Lebanese state media said airstrikes hit Beirut's southern suburbs late Friday after Israel issued evacuation orders.
The strikes brought down entire buildings in the area, according to the Reuters news agency. Neighborhoods in the area were mostly empty of residents, with most having fled in past weeks.
At least three people were killed and 30 injured earlier Friday in an Israeli airstrike on Tyre, a southern port city. There was no evacuation warning issued by the Israeli army, which said it was targeting Hezbollah "intelligence and command and control complexes."
Also Friday, Israel said it was opening a new humanitarian aid crossing into the Gaza Strip amid mounting U.S. pressure to get more assistance to Palestinians struggling with shortages of food and shelter since the Israel-Hamas war began. Israel did not say when the crossing would open.
In a joint statement Friday, the Israel Defense Forces and COGAT, the agency coordinating Israeli government activities in occupied territories, said they were preparing to open the Kissufim crossing.
Kissufim is a small border crossing into southern Gaza near Kibbutz Kissufim, one of the sites attacked by Hamas in its October 7, 2023, terror assault on Israel that sparked the war.
In that attack, Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and captured about 250 hostages. Israel says it believes Hamas is still holding 101 hostages, including 35 the military says are dead.
Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 people, according to the territory's health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon have been designated as terror groups by the United States, the U.K. and other Western countries.
Kissufim has mostly been unused except by the military since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
US deadline
The opening comes as a deadline set by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin draws near. In a letter delivered October 13, Austin and Blinken gave the Israelis 30 days to boost its humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza or face the possibility of cuts in U.S. military aid.
The letter called for Israel to enable a minimum of 350 trucks a day to enter Gaza through four crossings and to open a fifth humanitarian entry point.
During a U.S. State Department briefing Thursday, spokesman Mathew Miller mentioned the new crossing as he listed efforts Israel has taken to meet the demands made in the letter.
As the Biden administration has just over two months left, it is unclear what will happen with the Biden-Austin demands, and Miller said he would not speculate on that.
He did say that the U.S. has made clear “there are potential legal and policy considerations” if Israel fails to improve humanitarian assistance to Gaza and implement steps outlined in the letter.
The U.S. has also been involved in trying to bring about a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. The U.S. told Qatar that the presence of Hamas in Doha was no longer acceptable in the weeks since the Palestinian militant group rejected the latest cease-fire proposal, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday.
"After rejecting repeated proposals to release hostages, its leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner," the senior administration official said.
Deteriorating situation in Gaza
At a briefing Friday at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Tremblay, citing a new report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, said the situation in Gaza was extremely grave and rapidly deteriorating.
The report said there was a strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip. Tremblay said, “Immediate action — within days not weeks — is required from all actors who are directly taking part in the conflict, or have influence on its conduct, to avert and alleviate this catastrophic situation.”
Tremblay also updated the situation in the West Bank, citing a report from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, which said multiple Israeli military operations in the north this week included airstrikes and other lethal warlike tactics, which appear to exceed law enforcement standards.
The spokeswoman said initial information indicated eight Palestinians were killed and four others injured during Tuesday’s operations in Jenin, Tubas and Tulkarm.
OCHA reports that between October 29 and November 4, Israel settlers carried out 35 attacks against Palestinians that caused casualties or property damage, including to olive trees that were vandalized.
Since the beginning of October, OCHA has documented 177 settler incidents directly related to the olive harvest in 73 communities across the West Bank, most of which caused casualties or property damage.
Also Friday, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, issued a statement saying the IDF used two excavators and a bulldozer to destroy part of a fence and a concrete structure at a UNIFIL position in Ras Naqoura.
In a statement posted to its X account, UNIFIL said the IDF responded to its protest by denying any activity was taking place inside the UNIFIL position.
The UNIFIL statement went on to say the “deliberate and direct destruction of clearly identifiable UNIFIL property is a flagrant violation of international law and Resolution 1701.”
It was the latest instance of the mission accusing Israel of carrying out deliberate attacks against its positions. Israel denies that any of the instances are deliberate. It has urged UNIFIL members to leave the area for their own safety.
In its own statement Friday, the IDF said it had discovered and dismantled what it said was a Hezbollah terrorist training center located 200 meters from a UNIFIL post. It said the compound was “used by terrorists for training, studying and storing large quantities of weapons.”
On its website, the IDF released pictures and videos of weapons and other materials it said it had confiscated from the location. It did not identify the location of what it called the Hezbollah training center or the adjacent UNIFIL post, and it was unclear whether it was near the Ras Naqoura position.
VOA's Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
