‘Three children and their grandmother killed’ after airstrike on car in Lebanon, official claims
Three children and their grandmother have been killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting a car, according to a Lebanese official and local media.
Meanwhile, Gaza has fallen under its third total communications outage since the Israel-Hamas war began. The “new collapse in connectivity” across Gaza was reported by internet access advocacy group NetBlocks.org and confirmed by Palestinian telecom company Paltel.
In Lebanon, the state-owned National News Agency and Ali Safieddine, the head of the civil defence in the Tyre district, reported an Israeli strike targeted a car in southern Lebanon, between the villages of Aynata and Aitaroun.
One woman and three children, aged 10, 12 and 14, were killed and others were wounded, the news agency said, while a Hezbollah politician said the woman was their grandmother. Sky News has not been able to verify the report.
Follow live: Internet services ‘completely cut off again’ across Gaza
Fire and smoke rises following Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City. Pic: AP
Hezbollah politician Hassan Fadlallah described the alleged attack as a “dangerous development”, warning Israel would pay a price.
The militant group said it fired multiple grad rockets at the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona in retaliation for the strike.
Lebanon will submit a complaint to the United Nations over the killings, the country’s foreign minister Abdallah Bou Habib said.
Mr Bou Habib told Reuters that Lebanon was collecting information and pictures and would likely submit its complaint on Monday.
Israel’s military also claimed on Sunday evening an Israeli was killed in an attack by Hezbollah.
It said its troops engaged a vehicle “identified as a suspected transport for terrorists” in Lebanon and it was looking into reports there were civilians inside.
Israel’s forces have been exchanging with Iran-backed Hezbollah across the border in the north of the country since Hamas’s attack on 7 October.
Other key developments:
• Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf’s parents-in-law have arrived in Scotland after fleeing Gaza;
• Israeli minister suspended after suggesting atomic bomb on Gaza is an option;
• Boris Johnson meets Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem to “express solidarity”;
• Lebanon’s ambassador to the UK claims Israel has used white phosphorus in southern Lebanon.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Gaza: How is the IDF progressing?
Meanwhile the communications outage in Gaza has made it even more complicated to share details on the latest stage of Israel’s military offensive.
“We have lost communication with the vast majority of the UNRWA team members,” UN Palestinian refugee agency spokesperson Juliette Touma told the Associated Press.
Palestinian telecoms company Paltel said: “The main routes that were previously reconnected [were] cut off again from the Israeli side.”
The first outage in Gaza lasted 36 hours, while the second only lasted a few hours.
It comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his warning that there will be no ceasefire until hostages held by Hamas are returned, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the West Bank on Sunday.
Mr Blinken later held a news conference in Baghdad in which he said he had a productive meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani and also made “very clear” the attacks coming from militia aligned with Iran are “unacceptable”.
“We had a good candid conversation and more broadly we are working hard to make sure the conflict in Gaza does not escalate to other places,” he said.
Palestinians search for casualties at the site of a blast at Maghazi refugee camp
Earlier in the day Mr Blinken met the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, in the city of Ramallah on Sunday, as he continued his tour of the region.
Mr Abbas demanded an “immediate ceasefire” to allow humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, which Israel continues to bombard in response to Hamas’s attack on Israeli civilians on 7 October.
“We demand that you stop them from committing these crimes immediately,” Mr Abbas told Mr Blinken, according to a spokesperson.
Earlier on Sunday, Hamas, which has run Gaza independently of the Palestinian Authority since 2007, claimed an Israeli airstrike killed at least 47 people in the Maghazi refugee camp.
Violence has continued in the West Bank, with 121 Palestinians killed there since the war in Gaza began, according to UN figures.
Read more:
Inside Gaza with Israeli troops vowing to ‘make Hamas pay for what they did’
How much influence does Biden’s America have over its ally?
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Sky News enters Gaza
Demonstrators call for ceasefire
Israel’s siege of Gaza has also stirred global alarm at humanitarian conditions, with pro-Palestinian demonstrators protesting around the world on Saturday.
Demonstrations were held in cities including London, Berlin, Paris, Istanbul and Jakarta, with hundreds of thousands calling for a ceasefire.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Protests were held around the world
There was also a protest in Washington to denounce President Joe Biden’s war policy and demand a ceasefire.
The Hamas-run health ministry has said 21 Palestinians from the same family were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza overnight.
It said in a post on its Facebook page that they belonged to the family of Abu Hasira and that the strike targeted a house that was “full of women and children”.
Sky News has not independently verified the claim.
Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States,” he added, “going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump against Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Trump says Putin ‘talks nice and then bombs everybody’
During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call,” but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
Read more:
Trump announces 30% tariff on EU imports
Trump threatens to revoke US comedian’s citizenship
Two women killed after shooting at US church
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.
Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.
The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.
It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
In March, Sky’s Stuart Ramsay described escalating violence within Syria
The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.
Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.
But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.
It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.
Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
UK aims to build relationship with Syria
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Read more from Sky News:
UK restores diplomatic ties with Syria
Church in Syria targeted by suicide bomber
Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.
That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.
The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.
The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.
Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.
He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.
Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.
Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.
The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.
Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.
The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.
(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.
Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike