Israeli strikes in eastern Lebanon have killed 40 people, according to the country’s health ministry.
The strikes also wounded 53 more people around the eastern city of Baalbek in the Beqaa Valley on Wednesday, as Israel’s operation against the Hezbollah militant group continues.
The Israeli military has not commented.
More than 3,000 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon in the past year, but most deaths have happened over the past six weeks as violence between the Iran-backed militants and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) escalated.
Late on Wednesday and earlier on Thursday, further strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs, after the Israeli military ordered residents to evacuate several locations.
This morning, one large airstrike hit a site next to Lebanon’s only international airport. Israel said there were Hezbollah facilities there, without giving more details.
Follow Sky News on WhatsApp
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said in a speech aired on Wednesday that the Lebanese militant group is open for ceasefire negotiations only once “the enemy stops its aggression”.
More attacks in northern Gaza
Meanwhile, what has been a year-long relentless military campaign on the besieged enclave of Gaza raged on with more attacks on the north.
Israel’s ground operation in the region – said to be aimed at stopping Hamas, the militant group ruling Gaza, from regrouping – has extended to a town that has been heavily bombed since the earliest days of the war.
The military said in a statement on Thursday that “troops started to operate” in the area of Beit Lahiya after intelligence indicated the presence of militants there.
Israel launched another major offensive in nearby Jabaliya, a decades-old urban refugee camp, in early October.
It has sharply restricted the amount of aid entering northern Gaza and ordered a full evacuation.
Tens of thousands have fled to nearby Gaza City in the latest mass displacement of the war.
‘Absolute despair’
The war in Gaza, launched on 8 October last year following Hamas’s attack into southern Israel, has so far claimed the lives of more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.
Israel has been criticised by the Norwegian Refugee Council after its secretary general, Jan Egeland, visited northern and central Gaza and said the IDF’s campaign is “in no way a lawful” response to the 7 October attacks last year – when 1,200 people were killed in southern Israel and 250 were taken hostage by Hamas.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
2:06
Hospitals in Gaza are overwhelmed
Mr Egeland described the situation as “worse than anything I could imagine as a long-time aid worker”.
“What I saw and heard in the north of Gaza was a population pushed beyond breaking point,” he added.
“Families torn apart, men and boys detained and separated from their loved ones, and families unable to even bury their dead. Some have gone days without food, drinking water is nowhere to be found.
“It is scene after scene of absolute despair.”
Mr Egeland continued: “The families, widows and children I have spoken to are enduring suffering almost unparalleled anywhere in recent history.
“There is no possible justification for continued war and destruction. To avert tens of thousands of additional innocent lives lost, we need an immediate cease-fire, release of the hostages and those arbitrarily detained and the start of a real peace process.”
Slovakia’s prime minister has drawn criticism from across Europe and from his own people after his surprise visit to Moscow for face-to-face talks with Vladimir Putin on Sunday.
Robert Fico is only the third EU leader to visit Mr Putin in Moscow since the Russian president ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Kremlin said the two leaders discussed “the international situation” and Russian natural gas deliveries.
Russian natural gas still flows through Ukraine and to some other European countries, including Slovakia, under a five-year agreement signed before the war that is due to expire at the end of the year.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy told EU leaders last week that Ukraine had no intention of renewing the deal, which Mr Fico insisted would hurt Slovakia and its interests.
He said his visit to Moscow was a reaction to Mr Zelenskyy’s statement and that Mr Putin had told him that Russia was still ready to deliver gas to the West.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:24
Putin ‘ready’ to talk to Trump
‘It smells like treason’
In Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava, people took to the streets to protest after the meeting, with banners in support of Ukraine as well as unflattering depictions of Mr Fico on display.
One sign simply read: “It smells like treason.”
Mr Zelenskyy said the “unwillingness” shown by Mr Fico to replace Russian gas is a “big security issue” for Europe, and questioned the potential financial incentives being offered to the Slovak leader.
“Why is this leader so dependent on Moscow? What is being paid to him, and what does he pay with?,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
In his nightly address on Monday, Mr Zelenskyy said that Mr Fico had received an offer of compensation for losses from the expiring transit deal, but that he “did not want compensation for the Slovaks”.
In a statement, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said the “weakness, dependence and short-sightedness” of Mr Fico’s energy policy is a “threat to the whole of Europe”.
The Slovak leader’s “persistent attempts” to maintain energy dependence on Moscow is “surprising” and represents a “shameful policy of appeasement”, the Ukrainian ministry added.
