Israel strikes Lebanon as region braces for response to Iran

Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon killed at least 25 people and injured 127 on Friday, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.

The ministry said the casualties occurred in towns and villages across southern Lebanon, as well as in the city of Nabatieh, the Beqaa valley, the Baalbek-Hermel region, Mount Lebanon and the capital of Beirut.

At least 1,426 people have died and 7,597 people have been injured by Israeli military action in Lebanon since September 16, according to a CNN tally based on the ministry’s data.

Israel has launched an unprecedented bombing campaign and a limited ground offensive in the country as it fights the Iran-backed paramilitary group Hezbollah, which is based out of southern Lebanon.

US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

US President Joe Biden told reporters Saturday that he has not spoken to Israel’s Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu yet, after saying in earlier in the week he would be talking to the Israeli leader.

“No,” the president said, when asked by CNN’s Camila DeChalus if he had spoken to the Israeli leader.

Earlier in the week, the president told reporters that he would be speaking to Netanyahu “relatively soon” amid growing escalation in the Middle East.

The president was also asked about his message to the families of hostages being held in Gaza ahead of the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attack in Israel. Biden, while on the South Lawn, told reporters, “I’ll be talking to a bunch of them.”

People attend at a pro-Palestinian protest in Rome on Saturday.

Thousands of people rallied around the world Saturday in support for people in Gaza ahead of the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attacks.

Marches have been taking place in Paris, Manila, Cape Town and other major cities in the run-up to the anniversary of the Hamas attacks that killed around 1,200 people in Israel, according to Israeli authorities. Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians in the months since, according to the health ministry in the enclave.

“Unfortunately, in spite of all our good will, the Israeli government does not take any notice, and they just go ahead and continue their atrocities in Gaza, now also in Lebanon and in Yemen, and now also probably in Iran,” Agmes Koury, a protester in London, told Reuters while holding a sign reading: “This Holocaust survivor says: Stop the genocide in Gaza.”

Rim Boughanmi, a Tunisian protester who joined Saturday’s march in Rome, told Reuters: “We came here to say no to war, to say no to genocide in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen, no more war and no more support from the Italian state.”

“I’m here in support of the Palestinian people, especially the children and the women that are being violated and bombed each and every day. It cannot be right that we sit back and watch what Netanyahu is doing. It is enough: Palestine belongs to Palestinian people, not Israelis,” protester Nikewe Jentu told AFP in Cape Town.

In Dublin, hundreds of protesters marched, chanting, “Ceasefire now!” and “Free, Free, Palestine!”

In Israel: The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said Thursday it would not hold its weekly Saturday rallies in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem due to the “security situation” in the region. But dozens of rallies are still set to take place today in other locations.

French President Emmanuel Macron speaks at the Berlin Global Dialogue in Berlin, Germany, on October 2.

French President Emmanuel Macron has called for the complete suspension of the sale of arms used in the war in Gaza, while stressing France has not been involved in their supply.

“Right now, the priority is returning to a political situation, that we stop the delivery of arms being used in the war in Gaza. France is not delivering them,” Macron told French radio station France Inter on Saturday.

Several countries including the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom have been criticized by human rights groups for failing to suspend arms sales to Israel as its bombardment of Gaza has left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead.

France’s defense minister Sébastien Lecornu has repeatedly insisted that the country mainly supplies “spare parts” to Israel — worth 15 million euros in 2022 — and has supplied “no weapons.”

This response has failed to satisfy French and international NGOs, including Amnesty International, whose French chief Jean-Claude Samouillier penned an open letter to Macron earlier this year calling on him to suspend the export of war materials entirely.

Last month, the UK government announced the suspension of a fraction of its licenses for items used by the Israeli military in Gaza, which brought bitter criticism from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Germany put a pause on the approval of new arms export licenses to Israel, according to a Reuters report last week, which cited a source close to the Ministry of Economy.

Macron’s call comes as Israel also engages in an escalating war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, where it has been carrying out a new bombing campaign comparable to its aerial assault on Gaza.

