Enormous explosions and thundering claps of sound reverberated around the Lebanese capital overnight, in what was probably the most violent night yet. They continued into the early hours.
It’s hard to encapsulate just how loud and frightening the Israelibombings are in Beirut. The sound causes sheer terror. The shockwaves even some kilometres away can be felt shuddering through the buildings and ground.
People run to windows to check how close they might be. And the sound of the Israeli drones flying low and insistently across the city has become a pre-warning and another terrifying indicator of where the bombs might fall next.
The LebaneseEconomy minister has called it “a city under siege”.
The Israeli forces spent the night concentrating on targeting the southern suburbs again. The skies of the capital lit up in certain areas as enormous orange mushroom clouds enveloped buildings and huge sparks flew. It is terrifying. Horrifying. Devastating.
Beirut has utterly transformed in a matter of days. A bustling city centre is now crowded with people living rough, informal camps set up on pavements everywhere. The roads are gridlocked with extra traffic as families circle with whatever they can pile into their cars, searching for a place to camp or find some sort of shelter.
The official shelters in schools, universities, and designated government buildings are now in their hundreds and full to overflowing. A lot of roundabouts and road junctions are now filled with families camped on patches of grass; some have taken to sleeping on the public beaches.
The city is full up.
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Nightclubs have been turned into emergency housing for those who have fled their homes from further south nearer the Israeli border – who now find themselves cowering in terror as Israeli jets make multiple air raids throughout the night.
The Israeli military has been issuing “warnings” on a daily, nightly basis and this causes fear and terror in itself.
Dahieh – the southern suburb area most targeted – still has a Hezbollahpresence. It is known as a Hezbollah stronghold, but it is worth repeating that it is also usually home to tens of thousands of others who are not affiliated with the militant group, which is proscribed in the UK and US.
Difficult questions to answer
It is an area with a usual population of around 600,000 – so big I had to check and double-check the figure after being questioned about the size by colleagues. The figure is actually a bit old so it was probably, pre-war, much larger.
There are still people there, as well as Hezbollah fanatics. The many people we’ve spoken to tell us they are understandably nervous about leaving their homes with nothing to go to and uncertainty about when they’ll be back. So many have said to us: “But where would I go? What would I do? All I own and have is here – why would I leave it all?”
These are very difficult questions to answer.
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The Israeli forces insist they are targeting Hezbollah military structures and weapons stores, as well as the militant group’s political and leadership structure.
Several media outlets have quoted Lebanese security sources saying the group had lost contact with Hasham Safieddine – who hadn’t even yet been officially named as Nasrallah’s successor.
But with the pounding of airstrikes now on a nightly basis and often stretching into the day, the Lebanese feel they are being targeted as a population.
“It feels like collective punishment,” is very often the refrain. Time and again, ordinary people ask us: “Why are WE being hit? Why have we lost our family home?”
The Lebanese government appears to be a bystander in all this, unable to exert diplomatic or political muscle while the Lebanese army is dwarfed in size and power by Hezbollah fighters and weaponry, and the United Nations – which has “peacekeepers” along the Blue Line demarking the de facto border between Israel and Lebanon – is confined to its bases and unable to patrol.
With the death toll already surpassing that of 34 days of war in 2006, it looks most definitely like this is going to be a lot worse in terms of casualties, never mind the level of utter destruction being wrought throughout the country. Yet Hezbollah continues to fire rockets, volleys of them sometimes, into northern Israel, and fight Israeli troops on the ground.
Lebanese analyst and Hezbollah expert Amal Saad has said for some time, along with many others, that there is unlikely a scenario in which Hezbollah can be beaten militarily. And now Iran is very much involved too.
Michel Helou, secretary general of the National Bloc, a secular political party, said this morning on X: “Beirut just lived one of its worst nights. More than thirty strikes. Total silence in the international community.”
The UN has said Lebanon’s health system is “on the brink of collapsing”. Doctors and emergency workers are telling us in their droves how scared and terrorised they are and how they believe they are being specifically targeted.
The UK’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy has expressed alarm at the increasing reports of health facilities and emergency workers being attacked.
Satellite images show that smog in Pakistan can be seen from space, as the country battles record levels of air pollution.
Images from NASA Worldview show the east of the country cloaked in a toxic haze, with smog also reaching into India’s northern regions and New Dehli.
Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s Punjab region and home to 14 million people, had an air quality index of more than 400 on Tuesday morning, according to IQAir, which tracks global air quality.
Any reading above 300 is considered hazardous – anything between 0 to 50 is considered good.
Earlier in November, parts of Lahore had a reading above 1,900, marking a record high.
IQAir also reported on Tuesday that the concentration of PM2.5 – microparticles that enter the bloodstream through the lungs and can cause cancer – in Lahore was more than 50 times above recommended guidelines.
The city in eastern Pakistan is often ranked as one of the worst places in the world for air pollution.
