More than 100 children killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon, health ministry says
Israeli strikes have killed more than 100 children in Lebanon, according to the latest data from the Lebanese health ministry.
A total of 773 people have been killed since Israel’s first strikes on the country on 2 March, with a further 1,933 people wounded, the ministry said in its daily report.
It said 103 children had now been killed in the strikes, and a further 326 children have been wounded.
Plumes of smoke rise following an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday. Photograph: Amr Abdallah Dalsh/ReutersShare
Key events
Show key events only
Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature
Trump says he thinks Russia may be helping Iran ‘a little bit’
Earlier, Donald Trump said he believes that Russia might be helping Iran “a little bit”, before pointing to US support for Ukraine as possible justification.
In an interview on Fox News Radio on Friday morning, the US president was pressed on whether he believes Vladimir Putin is supporting Iran following US-Israeli strikes on the country. He said:
double quotation markI think he might be helping him a little bit, yeah, I guess. And he probably thinks we’re helping Ukraine, right? Yeah, we’re helping [Ukraine] also. And so, [Putin] says that, and China would say the same thing. You know, it’s like, hey, they do it and we do it. In all fairness, they do it and we do it.
On Thursday, the UK defence secretary, John Healey, said that Putin’s “hidden hand” lies behind Iran’s military methods.
He was speaking after British officers at the UK’s military headquarters in London told him that drone pilots from Iran and Iranian proxies were increasingly adopting tactics “from the Russians”.
Iran has already fired more than 2,000 Shahed drones – long-range weapons heavily used by Russia against Ukraine – across the Middle East in response to the US-Israeli attack launched on 28 February.
Last week, the Washington Post and others reported that Moscow was providing Tehran with intelligence on US military assets in the region.
Putin denied Russian involvement in a phone call with Trump, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said on Tuesday.
Updated at 14.51 EDT
British drones shot down ‘multiple drones’ overnight, MoD says
A British counter-drone unit has shot down “multiple drones overnight” following recent strikes on coalition bases in Iraq, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said.
It comes after a French soldier was killed in a drone attack in Iraq’s Erbil region last night, and a base housing UK and US forces in the area came under attack from an Iranian drone on Wednesday.
Overnight, UK Typhoon jets flew air defence operations over Bahrain for the first time, the MoD said in an update shared on X. It added:
double quotation markBritish Typhoon and F-35 jets are now flying in defence of British interests and allies across Qatar, Cyprus, UAE, Jordan, and Bahrain.
UK defences in the eastern Mediterranean now include Typhoon and F-35 jets, air defence and counter-drone units, Wildcat and Merlin helicopters, and a further 400 air defence personnel are currently deployed to protect British lives and interests.
ShareMore than 100 children killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon, health ministry says
Israeli strikes have killed more than 100 children in Lebanon, according to the latest data from the Lebanese health ministry.
A total of 773 people have been killed since Israel’s first strikes on the country on 2 March, with a further 1,933 people wounded, the ministry said in its daily report.
It said 103 children had now been killed in the strikes, and a further 326 children have been wounded.
Plumes of smoke rise following an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday. Photograph: Amr Abdallah Dalsh/ReutersShareSuspect in Michigan synagogue attack had lost family in Israeli strike on Lebanon
Shrai Popat
The armed suspect who crashed into a large Michigan synagogue had lost four family members in an Israeli airstrike in his native Lebanon last week, an unnamed official told the Associated Press on Friday.
Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, a naturalized US citizen born in Lebanon, was killed by security after ramming into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township outside Detroit on Thursday. There were no casualties or injuries to the synagogue’s staff, teachers and 140 children at the early childhood center on site.
The FBI, which is leading the investigation, described the attack as an act of violence targeting the Jewish community.
A local official in Mashgharah, in central Lebanon, told the Associated Press on Friday that Ghazali’s two brothers and a niece and nephew were killed at their home in the 5 March airstrike just after sunset as they were having their fast-breaking meal during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
More on this story here:
Updated at 14.17 EDT
Only 77 ships have so far crossed the strait of Hormuz in March as the Mideast war disrupts one of the world’s most vital shipping routes, a maritime data firm reported on Friday.