Dubai’s Emirates airline has banned pagers and walkie-talkies from its planes, following last month’s attacks on such devices carried by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Dubai’s Emirates airline has banned pagers and walkie-talkies from its planes, following last month’s attacks on such devices carried by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

“All Passengers travelling on flights to, from or via Dubai are prohibited from transporting pagers and walkie talkies in checked or cabin baggage,” the airline wrote in a statement posted on its website Friday.

It comes weeks after pagers exploded simultaneously across Lebanon, followed by walkie-talkies detonating in a similar fashion. Lebanese officials blamed Israel for the attacks.

Emirates, the region’s largest airline, said in an update Friday that flights from and to Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, remain canceled up until and including October 15.

The Israeli military has published the names of 10 people who it says were killed by a strike on the occupied West Bank on Thursday.

Altogether, according to the Israel Defense Forces, 12 militants were killed in the attack on the Tulkarem area — one of the highest numbers in a single day in the West Bank since last October.

The IDF said the people killed belonged to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, claiming the strike was carried out to thwart an “attack against Israeli civilians in the immediate future,” and that all 12 people were involved in making explosives or “supporting terrorist activities.”

Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, head of Hamas in Tulkarem, and Jit Radwan, a key operative in the Islamic Jihad in the Tulkarem area, were among those killed, according to the IDF.

The Palestinian health ministry previously said at least 18 people were killed in the strike, and Israeli ally Germany expressed concern over reported civilian deaths in the attack.

Some background: The West Bank is a territory that lies between Israel and Jordan, home to 3.3 million Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation. While Israel fights wars with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, violence has also increased in the West Bank.

Israel has launched large-scale raids in the territory, including one in late August that saw Israel tearing up streets with bulldozers and launching strikes in Tulkarem.

There has also been increasing violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, whose presence is considered illegal under international law.

Lebanon is contending with a “terrible crisis” as it continues to be bombarded by Israeli strikes, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said Saturday.

The high commissioner said that he had traveled to the Lebanese capital “in solidarity with those affected, to support the humanitarian effort and to ask for more international help.”

Remember: As many as a million people have been displaced in Lebanon in recent weeks, according to Lebanese officials, as Israel has ratcheted up its military campaign against Hezbollah. Over 1,400 people in Lebanon have been killed, and a further 7,500 have been injured, according to the country’s health ministry.

Israel has carried out fresh strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, launching several missiles at an area close to the airport.

A CNN camera recorded one of the blasts and a CNN team reported seeing smoke billowing from an area less than a mile from the airstrip.

The Lebanese state-run National News Agency said Israel struck Ain al-Sikka square in the Bourj el Barajneh area with four missiles. Bourj el Barajneh is a densely populated neighborhood that is home to a Palestinian refugee camp and many poorer migrants.

The Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs, an area of residential neighborhoods that’s also a Hezbollah seat of power, is where Israel has focused many of its attacks during its escalating war with the Iran-backed paramilitary group.

Israel has been bombarding Lebanon at a scale that hasn’t been seen outside of Gaza in the last 20 years, according to air warfare experts.

People stand near damaged vehicles at the site hit by an Israeli strike in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon, on October 5.

A leader of Hamas’ military wing in Lebanon has been killed in a rare Israeli airstrike near Lebanon’s northernmost city of Tripoli.

In a joint statement, the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet said they killed Saeed Atallah Ali, “a senior member of (the) Hamas Military Wing in Lebanon,” who they claimed “carried out terrorist attacks against Israeli targets and worked to recruit Hamas operatives inside Lebanon.”

It is believed that Lebanon’s second-largest city, Tripoli, has not been targeted since the 2006 conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. Israel’s strikes have largely focused on the south of the country and on Hezbollah strongholds in southern Beirut.

Hamas confirmed the death of Atallah Ali, who it described as a leader of the Lebanon branch of its military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades.

In a statement, the group said that Atallah Ali was killed by “treacherous Zionist bombing that targeted his home in the Beddawi refugee camp” near Tripoli. Ali’s wife and two daughters were also killed in the bombing, the statement said.

