The latest on the wars in the Middle East

The Israeli military has expanded its evacuation warnings to residents of 19 more villages in southern Lebanon, urging them to move further north into the country.

People living in the villages, located within 18 miles (30 kilometers) of the Israeli border, have been advised to relocate about 31 miles (50 kilometers) north.

“You must immediately move to the north of the Awali River. Save your lives and evacuate your homes immediately,” said Avichay Adraee, the Israel Defense Forces Arabic spokesperson, reiterating his previous advice in a message posted on X on Saturday.

Some context: This latest warning is part of a broader series of Israeli evacuation directives issued over the past week, now affecting a total of 136 villages.

Overall, a quarter of Lebanon’s territory has been placed under evacuation orders by Israel, with more than 1.2 million people now displaced, according to the United Nations.

Israel has reiterated its threat to target any emergency response vehicles in Lebanon if they are shown to be transporting armed fighters.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on Saturday that Hezbollah operatives have “increased their misuse of emergency vehicles” in recent days, adding that the vehicles had also been used to transport ammunition.

The warning, released in both English and Arabic, came one week after a similar warning on October 5 by the IDF Arabic language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee.

Health workers in Lebanon have frequently been the victims of attacks since Israel stepped up its campaign against Hezbollah.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization said that since September 16 when the most recent escalation began, 65 health workers had been killed and 40 injured in Lebanon.

In addition, 96 primary health care centers and health facilities had been forced to close in the south of the country.

Some context: Health and aid workers have been frequent casualties of Israeli bombardment during the yearlong war in Gaza. In February, a CNN analysis found evidence of repeated attacks on and in the vicinity of medical facilities in Gaza despite the presence of doctors, patients, and civilians.

An 11-hour-old baby girl suffered a head wound on Friday when a strike hit her house just moments after she was brought home from the hospital where she was born, the chief of emergency services in northern Gaza, Fares Afana, told CNN.

The strike killed the newborn girl’s father and uncle and injured her mother and grandmother, Afana said. A video from the hospital where the family was treated for injuries shows the tiny baby getting stitches to a wound at the bottom of her neck.

The mother of the newborn baby was in critical condition at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, where she was being treated in the intensive care unit, the hospital director Dr. Hussam Abu Saifiya told CNN on Saturday. The baby girl was stable and “next to her mother,” the doctor added.

The Israel Defense Forces told CNN they “were not aware” of a strike in the area at the time the witnesses described, but said they would need exact coordinates to be certain.

The baby’s grandfather said the girl — who was not yet named — was born at 1 a.m. on Friday and was being brought home by her parents when the building was struck, according to a video that shows him in an ambulance, accompanying his wife who was also injured in the strike.

Israeli army tanks drive in an area near Israel's southern border with the Gaza Strip on October 6.

The Israeli military is carrying out a widespread operation in northern Gaza, issuing evacuation orders and blocking food supplies. The intensifying military action comes just weeks after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reported to be mulling a plan to besiege the area to starve Hamas and force it to release hostages.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) this week launched the operation following intelligence that it said showed “the presence of terrorists and terror infrastructure in the area of Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip, as well as efforts by Hamas to rebuild its operational capabilities in the area.”

In practice, the renewed offensive has been far more widespread than the Jabalya refugee camp.

Four sources have told CNN that the Israeli cabinet has not adopted the siege proposal put forward by retired general Giora Eiland. But the current operation bears resemblance to the plan presented by Eiland in a public video, and in private to the Israeli cabinet and the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

A former senior military official aware of the Israeli government and security leadership’s thinking – though not directly involved in decision-making – told CNN that the cabinet had adopted “a version of” Eiland’s proposal, which has come to be known as “The General’s Plan.” Eiland told CNN the claim was “quite true” but said there were significant differences between his proposal and what was being implemented on the ground.

The operation comes at a time when the Israeli government is known to be considering several plans to reset the war in Gaza.

Read the full story here.

At least 22 people were killed by Israeli bombardment on the city of Jabalya in northern Gaza, according to emergency responders on Saturday.

The bodies were transferred to Al-Ahli Baptist hospital, according to the head of emergency services in northern Gaza, Fares Afana.