Lloyd’s List Intelligence said most of these vessels belonged to the so-called ‘shadow fleet’ – ships used to skirt Western sanctions and regulations, typically linked to Russia and Iran.
They are often ageing ships in poor condition, without proper insurance and with opaque ownership.
The 77 transits recorded so far this month compare with 1,229 passages between 1-11 March last year, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence.
ShareSri Lanka repatriates remains of 84 Iranians killed in US attack
Sri Lanka on Friday repatriated the remains of 84 Iranian sailors who perished when their frigate was sunk nine days ago by a US submarine, local officials said.
The seamen were killed when the IRIS Dena was torpedoed on March 4 just off the coast of Sri Lanka, in an incident that extended the Middle East war to the Indian Ocean, AFP reported.
An Airbus A340 chartered by Iran “left a short while ago carrying the remains of the sailors,” an airport official at Mattala International Airport in the island’s south told AFP by telephone.
“The departure was delayed because 84 sealed boxes had to be loaded,” added the official who requested anonymity.
The destination of the flight was not disclosed.
A drone strike killed two members of an Iranian Kurdish armed opposition group in northern Iraq on Friday, a senior official from the exiled party said, blaming the attack on Iran.
Since the start of the Middle East war, Iran has repeatedly struck positions belonging to Iranian Kurdish exiled groups in Iraq.
“A drone struck one of our positions at 4.40pm, killing two party members and wounding four others,” Mardin Zahidi, from the Khabat Organisation of Iranian Kurdistan, told AFP.
The attack occurred in the mountains of Bashiqa, in an area under Kurdish control, between the city of Mosul and the autonomous Kurdistan region.
Zahidi blamed the attack “on Iran and its militias”.
Turkey’s defence ministry on Friday said a ballistic missile from Iran had been shot down in Turkish airspace by Nato forces, the third such incident of the Middle East war.
“A ballistic munition launched from Iran and entering Turkish airspace was neutralised by Nato air and missile defence assets deployed in the eastern Mediterranean,” a ministry statement said.
Hours earlier, sirens sounded at Turkey’s southern Incirlik airbase, a key Nato facility where US troops are stationed located just outside the southern city of Adana, state news agency Anadolu reported.
Nato air defences shot down a first ballistic missile fired from Iran on 4 March, with a second intercepted on Monday.
ShareDespite living on the frontline, northern Israelis try to maintain normality
Jason Burke
On the main street of Metula on Thursday morning there was one thing everybody agreed on: the night had been “difficult”.
The sirens had fallen silent only a few hours earlier when military authorities were sure there would be no further waves of attacks with rockets and drones on targets across northern Israel launched by Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant Islamist movement, and its sponsor, Iran.
Yet any calm was fragile and partial.
Warplanes flew low over the small town, the northernmost community in Israel, and the loud percussive bang of interceptions of missiles came frequently. In the background was the thud and crack of what residents drinking coffee in the Bela cafe said was Israeli artillery firing not far away.
ShareIsraeli-backed Palestinian militias step up operations against Hamas in GazaJason Burke
Pro-Israel Palestinian militia have launched repeated raids, clandestine assassination and abduction operations deep inside parts of Gaza controlled by Hamas in recent months, with new operations launched recently despite the outbreak of conflict with Iran.
The militia, which are all based in eastern parts of Gaza that are under Israeli control after a ceasefire came into effect in October, have received significant logistic support from Israel since last year but appear to have increased their firepower, allowing new and more aggressive attacks in recent weeks.
Israeli strikes in Gaza, which had averaged around 10 a day across the devastated territory over the last five months, have continued even as Israeli jets carry out bombing campaigns in Iran and Lebanon.
On Sunday, an Israeli airstrike and tank shelling killed six Palestinians, including two women and a girl, in separate attacks in Gaza City, the deadliest incidents in Gaza since the US-Israeli offensive on Iran began, health officials said. At least 16 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by airstrikes since the outbreak of war with Iran on 28 February, health officials say.