The Beddawi refugee camp, housing Palestinian refugees, is located on a hill 5 kilometers (about 3 miles) northeast of Tripoli. Footage from the scene showed the damage sustained to the apartment building targeted in the strike. Outside the building, a cordon blocked off two damaged cars surrounded by piles of rubble. Sheets hung out from the balcony of the fifth floor apartment, attempting to conceal some of the damage caused by the strike.

Remember: Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has been ongoing for nearly a year, following Hamas’ attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023. Hezbollah and Israel have consistently been exchanging fire since October 8. The Iran-backed militant group has said that it will not stop striking Israel until a ceasefire in Gaza.

Three people suffered minor injuries in a Hezbollah rocket barrage launched at the Deir al-Assad area of northern Israel today, according to the Galilee Medical Center.

Twelve other people received medical assistance to cope with the shock and anxiety of the incident, the hospital said.

Earlier on Saturday, Israeli authorities said they were responding to several reports of direct hits to houses and debris falling in Karmiel and Deir al-Assad.

Footage shared on social media showed minor damage to some buildings and cries and shouts. Another video showed a fire burning in the distance.

Remember: Hezbollah has been firing rockets and other projectiles into northern Israel as Lebanon endures an unprecedented Israeli air campaign.

The Iran-backed militant group has said it will not stop striking Israel until a ceasefire in Gaza is reached.

Smoke billows after an Israeli Air Force air strike on a village in southern Lebanon on October 4.

This week saw Israel launch a limited ground incursion into southern Lebanon as it targets Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. For the first time since 2006, Israel struck central Beirut, with previous attacks being confined to the city’s southern suburbs.

These developments have marked a dramatic escalation in tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, and suggested that fears of an expanded regional war have materialized.

Meanwhile, Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel, and has pledged it will attack again if necessary.

Here’s a timeline of this week’s key events:

Hundreds of foreign nationals who have been flown out of Lebanon have been repatriated in the last 24 hours.

About 185 people from countries including the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and Finland landed in the Dutch city of Eindhoven on Friday night, according to the country’s Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp.

A separate evacuation flight from Lebanon arrived in Cyprus Friday night, carrying 38 Cypriots, 11 Greek nationals, two Poles and 19 Lebanese with permanent residency in Cyprus, the Cypriot foreign ministry said in a statement.

Several dozen Polish nationals were evacuated from Lebanon, Poland’s foreign ministry said, arriving in Warsaw Friday night. Two hundred and nineteen “particularly vulnerable Germans” were also evacuated from Lebanon Friday, Germany’s foreign office said.

Nigerian nationals in the south of Lebanon have been brought to Beirut and “other safer areas,” Nigeria’s foreign ministry said Friday. The Nigerian government has “commenced preparation for evacuation of Nigerians in Lebanon back to Nigeria,” the ministry added. Kenya’s government is also evacuating its citizens from Lebanon, it said in a statement Friday.

A charter flight supported by the Australian government left Beirut with 229 passengers on board on Saturday, according to Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong. Five Malaysians also landed in Kuala Lumpur on Friday after being evacuated from Lebanon, the country’s foreign ministry said.

Israeli authorities said they were responding to several reports of direct hits to houses and debris falling in Karmiel and Deir al-Assad, northern Israel, after a barrage of rockets was fired by Hezbollah on Saturday.

Footage shared on social media showed minor damage to some buildings. Another video showed a fire burning in the distance.

Israel’s emergency service Magen David Adom (MDA) said it had treated 10 people for shock but reported no physical injuries.

Several fire department crews were deployed preventatively in case people had become trapped and to assist with any possible injuries.

Eight firefighting teams were engaging an “extensive fire” near the town of Rosh Pina, authorities said.

Hashem Safieddine attends a ceremony of the Iran-backed Shiite militant group in Beirut's southern suburbs on May 24.

Hezbollah has lost contact with a possible successor to its late leader Hassan Nasrallah, according to a Lebanese security source.

The group has not heard from Hashem Safieddine since an Israeli strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs targeted him on Friday, the source told CNN Saturday.

