.

It’s painful to think of all “the memories that will be lost,” Taha told NBC News. Everyone she knows is scattered around Lebanon, adding to the pain of having to uproot her life in just moments.

“It’s very hard to leave your hometown,” Taha said. “It’s very hard to leave the place that you live in.”

CAIRO — Israel returned the bodies on Wednesday of 88 Palestinians killed in its military offensive in the Gaza Strip, which the territory’s health ministry refused to bury before Israel discloses details about who they are and where it killed them.

The bodies were brought into Gaza in a container loaded on a truck through an Israeli-controlled crossing, but, according to Palestinian officials, there was no information provided about the names or ages of the victims or locations where they were killed.

Health officials at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis refused to receive them and bury them, urging the International Committee of the Red Cross ICRC to seek details from Israel.

Read the full story here.

Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the IDF’s chief of staff, urged troops in northern Israel to “prepare themselves” for a “possible entry” into Lebanon as the country’s fight against Hezbollah continues.

“Today, we will continue, we are not stopping; we keep striking and hitting them everywhere,” Halevi said. “The goal is very clear — to safely return the residents of the north.”

He told the troops the IDF is a preparing plans that would include “military boots” that will “enter enemy territory.”

This signal for a potential ground offensive comes even as the U.S. and other international leaders urge de-escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, in order to avoid an all-out regional war.

On the “TODAY” show this morning, Blinken addressed a report by ProPublica that he had rejected warnings from U.S. agencies that Israel’s government was blocking aid into Gaza.

According to the report, both the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department’s refugees bureau concluded that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza and shared their assessments with top diplomats in April. Despite this, Blinken told Congress in May that the U.S. did not at the time believe Israel was prohibiting or otherwise restricting access to aid.

Asked about the matter by the “TODAY” show’s Savannah Guthrie, Blinken said the discrepancy was “pretty normal” and maintained that he had done his job.

“We get from different parts of my own department, different parts of the government, different assessments on any given issue. And that was the case here,” he said. “My job is to kind of sort through that, draw some conclusions from it and act accordingly, and that’s what I did.”

Hezbollah’s unprecedented attack targeting Tel Aviv this morning is “deeply concerning,” the White House said today.

Speaking in an interview with CNN, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the aerial attack was “evidence again” that Israel is “facing a legitimate threat from a terrorist group backed by Iran.”

Kirby did not appear to address Israel’s mounting attacks in Lebanon, where more than 570 people have been killed in strikes that have forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate southern Lebanon, according to Lebanese officials.

Today’s strikes by Israel have killed at least 51 people across Lebanon, including on Beirut, Baalbek, a region northeast of the capital, and the towns of Tebnine, Bint Jbeil and Ain Qana, in the south, the country’s Health Ministry said.

This adds to the death toll of 558 people the ministry reported yesterday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to depart tomorrow for New York to join the United Nations General Assembly, spokesman David Mencer said today.

Mencer said Netanyahu is scheduled to address the general assembly on Friday. He said the Israeli leader hoped to raise the plight of hostages who remain in Gaza, as well as to call for international pressure on Hamas and Hezbollah.

Asked to address concerns of Israel’s mounting hostilities with Hezbollah and whether they could develop into the “third Lebanon War,” Mencer said: “I’ll leave it to others to label the conflict.”

“What we know is that we are fighting to push Hezbollah, the terrorist organization, back from our border, to stop the rocket fire against our people, and to allow our citizens to return to their homes,” he said.

At least 90,530 “newly displaced” people have been reported in Lebanon, the International Organization for Migration has said.

The U.N. agency said that nearly 40,000 people were being provided shelter across 283 shelters.

Tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee southern Lebanon since Israel said it was ramping up attacks in the country to target Hezbollah after months of cross-border exchanges.

Roadways in Lebanon could be seen flooded with thousands of vehicles packed with families trying to flee the violence, which local authorities say has killed hundreds of people.

The Israeli military said fighter jets hit at least 60 targets in Lebanon today belonging to Hezbollah’s intelligence directorate.

The military said the strikes destroyed intelligence gathering tools, command centers and additional infrastructure used by Hezbollah to “build an intelligence situational assessment.”

It did not say whether there were any deaths from the strikes. Israel’s bombing campaign in Lebanon has killed more than 570 people and displaced nearly half a million, according to authorities in the country.

The United Nations Refugee Agency has said two of its workers were killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon earlier this week.