Afana said that in addition to those killed, there were also injuries and “a number of missing still under the rubble.”

CNN has contacted the Israel Defense Forces for comment.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported multiple airstrikes had struck a densely populated neighborhood in Jabalya overnight completely destroying multiple houses.

Wafa reported at least 30 injured and 14 missing, citing emergency responders.

Rescue efforts are still underway.

The Jabalya refugee camp was pounded by more strikes on Saturday, where explosions in the area have not stopped, the head of the emergency services in northern Gaza said.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have ordered more residents of Jabalya and Nazla, just north of Gaza City, to move south ahead of planned military operations on Saturday. At the same time, the Ministry of Interior in Gaza called on citizens not to leave their homes in the areas that the Israeli army warned about this morning.

This post has been updated.

Soldiers, including several visibly injured, are seen at the emergency department’s reception desk at the Ziv hospital.

The Ziv hospital in northern Israel is on high alert. Non-urgent operations are on hold, staff have been asked to consider donating blood when needed, and all patients – including newborns in the maternity unit – have been moved underground.

The expectation here is clear: If Israel ends up sending more troops to southern Lebanon, it could get bloody.

“We have been in a war situation for the past year, but after the army entered into Lebanon, our services and all of the staff are ready for, unfortunately, the next wave of casualties,” the hospital’s director, Salman Zarka, told CNN.

Ziv Medical Center is the only hospital in the area and the closest to Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria, as well as the occupied Golan Heights. The hospital in Safed has been receiving people injured in cross-border fire for months, including children hurt in the deadly attack on Majdal Shams in July.

“When you have combat on the ground, usually you have more wounded and, unfortunately, dead soldiers. I hope it will not happen, (but) we have to be ready,” Zarka, an IDF reservist and a former commander of the IDF’s Medical Services Center, added.

Read the full story here.

Displaced Palestinians flee areas in the northern Gaza Strip following an Israeli evacuation order in Jabalya, on October 6, 2024.

Israel’s military ordered additional residents of northern Gaza to move south ahead of planned military operations on Saturday.

The residents join tens of thousands of other Palestinians who were told to leave in a round of evacuation orders issued Monday.

The army will operate “with great force” in the areas of Jabalya and Nazla, north of Gaza City, and will continue to do so “for an extended period,” according to the military’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee.

“You must evacuate the area immediately,” he said, adding that the area, including the shelters within it, was considered a “dangerous combat zone.” He told residents that they should move south to the military’s so-called “humanitarian zone.”

That zone, in the coastal area of Al Mawasi, is already crammed with refugees and has been hit by repeated Israeli airstrikes including one that killed at least 19 people in September.

The military dropped flyers on Saturday morning warning people to “evacuate immediately,” according to residents.

On Friday, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said thousands of people already cannot leave northern Gaza despite evacuation orders from the military, due to gunfire and strikes around evacuation routes.

Palestinians fleeing the designated areas covered by Monday’s order in northern Gaza were shot at as they attempted to leave, according to residents there and footage shared with CNN.

In July the UN reported that approximately nine out of 10 people in Gaza had been internally displaced, many of them multiple times, due to repeated evacuation orders across the territory.

Aid organizations have previously said new rounds of evacuation orders make the delivery of emergency rations even more difficult.

No food has entered northern Gaza since the start of October, putting 1 million people at risk of going hungry, the World Food Programme told CNN on Friday.

People walk on the streets of Tehran, Iran, where Iranian flags and Hezbollah banners are seen, on October 9.

Iran’s government is extremely nervous and has been engaging in urgent diplomatic efforts with countries in the Middle East to gauge whether they can reduce the scale of Israel’s response to its missile attack earlier this month and – if that fails – help protect Tehran, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

Iran’s anxiety stems from uncertainty about whether the US can convince Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites and oil facilities, and the fact that its most important proxy militia in the region, Hezbollah, has been significantly weakened by Israeli military operations in recent weeks, the sources said.

The US has been consulting with Israel on how it plans to respond to Iran’s October 1 attack, and US officials have made clear they do not want Israel to target Iranian nuclear sites or oil fields. US President Joe Biden spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, their first conversation in almost two months, telling him Israel’s retaliation should be “proportional.”