Some background: Safieddine served as head of Hezbollah’s executive council and, until his predecessor’s death, was seen as one of the most likely heirs to the organization’s highest-ranking seat.

He is a maternal cousin of Nasrallah, and studied alongside him in Iran in the 1980s.

Following the back-to-back explosions that targeted Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies in September, Safieddine said that his organization “will not back down until the end.”

The United States designated Hezbollah a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, and in 2017 designated Safieddine a foreign terrorist.

CNN’s Nadeen Ebrahim contributed to this report.

A plane carrying 40 tons of urgent medical aid from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) landed in Lebanon Saturday, under the ‘UAE stands with Lebanon’ campaign, a Lebanese Ministry of Health official told CNN.

The UAE launched its relief campaign to support Lebanon on Saturday, its foreign ministry announced.

“The aid aircraft reflects the UAE’s humanitarian efforts and commitment to supporting the people of Lebanon and demonstrates the close fraternal relations between both nations, particularly in the face of such adversity,” the UAE’s foreign ministry said, noting that the country will send $100 million in aid to Lebanon.

“The UAE has previously expressed its deep concern over increased escalation in Lebanon, as well as the repercussions of this dangerous spillover and its impact on regional stability,” the foreign ministry said.

It comes after Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced nearly $157 million in US humanitarian assistance Friday to “support populations affected by conflict in Lebanon and the region.”

As many as one million people have been displaced in the country in recent weeks, according to Lebanon’s crisis management center, as Israel has ratcheted up its military campaign against Hezbollah. This includes more than 200,000 people, mostly Lebanese and Syrians, who have fled across the border into Syria, according to the United Nations.

The Israeli military has claimed to have dismantled several Hezbollah weapons storage facilities and tunnels during a series of localized raids in the border region of southern Lebanon, where a ground operation is underway.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that Israeli soldiers are carrying out focused raids on what it said was “terrorist infrastructure” both above and below ground.

According to the IDF, the targets, concealed in mountainous, densely built-up areas rigged with explosives, included weapons caches, observation posts and missile launch sites.

Earlier, Hezbollah said it had attacked an Israeli tank and repelled an Israeli assault on the town of Adaisseh. When asked by CNN, the IDF said it was not aware of these incidents.

New Israeli airstrikes have struck Beirut’s southern suburbs on Saturday, the scene of daily attacks over the past week.

CNN teams saw large plumes of dark smoke coming from the area, while the state-run National News Agency of Lebanon (NNA) also reported on fresh Israeli strikes.

Smoke rises following an explosion over Beirut's southern suburbs after a strike, as seen from Sin El Fil, Lebanon, on Thursday.

Israel has continued to batter Lebanon with strikes into Saturday, in an aerial campaign that has killed over 1,400 people, injured nearly 7,500 others and displaced more than one million people in less than three weeks, according to Lebanese officials.

Israel has refused to rule out targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities, while reports from Hamas-linked media have claimed Israeli forces have struck near Lebanon’s second-largest city of Tripoli for the first time.

Here are the latest updates:

More than 200,000 people have fled from Lebanon into Syria since Israel started its bombing campaign inside the country, the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said Saturday.

Among those are both Lebanese citizens and Syrians living in Lebanon, Grandi said.

Relief efforts are being carried out by the UN, the Syrian Red Crescent and other organizations at border crossings, he added.

Some context: Lebanese authorities have said that over 1.2 million Lebanese people have been displaced since fighting between Israel and Hezbollah escalated last month. Many families are now living on the streets.

Last week, Lebanon’s country director for Relief International, Giacomo Lapo Baldini, told CNN that hundreds of thousands of people don’t have access to clean water after facilities were hit by Israel.

Hezbollah said it struck an Israeli tank advancing near the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Maroun early on Saturday.

The militant group said it had hit the tank “directly” with a guided missile.

It also claimed that the Israeli crew members inside the tank were either killed or injured by the strike.

In a separate incident, Hezbollah said it had repelled an overnight assault by Israeli forces near the town of Adaisseh. In its last update on the incident several hours ago, Hezbollah said “clashes are ongoing.”

CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces on these reports but has not heard back.

Israel launched what it calls a “limited” ground incursion into Lebanon earlier in the week.

Destroyed residential buildings are seen after the Israeli military carried out airstrikes on the Dahiyeh area, south of Beirut, on Saturday.

The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon continued Saturday morning, following strikes across the country and at least a dozen air raids on Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight, according to the National News Agency of Lebanon (NNA).

The Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Arabic-language spokesperson told residents who had previously been ordered to leave their homes not to return in a statement on Saturday. Israel has hit the southern suburbs of Beirut every day for the past week.

Between 12:50 AM and 2:44 AM local time, Adraee issued three separate warnings to residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs to evacuate ahead of planned airstrikes.

“You are located near Hezbollah facilities and interests, against which the IDF will operate in the near future,” he wrote in each of the orders, which included maps of the specified areas.

Elsewhere in Lebanon, NNA reported strikes in areas including the Beqaa valley in the east and the city of Tyre on the Mediterranean coast, as well as in southern communities closer to the border with Israel.

Dozens of people took part in a group run in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Saturday, calling for the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

The gathering is the group’s fiftieth run since the war began and comes just days ahead of the one-year anniversary of the brutal Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.

Runner Eili David said that he felt “terrible,” adding that he believes the hostages have been living in “inhumane conditions” for the past year and “we still have not brought them back.”

On the possibility of staying hopeful that a hostage deal will be struck, David said he “has to be.”

Another runner said that he thinks about the hostages in Gaza “every day, all day.” He added was still “very hopeful” for their return, saying it was “possible if our leadership wants it.”

People stand at the site hit by an Israeli strike that killed Saeed Atallah Ali in Tripoli, Lebanon, on Saturday.

A leader of the Lebanon branch of Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam brigades, was killed by an airstrike near the northern city of Tripoli, according to a media outlet affiliated with the group.

The Israeli military has not commented on the report, which if confirmed would be the first strike in the Tripoli region, Lebanon’s second-largest city.

Hamas has yet to officially comment on the reports.

This post has been updated.

A hospital in southern Lebanon was evacuated following an Israeli strike that left nine medical staff injured, according to state media.

The strike – in the vicinity of the Martyr Salah Ghandour Hospital in Bint Jbeil – came after an evacuation order from the Israeli military, the National News Agency of Lebanon (NNA) reported, citing a statement from the hospital.

The statement added that most of the nine injured workers were in serious condition.

The Israeli military said in a statement on Saturday that it had struck a mosque adjacent to the hospital which it said was being used as a Hezbollah command center.

“Before the strike, notices were sent to residents and conversations were held with significant parties in the villages in which the IDF identified Hezbollah utilizing hospitals in defiance of the laws of armed conflict – demanding that any military activity carried out from the hospitals should stop immediately,” the military said.

One of Lebanon’s southern-most hospitals, the Marjayoun Governmental Hospital, was taken out of service Friday after Israeli strikes hit close to the facility, the hospital director Dr Mones Kalakish told CNN.

Medical facilities impacted: Israeli bombardment has taken a heavy toll on Lebanon’s health infrastructure in recent days.

On Thursday the director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 37 health facilities had been forced to close in southern Lebanon and 28 healthcare workers had been killed in the previous 24-hours alone.

Smoke billows after an Israeli Air Force air strike on a village in southern Lebanon on Friday.

A surgeon in Beirut has accused Israel of waging a “war on children” in Lebanon, drawing a comparison to how large numbers of young people have faced death and injury during Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British-Palestinian surgeon at American University of Beirut Medical Center, who previously worked in Gaza, gave his account from the ground to CNN’s Michael Holmes on Saturday.

“We are seeing [a] similar pattern to what I was seeing in Gaza in October and November last year,” he said.

He said children were being wounded in their homes and in some cases seeing multiple family members killed.

According to UNICEF, more than 690 children in Lebanon have been injured in the past six weeks and at least 100 killed over the past 11 days as Israel has ramped up strikes against Hezbollah.

