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Israel says number of dead exaggerated after strike on town of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of Israel’s wars on Gaza and Lebanon.
In northern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike hit several houses and a multi-storey residential building in the town of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza on Saturday night, killing at least 73 people, officials said.
The US government is investigating an alleged leak about classified US intelligence on Israel’s strikes against Iran, CNN reports. CNN reports that the documents which date from 15 and 16 October started circulating on Friday on Telegram through an account called the Middle East Spectator. The investigation is also examining how the documents were obtained – including whether it was an intentional leak by a member of the US intelligence community or obtained by another method, like a hack – and whether any other intelligence information was compromised, the Associated Press reports.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s house in the seaside town of Caesarea was hit by a drone on Saturday, causing superficial damage and no casualties. Neither Netanyahu nor his wife, Sara, were home at the time. “The attempt by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah to assassinate me and my wife today was a grave mistake,” Netanyahu said in a statement, vowing that Iran and its proxies would “pay a heavy price”.
The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, spoke to Benjamin Netanyahu after reports of an attempted drone attack on the Israeli prime minister’s holiday home in Saturday. According to a Downing Street spokesperson, Starmer told Netanyahu that he was alarmed to hear about what Netanyahu called an “assassination attempt” on his life.
G7 defence ministers expressed their concern over Israel’s latest attacks on Unifil in Lebanon. The group, which has been meeting in Naples, Italy, said: “We are concerned by the latest events in Lebanon and the risk of further escalation. We express concern over all threats to Unifil’s security.”
The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, spoke to his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, on Saturday, reviewing US forces’ “posture adjustments”. Those include the recent deployment of an anti-missile system to reinforce Israel’s defences against regional threats, the Pentagon said in a statement.
The US would like to see Israel scale back some of its strikes in and around the Lebanese capital of Beirut, Austin said. “The number of civilian casualties have been far too high,” Austin told reporters at a G7 defence gathering in Naples.
Two Israeli airstrikes targeted south Beirut early on Sunday, Lebanese state media reports. “Enemy (Israeli) airplanes carried out two strikes this morning on Beirut’s southern suburbs, one of them hitting a residential building in Haret Hreik” near a mosque and a hospital, the National news agency reported. There were no immediate details of casualties or property damage.
The Israeli army ordered civilians located near buildings it claimed were “affiliated with Hezbollah” in two neighbourhoods in south Beirut to immediately evacuate early this morning.
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