The US’ Gulf allies, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar, have also expressed concern to the US about a potential attack on Iranian oil facilities, which could create negative economic and environmental impacts for the entire region, an Arab diplomat told CNN.

Read the full story here.

Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry said it “strongly condemns” Israel’s attack on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon that injured two of its soldiers on Friday.

The peacekeepers were injured in an attack at the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) headquarters in the southern city of Naqoura, the Sri Lankan foreign ministry said in a statement.

On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces acknowledged it hit a UNIFIL base and said it was looking into the circumstances surrounding the incident. Its soldiers fired at “an immediate threat against them” and later found a UNIFIL post near the “source of the threat” was hit, injuring two UNIFIL peacekeepers, it said.

UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix on Thursday said the situation in southern Lebanon is “increasingly alarming,” with UN peacekeepers “at serious risk.”

The head of Ireland’s armed forces, Lieutenant General Sean Clancy, earlier said Israeli fire that hit the UN peacekeeping position in southern Lebanon on Friday seemed “deliberate,” given the circumstances.

This is the second incident of Israeli tank fire resulting in injuries to UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon this week. Two Indonesian peacekeepers were hospitalized on Thursday following a similar incident.

A nursing home in central Israel was damaged following the downing of a drone originating from Lebanon, according to officials.

The Israeli military said alerts had been activated after it detected two aircraft crossing from Lebanon, according to a statement on Friday night.

The military said the Air Force had successfully intercepted one aircraft but did not specify what had happened to the second.

“At this stage there is damage to a building in Herzliya,” the statement added. Herzliya is a coastal city in central Israel.

Images and video shared by the military showed damage to what it said was a nursing home, “following the (drone) attack.”

Broken windows and destroyed furniture could be seen along with water pooled on the floor of an adjoining hallway.

Israeli police received “multiple” reports of rocket fragments landing in the Herzliya area, according to a spokesperson.

Police officers and bomb disposal experts arrived to manage “debris from the interception,” the spokesperson said.

Neither statement indicated there were casualties. The military said the incident was under investigation.

Thailand’s foreign ministry said it was “profoundly saddened” by the death of a Thai worker in northern Israel on Friday, according to a statement.

Earlier in the day Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency response service had reported that the Thai national had been killed in the Upper Galilee region after an anti-tank missile was fired from Lebanon.

The Thai foreign ministry disputed that account, saying the death, and the injury of another of its nationals, had resulted from “an explosion of dropped ammunition” without providing additional details.

The ministry added that its embassy in Israel was closely monitoring the condition of the injured worker and awaiting autopsy results to confirm the identity of the deceased before notifying the family.

The statement said the embassy was working to evacuate 10 additional Thai nationals from the kibbutz where the incident had occurred. It asked other Thai citizens having trouble leaving high-risk areas of Israel to contact the embassy for assistance.

The agriculture industry in Israel has employed thousands of Thai nationals to tend crops and work in dairies.

Thais made up the largest group of foreign nationals killed in the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023. Most were workers on agricultural sites close to the perimeter fence that separates Israel from Gaza.

In the months after the attack an estimated 10,000 farm workers left, according to the Israeli government.

Nicaragua is breaking diplomatic relations with Israel over its war in Gaza, its Vice President Rosario Murillo announced on Friday.

Murillo said that the “repudiation” measure is not against the people of Israel but against its government.

CNN has contacted the Israeli consulate in Nicaragua for comment.

Context: The announcement comes on the back of statements made by Nicaragua’s foreign minister Valdrack Ludwing Jaentschke Whitaker in a speech to the UN General Assembly in late September, where Whitaker denounced and condemned “the genocide that the Government of Israel and its ‘First World’ allies have committed, commit and continue to commit” across the Middle East.

In January, Nicaragua’s government applied to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to join the genocide lawsuit that South Africa filed against Israel in December last year.

Israel has rejected the genocide charges, arguing that the war against Hamas in Gaza is conducted in self-defense. Israel also maintains that it is not fighting the Palestinian people, and that its leaders have not shown any intent to commit genocide.