Israel says it takes steps to minimize civilian harm, such as making phone calls and sending text messages to residents in buildings designated for attack. Human rights groups like Amnesty International say such warnings do not absolve Israel of responsibilities under international humanitarian law to limit civilian harm.

Abu-Sittah, who serves as director of the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Department at the prestigious American University hospital, also spoke of the similarities between the injuries inflicted by the two Israeli offensives in Gaza and Lebanon.

More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and more than 96,006 injured since Israel launched its war on Hamas following the group’s October 7 attack, according to the Gaza health ministry. The health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its figures but says most of the dead are women and children. Israel earlier this year said it had killed more than 17,000 combatants in Gaza since the start of the war. CNN cannot independently verify the ministry’s numbers.

Israel has not given assurances to the Biden administration that targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities is off the table in retaliation to the Iranian ballistic missile strikes earlier this week, a top US State Department official told CNN on Friday.

The official added that it is “really hard to tell” if Israel will use the anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 attacks to retaliate.

Earlier this week, President Joe Biden said the US would not support Israel targeting Iran’s nuclear program.

US officials also do not yet have clarity as to when Israel’s response will be decided upon, or enacted.

Asked whether Israel would use the one year anniversary of the Hamas attack to retaliate against Iran, the official said “it is really hard to tell.”

“I think in some ways they would want to avoid the seventh, so in my estimation if there is anything it would likely be before or after,” the official said, pointing to the solemnity of that day and any Israeli retaliation potentially taking away from what that day was all about.

The US has been working for almost a year to prevent the conflict from turning into a bigger war — and has so far done so, the official said. Right now, “this is on the edge,” the official added.

Hezbollah has said it repelled an Israeli incursion near the town of Adaisseh in southern Lebanon with clashes following a second ongoing, according to two statements on Saturday

The militant group said Israeli infantry first attempted to advance toward the town at 11:00 p.m. on Friday.

The second statement said Israeli soldiers had advanced again toward Adaisseh at 1:50 a.m. on Saturday.

The statement said its fighters “confronted the attempt to advance, and clashes are ongoing.”

CNN has contacted the Israeli military for comment on the reported confrontations.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Friday that two of its soldiers from the Golani Brigade were killed in “northern Israel” in a drone attack that came from the east.

The IDF didn’t specify who it suspects of carrying out the attack but it happened on Wednesday, the same day the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of several Iran-backed militias, said it conducted drone attacks on three targets in what it called  “separate operations north of our occupied territories.”

Hamas praised the group for their support of Palestinian people, saying the Iraqi Islamic Resistance’s drone operation targeted Israeli forces in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in the northeast, “resulting in deaths and injuries.”

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq also said it conducted three other drone attacks on Friday in the Golan Heights and Tiberias.

The Golan Heights is a strategic plateau that Israel seized from Syria during the Six-Day War in 1967, before formally annexing it in 1981. It remains under Israeli government control and is considered to be occupied territory by much of the international community.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced nearly $157 million in US humanitarian assistance Friday to “support populations affected by conflict in Lebanon and the region,” as the country continues to voice support for the “limited” Israeli military campaign in Lebanon that has triggered mass displacement.

“This funding will address new and existing needs of internally displaced persons and refugee populations inside Lebanon and the communities that host them,” Blinken said in a statement. “The assistance will also support those fleeing to neighboring Syria.”

Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced in the country in recent weeks as Israel has ratcheted up its military campaign against Hezbollah, including more than 100,000 people, mostly Lebanese and Syrians, who have fled across the border into Syria, according to the United Nations.

US officials say they support Israel’s military campaign, but note they have concerns about the humanitarian impact.

“We do think it’s appropriate that Israel, at this point, is bringing terrorists to justice and trying to push – trying – and launching these limited incursions, what at least at this point are limited incursions, trying to push Hezbollah back from the border,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Thursday.

“Ultimately our goal is a diplomatic resolution,” he said.

Peacekeepers from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol near the Blue Line in Kafarkila, Lebanon, on August 16.

