Live Updates: Deadly Israeli Strike Hits Southern Gaza, Health Officials Say

The Health Ministry also said that Israeli forces had raided Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few medical facilities still functioning in northern Gaza. Calls to the hospital director were not immediately answered. As Israel has engaged in a weekslong military offensive in northern Gaza against Hamas militants, the United Nations says hundreds of thousands of people have been trapped with little food or supplies.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was meeting on Friday with Arab officials in London, concluding a weeklong diplomatic tour aimed at jump-starting negotiations over a cease-fire in Gaza. A day earlier, in Qatar, Mr. Blinken had said that cease-fire talks would resume within days, but gave no indication that Hamas was any more willing to make a deal since Israel’s killing last week of its leader, Yahya Sinwar.

Here’s what else to know:

• Israeli fatalities: The Israeli military said that five army reservists had been killed overnight in southern Lebanon. Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, said a rocket had struck the building the soldiers were in and that several others had been injured. It was among the most casualties in a single attack for the Israeli military since it sent troops into southern Lebanon earlier this month to battle Hezbollah militants.

• Media workers killed: An Israeli airstrike hit a residence where journalists were staying in southern Lebanon early Friday, killing three people, according to their employers and Lebanon’s Health Ministry. The Al-Manar network, operated by Hezbollah, and Al Mayadeen, an outlet widely seen as aligned with the militant group, said its personnel were among the dead. Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike.

• Israel and Iran: With Israel planning a retaliatory attack after Iran’s ballistic missile barrage this month, the possibility of a direct war between the two adversaries has alarmed world leaders. Such a conflict would have global repercussions, pitting two formidable militaries against one another, possibly drawing in the United States and Persian Gulf nations, and generating global economic fallout. Read more about why the prospect of war is so concerning.

• Israeli allegation: The Israeli authorities said they had killed a Hamas commander in Gaza who was involved in the terrorist attacks in Israel last October, and who also worked for the main United Nations agency aiding Palestinians. A spokeswoman for the agency, UNRWA, said she was investigating the Israeli claim.

The casualties reported by the health ministry could not immediately be verified. Official accounts of death tolls often fluctuate in the hours after an attack.

The ministry also said on Friday that Israeli forces had conducted a raid at Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few functioning hospitals left in northern Gaza, where an Israeli military offensive has worsened a dire humanitarian crisis.

“The situation inside the hospital is catastrophic in every sense of the word,” the health ministry said in a statement. Calls to the hospital’s director, Dr. Husam Abu Safiyeh, were not answered on Friday morning.

The humanitarian crisis in northern Gaza has drawn criticism from aid groups, the United Nations and the United States, which said last week that it could cut military aid to Israel if it did not allow more humanitarian assistance into the territory.

Israel says it is battling Hamas fighters in Jabaliya, a large northern town, and the surrounding area. The United Nations has said 400,000 people have been trapped there for weeks by Israeli bombardment.

Food, medicine and medical supplies have been in short supply for many months at Kamal Adwan Hospital and throughout the north. This week, the main emergency service in Gaza said the Israeli offensive had forced it to cease all rescue operations in the northern part of the territory.

The Al-Manar network, operated by the militant group Hezbollah, reported that a cameraman working for the broadcaster was killed. Al Mayadeen, an outlet widely seen as aligned with Hezbollah, said a cameraman and a broadcast engineer with the network were among the dead.

Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike.

Eighteen journalists from seven news organizations were at the site of the strike, Lebanon’s minister of information, Ziad Makary, said.

Hasbaya had been generally considered a safe area, where people fleeing the fighting in nearby southern Lebanese towns had taken shelter.

Reporters Without Borders, the international advocacy group, said in a statement this month said journalists in Lebanon had narrowly escaped Israeli strikes or had been forced to flee their homes, and that journalists in the country should be allowed to report on the expanding war there without danger or harassment.

Earlier this week, Al-Mayadeen said that one of its offices in Beirut had been hit by an Israeli military strike. Israel said it had targeted civilian buildings used by Hezbollah to manufacture or store weapons. The offices were unoccupied, having been vacated at the start of Israel’s invasion, the network said, and there were no reports of injuries.

On Wednesday, Israel’s military accused six Al Jazeera reporters based in Gaza of being fighters for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Al Jazeera strongly denied the accusations, which it said were based on “fabricated evidence” and followed a long history of Israeli hostility toward the network.

Israel has repeatedly accused the Qatar-based broadcaster of being a threat to its national security, raiding its offices in the West Bank and accusing it of being “used to incite terror.”

Last November, two television journalists working for Al Mayadeen were killed in a strike blamed on Israel in southern Lebanon, shortly after a live broadcast. A month earlier, a cameraman for Reuters was killed and six other journalists injured amid clashes along Lebanon’s border with Israel.

In a report published this month, the Committee to Project Journalists concluded that the death of the Reuters journalist was “an early example of the Israeli military deliberately targeting journalists for their work.”

Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.

The attack on the bomb shelter led to the capture of four hostages and the murder of “many others,” Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said in a video statement on Thursday.