Antony Blinken speaks at a press conference during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summits in Vientiane, Laos, on October 11.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke separately on Friday with Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri as Israeli military operations in the country continue, including deadly strikes in Beirut Thursday.

According to State Department readouts of both calls, Blinken reiterated the US’ “commitment to a diplomatic resolution to the conflict across the Blue Line,” referring to the roughly 120-kilometer boundary between the two countries established by the United Nations in 2000 to ensure the withdrawal of Israeli forces.

The top US diplomat “underscored enduring United States support for Lebanese institutions that can help stabilize the country, including the Lebanese Armed Forces,” and called for the country not to allow Iran or Hezbollah to “stand in the way” of Lebanon’s security, the readout from the Mikati call said.

In both calls, Blinken discussed the presidential vacancy in Lebanon and the need to fill it with a leader “that reflects the will of the people for a stable, prosperous, and independent Lebanon.”

Neither readout mentioned the deadly Israeli strikes in Beirut or the ongoing ground operations in the south of Lebanon.

Israel’s military says it is investigating after Lebanese officials blamed an Israeli strike for the killing of two of the country’s soldiers on Friday.

The Lebanese army said earlier that Israeli strikes targeting an army base in Kafra, southern Lebanon, killed two of its soldiers. The Israel Defense Forces now tells CNN that it is looking into the reported incident, and added that it was unaware of a Lebanese Armed Forces facility in the area:

Some background: While Israel is at war with Hezbollah — the Iran-backed paramilitary group that operates in southern Lebanon — its strikes have also killed more than 1,400 Lebanese civilians and at least three of the country’s soldiers, according to Lebanon’s government.

The IDF reiterated in its statement Friday that it is fighting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and not the state of Lebanon.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati earlier condemned the strike in Kafra as a part of a “persistent Israeli crime against Lebanon.”

The US government expanded sanctions on two Iranian energy sectors in an effort to cut off revenue that the US says Tehran is using to fund proxy groups and foment instability in the region.

Friday’s actions were taken in response to Tehran’s missile attack on Israel earlier this month, the Treasury Department said in a press release. It comes while the region is on edge about potential conflagration as Israel weighs its potential answer to that attack.

“In the aftermath of Iran’s unprecedented October 1 attack against Israel, the United States made clear that we would impose consequences on Iran for its actions,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Friday. “To that end, we are taking steps today to disrupt the flow of revenue the Iranian regime uses to fund its nuclear program and missile development, support terrorist proxies and partners, and perpetuate conflict throughout the Middle East.”

Remember: Hezbollah, which Israel is fighting in Lebanon, and Hamas, which it is fighting in Gaza, are two members of an axis of militant groups funded by Iran, which also operate in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Palestinian residents of the Jabalya Refugee Camp flee to other areas, with the belongings they could carry, following Israeli attacks on the camp in Gaza City, Gaza on October 1, 2024.

Thousands of people are unable to leave northern Gaza’s Jabalya refugee camp despite evacuation warnings from the Israeli military, due to gunfire and strikes around evacuation routes, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on Friday.

CNN has previously reported incidents of evacuees from Jabalya coming under fire. One man said he and his family fled their home in Jabalya due to continuous bombing in the area, and that he and other civilians were shot at when they went back to retrieve supplies.

Five MSF staff members are currently trapped at the camp, according to a post on X from the organization, which is also known as Doctors Without Borders.

“Nobody is allowed to get in or out, anyone who tries is getting shot,” MSF project coordinator Sarah Vuylsteke added, in a post on MSF’s official X account.

Haydar, a driver working for the organization who is trapped at the camp, was also quoted by MSF describing his fear of attempting to flee the dangerous area:

CNN has reached out to the IDF for comment on allegations that its troops are firing near evacuation routes and that MSF workers are trapped.

Some background: The Israel Defense Forces launched its latest ground operation in Jabalya on Sunday, where it said it was encircling the area after seeing signs of Hamas rebuilding, despite a year of fighting and intense strikes on the area.

The IDF told residents across several parts of northern Gaza, including Jabalya, to evacuate on Monday, warning that it is “currently operating with great force in the area.”