Dina Darwiche, who had worked for 12 years in the organization’s Bekaa office in eastern Lebanon, was killed alongside one of her children after the building they were living in was hit by an Israeli missile on Monday, the agency announced yesterday. Darwiche’s husband and their other child were rescued and were being treated for serious injuries.

Ali Basma, who had been hired through an agency-contracted cleaning company and worked in the agency’s office in Tyre in southern Lebanon for seven years, was killed Monday in a separate incident, the agency said. It did not provide details on how Basma died.

The agency said it was “outraged by the killing of our colleagues” as it offered its condolences to their loved ones and called for the protection of civilians amid airstrikes that have killed more than 570 people in Lebanon.

The Israeli military has said it’s calling up two reserve brigades for “operational missions” in the north as part of its mounting assault in Lebanon.

The IDF said the missions would “enable the continuation of combat” against Hezbollah amid growing fears of an all-out war in the region as Israel and the Iran-backed militant group trade fire.

Israel’s hostilities with Hezbollah have “entered a new phase,” the Israeli military’s lead officer of the Northern Command said today, warning troops to be “fully prepared for maneuvers and action.”

Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin made the comments while visiting commanders and soldiers with the 7th brigade during an exercise on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.

“The operation began with a significant blow to Hezbollah’s capabilities, focusing on their firepower capabilities, and a very significant hit on the organization’s commanders and operatives,” Gordin said. “Facing this, we need to change the security situation, and we must be fully prepared for maneuvers and action.”

Pope Francis has branded Israel’s sweeping strikes on Lebanon this week a “terrible escalation” in its hostilities with Hezbollah as he called for the international community to work to bring the violence to an end.

Speaking at the end of his weekly general audience at the Vatican, the pope, who recently had the flu, did not name Israel outright, but said he was “saddened by news from Lebanon in recent days that bombardments have caused much destruction and many victims.”

“I express my closeness to the Lebanese people, who have already suffered too much in the recent past,” he said, with Lebanon still reeling from a series of crises.

“Let us pray for peace,” he said, adding that the world should not “forget tormented Ukraine, Myanmar, Palestine, Israel, Sudan, all the suffering peoples.”

KIRYAT BIALIK, Israel — One of the relatively few Hezbollah rockets to break through Israel’s air defenses and hit a populated area in came crashing down in the town of Kiryat Bialik on Sunday.

Three people were wounded and several houses were damaged by fire and shrapnel in the town just north of Haifa.

Israeli politicians from across the political spectrum visited the site on Tuesday to offer their support for residents and to voice their determination to fight Hezbollah. Among them was Ariel Kallner, a member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s governing Likud party. 

“The people here are afraid, but they are very, very strong,” Kallner told NBC News. “The Israeli people are very strong and we are in a war for our existence. We were attacked. We have been attacked for 11 months from Lebanon, by Hezbollah. We almost didn’t do anything, but enough is enough. We need to fight back. We need to bring security for our civilians.”

Asked about concerns that Netanyahu’s decision to escalate in Lebanon would dash hopes of a hostage deal in Gaza, Kallner said he didn’t accept the argument. “We are committed to our hostages and we are committed to the security of our citizens. And these two goals are do not restrict each other,” he said.

Warning sirens sounded in Tel Aviv this morning as a single surface-to-surface missile was intercepted by air defense systems after it was detected crossing from Lebanon, the Israeli military said.

It was the first Hezbollah attack on the country’s economic hub.

Killing Hezbollah commanders will not defeat the Iran-backed militant group, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said today, after Hezbollah confirmed the killing of another senior commander in an Israeli airstrike.

“The loss of valuable and influential members of Hezbollah was undoubtedly a setback, but Hezbollah’s organizational strength and human resources far surpass such losses, and the ultimate victory will be theirs,” Khamenei said according to the state news agency IRNA.

“Hezbollah’s organizational strength and human resources are far greater than anything these actions can undermine. Their power, capability, and resilience are well beyond the reach of such attacks,” Khamenei said.

His warning came after Hezbollah confirmed that senior commander Ibrahim Muhammad Kobeisi was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut yesterday, the latest assassination of the group’s leadership in recent weeks.

Diplomacy, not war, is the only solution that will see displaced civilians in northern Israel and southern Lebanon able to return to their homes, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC’s “TODAY” show this morning.

In an interview with host Savannah Guthrie, Blinken said that Washington did not believe “that war’s the solution” as he urged a “diplomatic agreement” between Israel and Hezbollah to bring mounting hostilities to an end and prevent an all-out war in the region.

Blinken said the U.S. was focused on a “plan to de-escalate” the spiraling situation at Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. He noted that the U.S., Israel’s biggest arms supplier, has a “longstanding relationship and security relationship with Israel,” but he said there was still an opportunity to “stop any escalation” and prevent a full-scale war.

Demonstrators gathered to express their solidarity with Lebanon and Palestinians in New York City last night.

Hezbollah fired more than 300 rockets and missiles into Israeli territory yesterday, injuring six people, the Israeli military said today.

IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said this morning that “the number of injuries could have been higher, but we were able to prevent a larger-scale attack through our operations, which removed threats in real-time.”

Israel also has a comprehensive aerial defense system to protect against missile and rocket attacks.

A man sleeps on the sidewalk in the southern coastal town of Sidon, Lebanon today.

Egypt, Jordan and Iraq warned in a joint statement today that Israel is pushing the Middle East toward a “whole-scale war” as they urged a halt to the “dangerous escalation in the region.”

Foreign ministers of the three nations met yesterday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where they called for an end to Israel’s nearly yearlong offensive in Gaza and condemned “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon, stressing that Israel is pushing the region into a whole-scale war.”

The three ministers called on the international community and the United Nations Security Council to “assume their relevant responsibilities to stop the war” as they blamed Israel for the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Middle East, which they warned would have “serious consequences for the entire region.”

The Israeli military pounded southern Lebanon and the Bekaa area with “extensive strikes” this morning following an attack from Hezbollah targeting Tel Aviv.

The IDF said around 9 a.m. local time (2 a.m. ET) that it was carrying out a barrage of strikes in the region, where hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes amid ramped up attacks from Israel that have left hundreds dead.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah said it continued to fire into Israel, with the IDF saying around 40 “projectiles” had been identified as crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory. Several were intercepted, while one projectile hit what the IDF said was an assisted living facility in the area of Safed, with no injuries reported.

Lebanon’s foreign minister has warned that the number of people displaced from their homes in the country’s south is likely approaching “half a million” after Israel ramped up its aerial assault on the region in strikes that have killed more than 550 people, according to local health officials.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace yesterday, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said he believed the number of people displaced was “probably” approaching half a million.

“Israel has, I guess, now more than 60,000 displaced… They used to have sixty. We used to have 110. Now, probably they’re approaching half a million,” he said.

Habib said Lebanese officials were “trying our best to help the people,” but he emphasized that Lebanon was “still weak economically,” with the country still feeling the impacts of a protracted economic and political crisis, as well as the Port of Beirut explosion and the Covid-19 pandemic.

An Israeli anti-missile system launches missiles to intercept rockets fired from Lebanon, as seen from Haifa, northern Israel last night.

HAIFA, Israel — The IDF has said there is “no evidence” to support Hezbollah’s claim this morning that a missile fired toward Tel Aviv was targeting spy agency Mossad’s headquarters in the city’s suburbs.

Hezbollah said it had launched the attack at 6:30 a.m. local time (11:30 p.m. ET yesterday) and had targeted the headquarters of Mossad, which it blamed for “assassinating leaders and blowing up pagers and wireless devices” in attacks earlier this month.

IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said today there was no evidence to support that claim. He suggested Hezbollah was firing missiles that were “aimed directly at civilians” in its attacks on Israel.

The Israeli military said it intercepted a missile fired from Lebanon today that for the “first time in history” targeted economic center Tel Aviv.

The missile was fired from the area of Nafakhiyeh in southern Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces said earlier this morning, before announcing its forces had struck the launcher it was fired from.

IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said it was the “first time in history, as far as I can confirm, that Hezbollah has fired a rocket or missile towards Tel Aviv.” Shoshani said millions of people were forced to seek safety in bomb shelters before the missile was intercepted.

Israel has an extremely robust aerial defense system, with the missile fired from Lebanon intercepted by “David’s Sling,” a short to medium range system designed to intercept long-range rockets and certain cruise missiles.

Tens of thousands of people have fled southern Lebanon as Israel mounts a major aerial offensive on the area that has killed more than 550 people, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

Hezbollah has hit back with cross-border fire as Israel warned yesterday it planned to “accelerate” its campaign against the Iran-backed militant group.

The flare in hostilities has stoked fears of an all-out war in the region, with European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warning yesterday, “we are almost in a full-fledged war.”