Mr. Abu Itiwi had worked for the U.N. agency, known as UNRWA, since 2022, the authorities said. Admiral Hagari reiterated Israel’s request for an investigation into the involvement of UNRWA employees in the Oct. 7 attacks.

A spokeswoman for UNRWA did not immediately comment on the allegations, saying that she was investigating.

This is not the first time that the Israeli authorities have accused UNRWA staff members of participating in the Hamas-led attack that ignited the war in Gaza — and their latest accusation will likely inflame tensions between the agency and Israel.

In January, Israel accused a dozen UNRWA workers of participating in the Oct. 7 attack or its aftermath, imperiling the organization’s funding. Donors, including the United States, suspended financial support.

The United Nations said it fired 10 of the 12 employees Israel had accused, and two are dead. In the following months, seven more UNRWA staff members were accused of participating in the Hamas-led attacks. Of the 19 total claims, there was evidence in nine instances indicating that UNRWA staffers may have been involved, the U.N. concluded in August.

An internal U.N. investigation found that Israel had not provided evidence to back up a separate accusation that many UNRWA staff members had ties to Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.

The U.N. agency has accused Israel of waging a violent campaign against it.

In May, Philippe Lazzarini, the agency’s commissioner general, wrote in an opinion article in The New York Times that UNRWA staff members had been killed, harassed and hindered in their efforts to provide assistance throughout the war. Mr. Lazzarini added that Israeli officials were “not only threatening the work of our staff and mission, they are also delegitimizing UNRWA by effectively characterizing it as a terrorist organization that fosters extremism and labeling U.N. leaders as terrorists who collude with Hamas.”

On Thursday, before Israeli authorities made their announcement, Mr. Lazzarini wrote on social media that the United Nations had never been under “fiercer attack,” and called on people to “push back against attempts to intimidate & undermine the United Nations including @UNRWA.”

Now, with Israel planning a retaliatory attack after Iran’s ballistic missile barrage of unprecedented scale and scope on Oct. 1, a war seems more likely, alarming the international community and countries in the region.

Here is why a war is so concerning.

Israel and Iran have two of the region’s most formidable militaries.

Israel has one of the world’s most technologically advanced militaries and is among the top military spenders globally as a share of gross domestic product. Israel’s arms industry produces weapons at such a high capacity that last year it produced enough to export a record amount despite its war in Gaza, according to researchers. Israel is also heavily backed by the United States, which has supplied more than 29,000 guided bombs, artillery rockets and assorted missiles since 2009.

Iran’s armed forces are among the largest in the Middle East, with at least 580,000 active-duty personnel and about 200,000 reservists, according to an assessment last year by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Iran has made the development of precision and long-range missiles a priority for decades and has amassed one of the largest arsenals of ballistic missiles in the region. The country also has a sizable inventory of drones, with ranges of up to 1,550 miles and the ability to fly low to evade radar.

A war could draw in the U.S. and Gulf States.

A spiraling conflict between Iran and Israel, one of the United States’ closest allies, could pull U.S. forces positioned throughout the region into the fray. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in a social media post that “anybody with knowledge or understanding” of Israel’s plans to attack Iran should be held accountable. President Biden has indicated that he is aware of Israel’s plans.

Senior Pentagon officials have been debating whether the increased U.S. military presence, intended to avert a wider war, has been inflaming the regional conflict by emboldening Israel. The Defense Department said in late September that it was sending a few thousand additional U.S. troops to the region, to bolster the 40,000 who are in place. This month, the United States sent Israel an advanced missile defense system known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, with about 100 American troops to help operate it.

Iran’s foreign minister has made oblique threats against countries that host U.S. forces, which include Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. Iran’s mission to the United Nations warned in a statement this month that “should any country render assistance to the aggressor, it shall likewise be deemed an accomplice and a legitimate target.”

The economic fallout could be devastating.

Israel has told the United States that it will not attack Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities in its expected attack. Even so, that assurance does not preclude Israel from taking aim at Iran’s oil installations in any future rounds of escalation, and the fallout could be immensely destabilizing for the global economy.

Though highly unlikely, an Israeli strike on Iran’s oil facilities could prompt Iran or its proxies to target refineries in Saudi Arabia or the U.A.E. Another remote scenario that analysts fear is Iran threatening the passage of tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, through which oil produced in the Persian Gulf is shipped to the world.

A shock to the global oil supply could lead to surging gas prices, dampen hiring and investment and push economies toward recession. The reverberations would be particularly damaging for poorer nations that depend on imported oil.

There is a lot of room for miscalculation.

In past years, the prevailing presumption for Middle East watchers was that both Iran and Israel wanted to avoid direct conflict.

This April, Iran’s attack involving more than 300 drones and missiles, in retaliation for Israel’s killing of seven Iranian officials in Syria, shattered that supposition. That surprised Israel, which had miscalculated the severity of Iran’s response, according to U.S. officials. Israel’s measured response at the time appeared to bring the tit for tat to a conclusion well short of war.

Israel may now be more willing to risk war with Iran after the barrage earlier this month targeted civilian areas in addition to military ones. The longstanding framework of deterrence appears to have collapsed, leaving each country in danger of misjudging the other’s response and overstepping at each turn.