Regional authorities have banned most outdoor activities, ordered shops to close early, and closed schools and public spaces until 17 November in response to the air pollution.
Health officials said more than 40,000 people have already been treated for respiratory ailments, while hospitals in the region have reported an unprecedented rise in patients with eye and throat irritation and pink eye disease.
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It comes as a UN agency warned the health of 11 million children in the Punjab region is at risk if efforts aren’t made to tackle the toxic smog.
Abdullah Fadil, UNICEF’s representative in the country, said in a statement: “Prior to these record-breaking levels of air pollution, about 12% of deaths in children under five in Pakistan were due to air pollution.
“The impact of this year’s extraordinary smog will take time to assess, but we know that doubling and tripling the amount of pollution in the air will have devastating effects, particularly on children and pregnant women.”
Several South Asian countries are engulfed by smog each winter as cold air traps dust, emissions and smoke from farm fires.
Thirty-five people have been killed and another 43 injured after a motorist deliberately drove his car into people exercising at a sports centre in the Chinese city of Zhuhai, police said.
A 62-year-old man, identified only by his family name of Fan, was detained at the centre late on Monday.
He was discovered in the car with a knife and wounds to his neck that were thought to be self-inflicted, according to a police statement.
Fan was reported to be unconscious and receiving medical care.
A motive has not been confirmed but police said a preliminary investigation found he was unhappy with the split of financial assets in his divorce.
Officers said a “number of” pedestrians were knocked down in the incident which took place on the eve of of an annual People’s Liberation Army exhibition in the southern Chinese city.
China’s president Xi Jinping has called for “all-out efforts” to treat those injured in the disaster, the country’s state media has said.
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Mr Xi also said the perpetrator should be punished in “accordance with the law”.
Meanwhile, one of the four hospitals that took in casualties said it had more than 20 injured, state media reported.
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Video shared on social media showed emergency services performing CPR on people at the scene, as others were told to leave the area.
Some were shared by news blogger and dissident Li Ying, who is better known on X as Teacher Li. His account posts daily news based on user submissions.
The clips showed dozens of people lying on the sports centre’s running track, with a woman in one saying: “My foot is broken.”
By Tuesday morning, searches for the incident were heavily censored on Chinese social media platforms.
A search on Weibo for the sports centre only turned up a few posts, with only a couple referring to the fact that something had happened, without pictures or details.
Articles by Chinese media about the incident from Monday night were taken down.
Chinese internet censors take extra care to check social media ahead of and during major events, such as the meeting of the National People’s Congress, where the government announces its major policy initiatives for the coming year.
The sports centre for the city district of Xiangzhou regularly attracts hundreds of residents, where they can run on the track field, play soccer and take part in social dances. Following the incident, the centre announced that it would be closed until further notice.
China has seen a number of attacks in which suspects appear to target random people such as schoolchildren.
In October, a 50-year-old man was detained after he allegedly used a knife to attack children at a school in Beijing. Five people were injured.
In September, three people were killed in a knife attack in a Shanghai supermarket.
Two commercial planes have been hit by gunfire over the capital of Haiti.
A Spirit Airlines flight was just metres from landing in Port-au-Prince having come from Fort Lauderdale in Florida, when gangs shot at the plane, injuring a flight attendant.
Footage circulating on social media, which is believed to have been filmed by an airline employee, appeared to show the hole where a bullet had entered the aircraft near the back door and struck overhead lockers.
The plane was diverted and landed in the Dominican Republic and all flights in and out of the Toussaint Louverture International Airport were halted, the US embassy in Haiti said.
Shortly after, a JetBlue flight was struck by a bullet as it took off from the capital towards New York.
The airline said its Flight 935 arrived later than scheduled without reporting any issues, but a post-flight inspection identified that the exterior of the aircraft had been hit.
JetBlue said it will extend on its halt of all flights to the nation until 2 December, adding that it is investigating the shooting and is collaborating with the relevant authorities.
It comes as businessman Alix Didier Fils-Aime became the nation’s new interim leader, replacing Garry Conille, who was fired from the position after only six months.
Mr Fils-Aime said his top priorities after taking office were to restore peace to the nation and hold elections, which haven’t been held in Haiti since 2016 – largely due to soaring levels of gang violence.
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The country’s gangs – which control 80% of the capital as well as key roads and infrastructure – often target major airports like Toussaint Louverture International in an attempt to take advantage of political instability.
Earlier this year, coordinated attacks by gangs forced former prime minister Ariel Henry to resign.
Gunmen took control of police stations, opened fire on the airport – leading to its closure for nearly three months – and stormed Haiti’s two biggest prisons.
Violence continued under Mr Conille, including a gang massacre which killed 70 in the town of Pont-Sonde in October and the targeting of a United Nations helicopter which was hit by bullets as it flew over the capital.