The Czech government also criticised Mr Fico’s trip to Moscow, pointing to its own decision to wean itself off Russian energy.
“It was the Czech government that secured independence from Russian energy supplies so that we wouldn’t have to crawl in front of a mass murderer,” Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavsky said.
In early December 1955, the phone rang at an air base in Colorado Springs. The officers on the watch floor of the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) – who were defending the skies above the US and Canada – stiffened.
The Cold War was in full swing and tensions were running high.
The command’s director of operations Colonel Harry Shoup answered the call. On the other end was a child’s voice asking: “Is this Santa Claus?”
According to the colonel’s daughter Terri Van Keuren, now 75, her father initially thought it was a prank, and replied: “I’m the commander of the Combat Alert Center. Who’s this?”
In response, the child started crying and asked if he was one of “Santa’s helpers”.
The colonel then decided to play along, replying that he was indeed Santa Claus and mustering a convincing “ho-ho-ho”.
This surprise call started the nearly 70-year tradition of the Santa Tracker, which allows children around the world to track the whereabouts of Father Christmas via a livestream and a phone line answered by volunteers.
It is now run by CONAD’s successor, the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD).
But how did a child seemingly get the phone number of a colonel in the US air force?
The American department store Sears had printed an advert in a local newspaper telling children they could call Santa, Terri explains.
“They had printed one digit wrong in the phone number. And it was dad’s top secret number.”
Colonel Shoup called the phone company and asked for a new number for his office.
Meanwhile, the phone at CONAD was “ringing off the hook” and Colonel Shoup told his staff they were to answer the calls as Santa Claus.
In the story told by Terri, on 24 December that year her parents arrived at the base to deliver cookies to those on duty, and found the military establishment unusually festive.
A picture of a sleigh had been drawn by a map writer on plexiglass – which was used to mark where unidentified flying objects were located.
“Next thing they knew, dad was calling the radio station. ‘This is Colonel Shoup, the commander of the Combat Alert Center in Colorado Springs. And we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh’,” says Terri.
Terri, who lives in Castle Rock, Colorado, was six years old when her father became the “Santa Colonel”. She says the NORAD Santa Tracker, which reaches millions of children around the world every year, is his “legacy”.
NORAD’s tracking of Santa is a military operation in itself beginning on 1 December.
Brigadier General Jocelyn Schermerhorn, a senior US military officer in Canada, tells Sky News how the day unfolds on Christmas Eve.
“We have about a thousand people come together to set up the operations centre that is used to track Santa and that allows anyone to call in to check on his whereabouts”.
Volunteers are responsible for answering calls from tens of thousands of children around the world. In 2022, 78,000 calls were answered at Peterson Space Force Base.
For 10 years Terri was one of these volunteers. “I always wore a t-shirt that had a picture of my dad. It says: ‘My dad’s the Santa Colonel’.”
What’s next for the Santa Tracker? Terri says her father’s festive story is so famous she’s “had several requests to make a movie out of it”.
Head to Sky News’ YouTube and other social media channels to watch NORAD’s Santa Tracker and find out where he is in the world delivering presents.
The sister of a British man who has been missing in Spain for nine days has said “panic” is setting in.
Courtney George last spoke to her brother John Hardy on Saturday 14 December, around the time she believes he was due to drive from Alicante to Benidorm.
She reported him missing after he failed to get on his flight home on Wednesday 18 December.
Mr Hardy, from Belfast, has several tattoos, including half a sleeve on his right arm and a panther on his torso.
Police in Northern Ireland have confirmed a 37-year-old is believed to be missing.
Ms George said her brother, who has two sons, would “never” go so long without contacting her.
“Another day waking up hoping what is going on is a nightmare, but realising this is real life. The panic sets in,” she wrote on Facebook yesterday.
“Another day, no contact from John – never ever would this happen… What’s Christmas without family? My big brother hasn’t just vanished! That doesn’t happen!”
She added today his sons “need to know” where their dad is.
She continued: “There will be no Christmas for my family. The only thing we are focused on is getting our loved one back.”
The distressed Ms George is offering a reward for anyone with “any helpful information to find John”.
The Police Service in Northern Ireland said the force had “received a report on Wednesday, 18th December that a 37-year-old man from Belfast, holidaying in Spain, was believed to be missing”.
It added: “Enquiries are ongoing in conjunction with our international policing partners.”