Middle East crisis live: drone launched at Netanyahu’s house, spokesperson says, as Israel bombards Gaza

Reuters reports that a drone was launched towards Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in the northern Israel town of Caesarea on Saturday, citing his spokesperson.

The spokesperson added that Netanyahu was not in the vicinity and there were no casualties.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that the Israeli military said a drone was spotted crossing into the country from Lebanon on Saturday and struck the central town of Caesarea. It said two other drones were intercepted.

The drone “hit a structure in the area of Caesarea” without causing any casualties, the military said, without elaborating.

Health authorities in Gaza said Israeli forces surrounded and shelled the Indonesian hospital in the territory’s northern town of Beit Lahia at dawn on Saturday, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Israeli tanks have completely surrounded the hospital, cut off electricity and shelled the hospital, targeting the second and third floors with artillery,” said the facility’s director, Marwan Sultan. He added:

There are serious risks to medical staff and patients.”

In a statement, Gaza’s health ministry also said Israel had targeted the upper floors, adding there were “more than 40 patients and wounded in addition to the medical staff” present.

“Heavy gunfire” towards the hospital and its courtyard had sparked a “state of great panic” among patients and staff, it added.

Israel launched a new offensive in northern Gaza earlier this month, saying it was targeting Hamas fighters who were regrouping there.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said an Israeli strike the night before in nearby Jabalia killed 33 people.

The UN humanitarian affairs agency on Friday continued “to sound the alarm about the increasingly dire and dangerous situation that civilians in northern Gaza are facing. Families there are trying to survive in atrocious conditions, under heavy bombardment.”

At least 72 Palestinians were reportedly killed on Friday as Israel launched new airstrikes and sent more troops into Gaza, dashing brief hopes among many residents of the territory that Thursday’s killing of the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, could bring an end to the war.

At least 33 people were killed and 85 injured in Israeli strikes that hit several houses on Friday in Jabalia in northern Gaza, medics said, where residents said tanks blew up roads and houses.

Reuters reported that the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said the death toll from the strikes could rise because some people were believed to be trapped under the rubble, and the Palestinian official news agency Wafa said children were among those killed. There was no immediate comment from Israel.

Other Israeli strikes killed at least 39 Palestinians across Gaza on Friday, 20 of them in Jabalia, the Gaza health ministry said.

Meanwhile, Iran’s supreme leader said Hamas would survive after Sinwar’s death. “His loss is certainly painful for the resistance front” against Israel, “but it will not end at all with the martyrdom of Sinwar”, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a statement.

In Jabalia, residents said Israeli tanks had reached the heart of the camp after pushing through suburbs and residential districts. They said the Israeli army was destroying dozens of houses daily, from the air and the ground, and by placing bombs in buildings then detonating them remotely.

The Israeli military says its operation in Jabalia is intended to stop Hamas fighters regrouping for more attacks.

Residents said Israeli forces had effectively isolated the far northern Gazan towns of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia, and Beit Lahiya from Gaza City, blocking movement except for those families heeding evacuation orders and leaving the three towns. They said communications and internet services had been cut, disrupting rescue operations.

In other developments:

• Hamas confirmed the death of Yahya Sinwar in a defiant message that vowed the group would be undeterred by his killing. Senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya said its leader’s death “will only increase the strength and solidity of our movement”, adding that the group will not release the hostages it is holding captive in Gaza until Israel ends the war. Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam brigades, vowed to keep fighting Israel until the “liberation of Palestine” as it mourned Sinwar’s death.

• Israeli military officials said Israel was sending reinforcements to bolster its operation in Jabalia, raising fears of an escalation of violence there. Israel has issued evacuation orders for inhabitants in almost all of northern Gaza, but many cannot or do not want to comply. Tens of thousands of civilians are thought to be trapped in Jabalia, where conditions are deteriorating. Health officials have appealed for fuel, medical supplies and food to be sent immediately to three northern Gaza hospitals overwhelmed by the number of patients injured in Israeli attacks.

• Supporters of pro-Iran armed groups in Iraq ransacked the offices of a Saudi TV channel in Baghdad early on Saturday, a security source said, after the broadcaster aired a report referring to commanders of Tehran-backed militant groups as “terrorists”. Agence France-Presse reported that 400 to 500 people attacked the Baghdad studios of Saudi broadcaster MBC after midnight. “They wrecked the electronic equipment, the computers, and set fire to a part of the building,” an interior ministry source said on condition of anonymity. The fire had been extinguished and the crowd dispersed by police, he said.

• More than 42,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli offensive began, according to the Palestinian health ministry on Friday. Almost 100,000 have been injured. Six medical humanitarian groups were informed this week that their medical missions will now be denied entry into Gaza.

• The leaders of the US, the UK, France and Germany released a joint statement where they stressed the “immediate necessity” for ending the war in Gaza. The leaders discussed events in the Middle East, particularly the “implications” of Sinwar’s death, as well as the need to “bring the hostages home to their families, for ending the war in Gaza and ensure humanitarian aid reaches civilians”. Biden said Sinwar’s death raises “the prospect of a ceasefire” and “represents a moment of justice”.

• World leaders continued to respond to news of Sinwar’s death. Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, said “no one should mourn the death” of the Hamas leader who has Israelis and Palestinians on his hands. Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said he hoped it would open the door to a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages. Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said the Hamas leader fought and died “like a hero” but that “the martyrdom of commanders, leaders and heroes will not make a dent in the Islamic people’s fight against oppression and occupation”.

• Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are facing an increase in Israeli settler attacks and Israeli army violence at the start of the important olive harvest season, the UN has said. The international body’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) accused Israel on Friday of using “war-like” tactics in the West Bank amid a rise in killings and settler attacks since the olive harvest got under way last week. Nine people were killed by Israeli forces between 8 and 14 October, OCHA said.

• Israeli airstrikes killed several Lebanese citizens and injured others across Lebanon on Friday morning, Wafa, the Palestinian news agency reported, without specifying the number of casualties. A number of civilians were reportedly killed in the town of Ansar, a village in southern Lebanon, as a result of the Israeli attacks. Wafa reported the strikes also targeted various towns including al-Duwayr, Baraachit, Dabbal, Haneen, Khiam and Ramiyah.

• The Israeli army urged residents of 23 villages in southern Lebanon on Friday to evacuate northward as it intensifies its attacks in the region. The Israeli military’s Arabic spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, said on X that residents were “prohibited from going south” and that doing so “could be dangerous to your life”. Lebanon’s health ministry said 45 people were killed and 179 injured in Israeli attacks across the country on Thursday.

• Al Jazeera journalist Fadi Al-Wahidi has fallen into a coma more than a week after being shot in the neck by an Israeli sniper in northern Gaza, the broadcaster reported on Friday, adding that Israel has not responded to requests to allow his evacuation for medical treatment.