Updates: Deadly new attack on Lebanon’s capital as Hezbollah hits Tel Aviv

Read our explainer on the US Senate voting later this week on bills to block a $20bn arms deal with Israel, here.

Here’s a story about a convoy of 109 trucks that was violently looted after entering Gaza where the threat of famine is rapidly rising.

And for more on US President Joe Biden’s administration issuing a new round of sanctions against groups and individuals involved in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, check out our story, here.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here is a recap of today’s developments:

• Rocket sirens sounded off across Tel Aviv and much of central Israel as falling shrapnel from an intercepted Hezbollah missile hit a main street – wounding six people including a woman in serious condition.
• At least 50 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn, medical sources told Al Jazeera.
• Four people were killed and more than 30 wounded following the latest Israeli air strike in central Beirut near Lebanon’s government headquarters.
• A woman died from her wounds after a Hezbollah rocket struck a building in Shfaram in northern Israel. Several others were wounded.
• Gaza’s Interior Ministry says at least 20 people were killed in an operation targeting “gangs” that looted UN trucks bringing food into the war-torn territory which is threatened by famine.
• An Israeli air strike on a house near Kamal Adwan Hospital in besieged northern Gaza killed at least 17 people.

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the complete occupation of the northern Gaza Strip to force Hamas to release Israeli captives.

“To bring the hostages home, we must occupy northern Gaza entirely and tell Hamas that if they don’t return them, we will stay there forever, costing Gaza a third of its territory,” Smotrich told a meeting of his Religious Zionism Party.

“Reaching an agreement with Hamas to end the war would mean surrender and defeat,” he added. “We will continue until Hamas is eliminated and an agreement is reached under which it surrenders. We won’t stop until our enemies are destroyed and security is fully restored to the state of Israel.”

A girl in Gaza has been left with life-changing injuries to her face after an Israeli air strike.

Nongovernment organisations, doctors and activists are calling on Israel to allow Mazyouna to leave the Strip so she can get reconstructive treatment. Israel has so far refused.

Watch our video report below.

A funeral has been held in southern Lebanon for Mohammad Afif, Hezbollah’s head of media relations, a day after he was killed in an Israeli air strike in central Beirut.

Afif’s coffin, draped in Hezbollah’s yellow flag, was carried through the streets of Sidon on the shoulders of mourners.

“Resistance is the response and the convoys of martyrs create victory,” Afif’s brother, Sadiq al-Naboulsi, said at the funeral.

“Hajj Mohammad Afif was a big figure in the media and therefore the Israelis and Americans were hurt by his voice. For that reason, they assassinated him. The killing of Hajj Mohammad Afif and all the martyrs and leaders will not turn [us] back at all,” he said.

The Lebanese armed group says it targeted a gathering of Israeli forces in the town of Khiam.

Hezbollah also said it targeted Israeli soldiers west of the southern Lebanese town of Aalma ech Chaab with a “squadron of suicide drones”.

Fighters later launched an “air attack with a squadron of qualitative attack drones on sensitive military points – which will be announced later – in the city of Tel Aviv,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

The United States has warned Turkey against hosting Hamas’s leadership, saying Washington does not believe leaders of a “terrorist organisation” should be living comfortably.

US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller did not confirm the reports that some Hamas leaders had moved to Turkey from Qatar but said he was not in a position to dispute them.

He said Washington would make clear to Turkey’s government there can be no more business as usual with Hamas. Some Hamas leaders are under US indictment and Washington believes they should be turned over to the United States, he added.

“We don’t believe the leaders of a vicious terrorist organisation should be living comfortably anywhere, and that certainly includes in… a major city of one of our key allies and partners,” Miller told reporters.

Hamas dismissed the reports as “rumours the [Israeli] occupation is trying to publish from time to time”.

Lebanon’s permanent mission to the UN in New York will submit a formal complaint condemning Israel’s continuing assaults on the Lebanese military.

Two soldiers died and three others were injured, including one who is in critical condition, following an Israeli strike on a military outpost on Sunday in the town of Mari in southern Lebanon.

With this latest incident, the total number of Lebanese army soldiers killed in Israeli attacks since October 8, 2023, rose to 36.

The Foreign Ministry said the attacks undermined international efforts to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for a full cessation of hostilities between Lebanon and Israel.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry has reported that while the death toll from the Israeli strike on the Zuqaq al-Blat area remains at five, the number is expected to increase.

The number of injured rose to 31, up from 24, and two individuals are missing, it added.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will continue to operate militarily against Hezbollah even if a ceasefire deal is reached in Lebanon.

“The most important thing is not [the deal that] will be laid on paper,” Netanyahu told the Israeli parliament. “We will be forced to ensure our security in the north and to systematically carry out operations against Hezbollah’s attacks … even after a ceasefire.”

Israel insists any truce deal must guarantee no further Hezbollah presence in the southern area bordering Israel.