The United Nations refused a request from Israel to move some its peacekeepers near the Lebanese border just days before Israel began its ground operation earlier this week.

United Nations Interim Force In Lebanonn (UNIFIL), the UN’s peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, received a request from the Israeli military to “vacate” several positions near the Blue Line — the demarcation zone between Israel and Lebanon which has been the center of intense fighting in recent months, according to Jean-Pierre Lacroix, UN Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations.

The UN already anticipated the prospect of Israel carrying out “targeted ground operations” in Lebanon and decided to stay put in such an instance, Lacroix told a briefing Thursday.

“We had made a very considerate, thorough and sorely discussed decision that it would be better for UNIFIL, for peacekeepers, and in terms of our responsibility to the mandate to stay in those positions,” the chief added.

Some context: UN peacekeepers have been stationed along the roughly 120 kilometer Blue Line since it was drawn up by the UN in 2000 to ensure Israel’s complete withdrawal from Lebanon. UN peacekeepers were drawn from armies of several nations to monitor the situation along the Blue Line which separates the two states.

The Israeli military said it killed at least seven militants, including a senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative, in Thursday’s strike on the West Bank’s Tulkarem area, using at least one fighter jet.

Israel described Ghaith Radwan as “a key operative” in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad operation in Tulkarem. The group’s military wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, confirmed Radwan’s death, calling him one of the leaders of the Tulkarem Battalion in the occupied West Bank.

The strike killed other Islamic Jihad members as well as operatives of Hamas, the Israeli military said, alleging the militants were gathering to carry out a terror attack against Israel in the “immediate future.”

Hamas confirmed on Friday that one of its commanders, Zahi Yaser Oufi, was among eight members killed in the attack. Israel said Oufi was the leader of Hamas’ network in the Tulkarem area.

At least 18 people were killed in the strike, the Palestinian health ministry said Thursday.

Germany, an ally of Israel, said the high number of civilian victims is shocking.

“In the fight against terror, the Israeli army is committed to the protection of civilians in the West Bank. Palestinians, like the Israelis, have the right to a life of safety,” the German Foreign Office posted to X on Friday.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah gives a televised address in Lebanon on September 19.

Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah last Friday has driven the Iran-backed group even deeper underground. A successor has not yet been named. And perhaps most unusually, a funeral — at least a public one — has not yet been held.

Why this matters: According to Islamic norms, the dead must be laid to rest at the soonest opportunity, normally within 24 hours. That is especially true for Muslims slain by an enemy state. Questions swirled and reports emerged on Friday morning that the late leader had been buried in secret. But a source close to Hezbollah told CNN this was not true. “Nothing has been decided,” the source said, about the time and place of the burial.

Coupled with the lack of a clear successor, this has shrouded the group in more secrecy. For a week, Hezbollah’s public statements have been cursory at best. This strikes a sharp contrast with the Iran-backed Shia group’s practice of shoring up community support with public gatherings, and Nasrallah’s long and rousing speeches.

Still, this all underscores the fact that this is a very different war. During the last all-out war with Israel in 2006, Nasrallah gave televised speeches nearly every day. The leadership is operating more clandestinely than ever before, after having been confronted by the most extensive Israeli infiltration of its ranks in its history.

Smoke billows from an Israeli airstrike in Khiam, Lebanon, on October 3.

Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon is heavier than the height of the United States’ fight against ISIS, data from a conflict monitoring group shows.

Israel has pummeled Lebanon with an unprecedented airstrike campaign in less than three weeks, killing more than 1,400 people, injuring nearly 7,500 others and displacing more than 1 million people from their homes, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

To put that into context, over the course of two days, on September 24 and September 25, the Israel military said it used 2,000 munitions and carried out 3,000 strikes.

In comparison, for most of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan, the US carried out less than 3,000 strikes a year, barring the first year of the invasion, where around 6,500 strikes were carried out, according to data from Airwars analyzed by CNN.

Israel’s bombardment, which Israel says is targeting Hezbollah strongholds in the country, marks the world’s “most intense aerial campaign” outside of Gaza in the last two decades, Airwars said.