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Israel has sent more troops into Lebanon after a night of escalation brought the Middle East a step closer to war.

On Tuesday evening, in a move anticipated by officials, nearly 200 missiles were launched from Iran into Israel.

The attack, coming in retaliation for Israel’s campaign of strikes against Hezbollah including the killing of its leader, marks a significant escalation in the region.

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Where did Iran’s missiles get through Israel’s defences?

Most of the missiles were intercepted, Israel said, with US help, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to respond, labelling the attack a “major mistake”.

The two countries have since traded threats as allies and onlookers, including the UK, called for a step back amid fears of regional war breaking out.

Then on Wednesday, the Israeli military said that infantry and armoured units were joining ground operations in southern Lebanon.

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It claimed actions there would remain limited and localised but concerns of a ground invasion remain.

However, Hezbollah’s media chief Mohammad Afif said the group was “only in the first round” of fighting following the most recent wave of clashes in southern Lebanon.

Meanwhile, across Gaza, Israeli attacks claimed at least 60 lives, medics said, according to Reuters, adding that Israeli tanks had advanced in the southern areas of Khan Younis.

In other developments:
• UN general secretary Antonio Guterres has been banned from Israel.
• An Israeli squad commander was killed in Lebanon.
• A Lebanese soldier was injured in an Israeli drone strike, according to the country’s army.
• Iran’s supreme leader has said the West is “the source of war and instability” in the region.
• Three people have been arrested after blasts, likely caused by hand grenades, near the Israeli embassy in Denmark.

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‘I’ve never seen anything like it before’

More Israeli troops in southern Lebanon

Israel said on Tuesday that commando and paratrooper units had crossed their northern border into southern Lebanon.

It subsequently added that special forces units had been carrying out cross-border raids against Hezbollah targets for months.

Read more on this story:
What is Hezbollah?
Sky team witness Iran’s missile barrage
Six killed in Tel Aviv shooting
What is Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’?
Analysis:
Israel is unlikely to choose a token response

But, the recent addition of infantry and armoured troops from the 36th Division, including the Golani Brigade, the 188th Armoured Brigade and the 6th Infantry Brigade, suggests that the operation has moved beyond limited commando raids.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed its ground operation is largely aimed at destroying Hezbollah tunnels and infrastructure on the border, with no plans for a wider operation.

Smoke rises from neighbourhoods hit by Israeli airstrikes in Dahieh, Beirut. Pic: AP
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Smoke rises from neighbourhoods hit by Israeli airstrikes in Dahieh, Beirut. Pic: AP

People check the site of an Israeli strike in Beirut on Wednesday. Pic: AP
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People check the site of an Israeli strike in Beirut on Wednesday. Pic: AP

Over the past two weeks, Israeli strikes have killed over 1,000 people in Lebanon, with almost a quarter of them women and children, according to the country’s health ministry, as over one million people have been displaced.

Most recently, the IDF warned people to evacuate from another 50 villages in southern Lebanon, in a UN-declared buffer zone.

‘At least 60 killed’ in Gaza overnight

Israeli military strikes overnight killed at least 60 Palestinians, medics said, adding that Israeli tanks briefly advanced in the south of the enclave.

Israeli tanks carried out a raid in areas in eastern and central Khan Younis, before partially retreating, killing at least 40 people and wounding dozens, according to the official Voice of Palestine radio and Hamas media.

Palestinians inspect the site of Israeli strikes on houses, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 2, 2024. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
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Palestinians inspect the site of Israeli strikes on houses in Khan Younis. Pic: Reuters

A Palestinian boys sit on piles of debris at the site of Israeli strikes on houses, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 2, 2024. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
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Palestinian boys sit on piles of debris at the site of Israeli strikes on houses in Khan Younis. Pic: Reuters

Palestinians inspect the site of Israeli strikes on houses, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis.
Pic: Reuters
Image:
Palestinians inspect the site of Israeli strikes on houses, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis.
Pic: Reuters

The European Hospital in Khan Younis said it received bodies after Israeli strikes in the city with hospital records showing that seven women and 12 children as young as 22 months old were among those killed.

Dr Saleh al Hams, head of the nursing department at the hospital, said he had seen dozens of dead and wounded people in his facility from around 3am local time.

He warned the number of dead could rise.

Israel carried out a massive offensive earlier this year that left much of Gaza’s second city in ruins.