“We will not allow Hezbollah to return to the state it was in on October 6” 2023 – the eve of the attack by its Palestinian ally Hamas into southern Israel, he said.

Footage shot in Tel Aviv’s Ramat Gan district at 10pm (20:00 GMT) shows a fire that started at the base of a transmission tower as well as surrounding buildings with blown-out windows.

The ambulance service said its first responders evacuated six injured people to hospitals following the strike. One woman is in serious condition.

Israel’s military said it “intercepted one projectile” that crossed from Lebanon while Israeli police said they received reports of rocket debris falling in the Tel Aviv area.

A review of Israel’s air defence systems shows that an interceptor missile “hit a surface-to-surface missile launched from Lebanon at a high altitude, breaking it into several parts”, the army said.

“As a result of the interception, some parts of the missile hit the ground, causing damage and casualties.”

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reaffirmed his demand for an immediate and lasting ceasefire in Gaza.

“Once again, I call for an immediate and lasting ceasefire in the face of the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza,” Erdogan said in his speech at the G20 leaders’ summit in Brazil.

Drawing attention to the humanitarian crisis, Erdogan said 96 percent of Gaza’s population, “over two million people, lack access to healthy food and water”.

“The risk of famine in Gaza has reached disaster levels according to international classifications,” Erdogan said. “With the increasing attacks and the approaching winter season, the conditions of the people in Gaza are worsening by the day.”

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says there needs to be a “huge, huge rise in aid” to Gaza, where most of the population of 2.3 million is displaced.

“The situation is devastating and, frankly, beyond comprehension, and it’s getting worse, not better,” Lammy said. “Winter’s here. Famine is imminent, and 400 days into this war, it is totally unacceptable that it’s harder than ever to get aid into Gaza.”

US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council that Washington is closely watching Israel’s actions to improve the situation for Palestinians and engaging with the Israeli government every day.

“Israel must also urgently take additional steps to alleviate the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza,” she said.

Gaza’s Interior Ministry says at least 20 people were killed in an operation targeting “gangs” that looted United Nations trucks bringing aid into the war-torn territory threatened with famine.

“More than 20 members of gangs involved in stealing aid trucks were killed in a security operation carried out by security forces in cooperation with tribal committees,” the ministry said in a statement.

“Today’s security operation will not be the last. The phenomenon of truck thefts … has severely impacted society and led to signs of famine in southern Gaza.”

The statement called the operation “the beginning of a broad security campaign that has been long planned and will expand to include everyone involved in the theft of aid trucks”.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a press briefing in New York Monday that only 11 of the convoy’s 109 trucks made it to the warehouse where they were expected.

UNRWA’s chief Philippe Lazzarini says there’s “no plan B” if Israel bans the UN agency from supporting Palestinian refugees. Lazzarini warned, “If there’s no international response, the responsibility falls to Israel.”

He called on countries to convince Israel not to go through with a ban on the critical humanitarian agency in Gaza.

There is no indication what the target was, if there even was a target. The area hit is about 1km [0.6 miles] from where we are standing and from the prime minister’s office here in Beirut.

It is a densely populated area. It has a religious centre. It has several coffee shops that are popular.

Many people live in this area – add to that a number of internally displaced people who moved here as a result of the war.

There’s people coming from Beirut’s southern suburbs and southern Lebanon, which have been heavily targeted by Israeli air strikes.

The US wants Israel to complete its probe into the killing of Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi before determining any potential next steps.

“We want to see the end of the [Israeli] investigation before we speak to that, which does not mean that it is an open-ended timeline,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said during a daily press briefing.

His remarks came in response to a question about whether the State Department plans to take any action regarding Ezgi Eygi’s killing instead of waiting for Israel to conclude the investigation, which has been going on for more than two months.

“We continue to press the government of Israel to conduct its investigation and to brief us on the results of that investigation. We want to see the investigation be thorough, and then when we see the results, of course, we want to speak to them at that time as well as any additional steps that may or may not be warranted,” Miller said.

An Israeli soldier fatally shot Ezgi Eygi, 26, in September at a demonstration in the occupied West Bank against Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.

We’ve been reporting on a long-range missile fired from Lebanon that was allegedly intercepted by Israel’s air force.

According to the Israeli military, shrapnel fell to the ground in the Ramat Gan area of Tel Aviv, causing a major fire in a building.

However, Israeli media outlet Kan News quotes the district police commander as saying, “it is not fragments of an interceptor but a heavy missile hit.”

מפקד המחוז במשטרה על הנפילה במרכז: "לא מדובר בשברי מיירט, אלא בפגיעת טיל במשקל רב"@ittaishick pic.twitter.com/yyKu40rNz5

— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) November 18, 2024

Translation: The district commander of the police on the fall in the centre: “It is not fragments of an interceptor, but a heavy missile hit”

At least 50 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since this morning, medical sources tell Al Jazeera.

We reported earlier on one of the deadliest attacks of the day – an Israeli air strike on a house near Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip that killed at least 17 people.