🔴 Live: Israeli military begins ‘series’ of air strikes on Lebanon

Summary:

• The Israeli military said on Wednesday that its fighter jets “began a series of strikes in Lebanon”, raising fears of a war between the two countries after months of cross-border fire. 
• Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas called on Wednesday for Hamas to accelerate an exchange of hostages for prisoners with Israel to spare Palestinian people further “catastrophe”, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
• Negotiations to pause the Israel–Hamas war and free the remaining hostages headed into a second day in Cairo on Wednesday, as displaced Gazans braced for an expected Israeli assault on their last refuge of Rafah. 
• With Palestinians in Rafah “staring death in the face”, United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths said an Israeli ground invasion there would make humanitarian relief nearly impossible.
• The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 28,576 people have been killed and 68,291 wounded in Israeli strikes on the enclave since October 7, the vast majority women and children. Israeli officials say about 1,140 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks in southern Israel. Militant fighters took some 250 hostages during the attack and 132 are still in Gaza, according to Israeli figures.

• The UN has again warned against an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah, saying it could “lead to a slaughter” in the southern region of the Palestinian enclave.
• Israel’s army Tuesday released a video it said was of Hamas’s chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, filmed on October 10 with his family members in a tunnel in the Palestinian territory.
• The leader of Yemen‘s Houthi movement has said the group had been able to prevent Israeli-linked ships from passing through the Gulf of Aden over the past week.
• South Africa asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to urgently intervene against a looming full-scale Israeli assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah.   

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP, Reuters)