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Houthis target Israeli military posts

Meanwhile, Houthis have targeted military posts deep inside Israel amid the escalating tensions.

Yahya Saree, a spokesperson for the group, said on Wednesday that it had used three winged ‘Quds 5’ rockets.

Iran and its informal 'axis of resistance'
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Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’ – of which the Houthis are an important part

The group added that continuous support for Israel from the US and UK would put their own interests “under fire”.

“We will not hesitate in broadening our military operations against the Israeli enemy and who is behind it until the aggression against Gaza and Lebanon ends,” Mr Saree added.

Persona non grata

In a move likely to deepen the already wide rift between Israel and the UN, foreign minister Israel Katz declared the UN general secretary Antonio Guterres “persona non grata”, as he banned him from entering the country.

It is not immediately apparent if Mr Katz has the power to do this, but he accused Mr Guterres of having an anti-Israel bias after not referring to Iran in a statement made on Tuesday.

In a speech after the move, Mr Guterres said he “strongly condemns” the Iranian attack on Israel and warned that the “deadly cycle of tit-for-tat violence” in the Middle East “must stop”.

“Time is running out,” he told the organisation’s security council.

Later on Wednesday, the IDF said seven soldiers had been killed in combat, a day after the start of a ground incursion into southern Lebanon.

The IDF identified the soldiers as Captain Harel Ettinger, Captain Itai Ariel Giat, Major Noam Barzilai, Major Or Mansour, Major Nezer Itkin, Sergeant Alamkan Tarfa, and Sergeant Ido Breuer.

This came after Captain Eitan Itzhak Oster, 22, a squad commander in the “Egoz” unit, was the first death announced since Israel’s most recent attacks on Lebanon began.

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Trump team will worry about Washington attacker being glorified

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Trump team will worry about Washington attacker being glorified

There are multiple layers to this shocking act of extreme violence.

The presence of the US attorney general at a midnight news conference is a clear indication of the Trump administration’s shock and swift reaction. Pam Bondi had already visited the scene of the attack.

The president himself was quick to comment on social media, calling it out as antisemitism and saying: “Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA.”

Israeli embassy staff shooting suspect ‘shouted free Palestine’ – follow live updates

A man with an Israeli flag kneels at the scene.
Pic: Reuters
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A man with an Israeli flag kneels at the scene. Pic: Reuters

There will be immediate questions for the US authorities about the security of Israeli diplomats. The shooting happened in the downtown area of DC, not far from the FBI field office and the FBI headquarters.

The two victims are understood to be junior aides and so probably not considered particular targets. But the shooting will prompt a fresh look at diplomatic security arrangements.

A video has emerged online said to show the gunman calmly shouting “free free Palestine” as he was detained by museum security.

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Tearful witness: ‘He shot this young couple’

Pro-Palestinian protests have been intense on college campuses, outside embassies and elsewhere; the Israeli embassy in Washington has been a particular focus of protesters.

Last year, a 25-year-old active duty US airman immolated himself in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington to protest the war in Gaza.

Israel’s diplomatic relations with close allies, including the UK, France and others, have become increasingly strained over the methods used in its continuing war in Gaza.

Read more:
Sex offenders could face chemical castration
Meet staff crossing gang lines to battle malnutrition in Haiti
Trump ambushes South African president at White House meeting

Emergency services at the scene of the shooting. Pic: AP
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Emergency services at the scene of the shooting. Pic: AP

Pic: Reuters
Image:
Pic: Reuters

Authorities will also be braced for how this incident plays in the days ahead.

There will be a concern within the Trump administration that this man’s actions will be given some glorification in parts of society, mainly online, in the same way Luigi Mangione became not just infamous but famous for allegedly shooting dead a healthcare executive in protest of corporate greed.

Expect prompt condemnation from the White House of any such glorification.

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There is also a deeply tragic twist to this shooting. The two young victims were a couple and were due to travel to Jerusalem in the days ahead to become engaged.

I’ve been in touch with contacts at the Israeli embassy where the entire team is in shock and reeling at the loss of two of their own on the streets of Washington.

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Washington suspect told witness he ‘did this for Gaza’ in frenzied moments after Israeli embassy workers shot dead

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Washington suspect told witness he 'did this for Gaza' in frenzied moments after Israeli embassy workers shot dead

Witnesses have told Sky News of the moments after a man shot two Israeli embassy staff members outside a Jewish museum in Washington DC.

Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgram, a couple who were about to become engaged, were shot dead as they left the Annual Young Diplomats reception at the Capital Jewish Museum in the US capital.

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Footage emerges of Washington suspect

The suspect, named as Elias Rodriguez by police, shot at a group of four people just over a mile from the White House and then chanted a pro-Palestinian slogan in custody.

The event organiser told Sky News she handed the suspect water, mistakenly believing him to be an “innocent bystander”.

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Shooting suspect shouted ‘free Palestine’

Jojo Drake Kalin said the event was wrapping up when she headed to the lobby to find “commotion and a frenzy” but at that time, no one was aware two people had lost their lives.

“The gunshots were heard, so security started locking the doors and that is when I saw who I now know is the… murderer of this Israeli-Jewish couple,” she said.

Analysis: Trump team will worry about Washington attacker being glorified

Ms Drake Kalin didn’t find out until “much later” who she was actually talking to.

“I see him [and] he seems very distraught. I now understand it’s because he killed two people point-blank. [I] offered him water, he accepted,” she said.

“The second I’ve handed him water, he whips out his keffiyeh [a scarf] and yells ‘Free Palestine’ and then he’s subdued by the officers on scene.”

Ms Drake Kalin said the event was themed around “bridge-building” between Israeli and Palestinian communities.

She called it “painfully ironic” that someone came in with “such hate and destruction”, considering the event’s theme.

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Tearful witness: ‘He shot this young couple’

Another witness, John Elleson, cried as he told Sky News correspondent Ashish Joshi what he saw.

“A guy came up and… looked like [he had a] gun, I couldn’t tell what it was, but I heard it afterwards, the shots, and he shot this young couple,” he said.

“He ran inside and yelled something.

“It was terrible. It was terrible.”

Another eyewitness, Katie Kalisher, said it was around 9.07pm when she heard gunshots.

“Then a man comes in. He looks really distressed and people are talking to him and trying to calm him down,” she said.

“Eventually, he comes over to where I was and we were like, ‘Do you need any water?’, ‘Are you okay?'”

Ms Kalisher said the suspect asked her what kind of museum he was in and when she replied, “It’s a Jewish museum,” he said: “Do you think that’s why they did this?”

She told him she didn’t think so but he then reached into his bag and pulled out a keffiyeh.

“[He] says, ‘I did it. I did this for Gaza’ – and just starts shouting ‘free Palestine’ and that’s when the police came in and arrested him,” said Ms Kalisher.

The reaction to the shooting has been one of shock, with President Donald Trump condemning the “horrible killings” which he said were “based obviously on antisemitism”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his heart ached for the families of the victims, “whose lives were cut short in a moment by an abhorrent antisemitic murderer”.

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The staff crossing gang lines to battle malnutrition and cholera in Haiti capital

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The staff crossing gang lines to battle malnutrition and cholera in Haiti capital

In a simple breezeblock and cement building, cholera patients are attached to drips as they lie sprawled on hard, wooden beds.

In one section, two young boys stare into the distance through listless eyes. They are very poorly, the staff tell us, but now they are here, they will survive.

Two boys at the Fontaine Hospital in Haiti.
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Two boys at the Fontaine Hospital

Medical staff check on their patients in the relatively cool interior of the wards, while outside the sun beats down on the grounds of the rough and ready interconnected buildings of the Fontaine Hospital in Port-au-Prince.

The hospital is built amid the slums in an area of Haiti’s capital known as Cite Soleil – or Sun City.

A malnourished child at the Fontaine Hospital.
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‘All the infants are malnourished’ at the Fontaine Hospital, writes Sky’s Stuart Ramsay

This suburb is widely regarded to be the birthplace of the gangs of Port-au-Prince, and this section of the city has been violent and dangerous for decades.

Civil society doesn’t function here. Indeed, the Fontaine Hospital is the only medical facility still operating in the gang-controlled areas of Cite Soleil.

Without it, the people who live here would have no access to doctors or medical care.

How did gangs take over Haiti? Watch Q&A with Stuart Ramsay

I’m standing in the cholera ward with Jose Ulysse, the hospital’s founder. He opened the hospital 32 years ago. It’s a charity, run purely on donations.

Mr Ulysse explained that the increasing gang violence across the whole of Port-au-Prince, and the chaos it is causing, means people are herded into displacement camps, which in turn means that cholera outbreaks are getting worse.

Jose Ulysse, Fontaine Hospital founder.
Image:
Jose Ulysse, Fontaine Hospital founder

“Cholera is always present, but there’s a time when it’s more,” he told me.

“Lately because of all the displacement camps there is a great deal of promiscuity and rape, and we have an increase in cases.”

As we spoke, I asked him about the two young boys, and a small group of women on drips in the ward.

“Now they are here, they will be okay, but if they weren’t here and this hospital wasn’t here, they would be dead by now,” he replied when I asked him about their condition.

Jose Ulysse and Stuart Ramsay.
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Jose Ulysse and Sky’s Stuart Ramsay

We left the cholera ward, cleaning our hands and shoes with disinfectant, before moving on to the next part of the hospital under pressure – the malnutrition ward.

“Malnutrition and cholera go hand-in-hand,” Mr Ulysse explained as we walked.

In the clinic, we meet parents and their little ones – all the infants are malnourished.

The mothers – and important to note – one father, are given food to feed their babies.

Read more of Stuart Ramsey’s reporting in Haiti:
Children going to school in Haiti dodge gunfire
Listen: Reporting from Haiti’s urban war zone
Soldiers face ‘raining bullets’ from Haiti’s gangs

A malnourished child at the Fontaine Hospital.
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Distended tummies are ‘giveaway signs’ of malnutrition

Those who are in the worst condition are also fed by a drip. One of the giveaway signs of malnutrition is a distended tummy, and most of these babies have that.

Poverty and insecurity combine to cause this, Mr Ulysse tells me. And like cholera, malnutrition is getting worse.

He explained that when the violence increases, parents can’t go to work because it is too dangerous, so they end up not being able to make a living, which means that they can’t feed their children properly.

The medics and hospital workers risk their lives every day, crossing gang lines and territories to get to the hospital and care for their patients.

Mothers and children at the Fontaine Hospital in Haiti.
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Mothers and their children at the Fontaine Hospital in gang-controlled Cite Soleil

NICU Unit at Fontaine Hospital.
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NICU unit at Fontaine Hospital

The reason why this hospital is so popular is because staff show up, even when the fighting is at its worst.

Despite their meagre resources, the Fontaine Hospital’s intensive care unit for premature babies is busy – it is widely regarded as one of the best facilities of its kind in the country.

A team of nurses, masked and in scrubs, tenderly care for these tiny children, some of whom are only hours old.

They are some of the most incredibly vulnerable.

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I asked Mr Ulysse what would happen if his hospital wasn’t there.

“Just imagine, there isn’t a place where they can go, everyone comes here, normally the poorest people in the country”, he told me.

But he stressed that the only way the hospital can keep going is through donations, and the cuts to the US government’s USAID programme has had a direct impact on the hospital’s donors.

A young boy at the Fontaine Hospital.
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The hospital is run by donations, which have been affected by cuts from the US government’s USAID programme

Attacks on hospitals and staff working in the toughest areas across Port-au-Prince have become common.

We filmed outside one of the two Médecins Sans Frontières facilities in the centre of the capital, where work has been suspended because their staff were threatened or attacked.

Medical personnel from the health ministry in Port-au-Prince tell us over 70 per cent of all medical facilities in Port-au-Prince have been shut. Only one major public hospital, the Le Paix Hospital, is open.

Haiti - gang controlled - map
Haiti map

The Le Paix Hospital’s executive director, Dr Paul Junior Fontilus, says he is perplexed by the gang’s targeting of medical facilities.

“It makes no sense, it’s crazy, we don’t know what it is they want,” he said as we walked through the hospital.

The hospital is orderly and functioning well, considering the pressure it is under. They are dealing with more and more cases of cholera, an increase in gunshot wounds and sexual violence.

“We are overrun with demand, and this surpasses our capacity to respond,” he explained to me.

“But we are obliged to meet the challenge and offer services to the population.”

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Haiti: An eyewitness account

Gang violence is crushing the life out of Port-au-Prince, affecting all of society. And, as is often the case, the most vulnerable in society suffer the most.

Stuart Ramsay reports from Haiti with camera operator Toby Nash, senior foreign producer Dominique Van Heerden, and producers Brunelie Joseph and David Montgomery.

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