Israeli airstrikes in Sour district, Israel vows to respond 'vigorously' to Houthi missile strike | LIVE

Israeli strike in Majdal Zoun

An Israeli drone carried out a targeted strike on an individual in the town of Majdal Zoun, in the Sour district, according to our South Lebanon correspondent.

Residents reported that ambulances arrived at the scene and transported the targeted individual to the hospital.

Druze Sheikh Akl Sami Abi el-Mona (the highest religious authority of the Druze community) sent his congratulations to the new pope on his election, “on behalf of the Druze community in Lebanon.”

“Your path is rich with remarkable achievements that have destined you for this role,” he said in a statement. “You are known worldwide as a reformist, a moderate, and a humanist—committed to strengthening intercultural dialogue and promoting peace and justice. These are precisely the values the world needs now more than ever, given the many challenges it faces today.”

On Saturday, Leo XIV will meet with the cardinals, the senior Church dignitaries who assist him in governance. Gathered in the College of Cardinals, which is currently presided over by Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, 91, they constitute the highest body of the Catholic Church.

On Sunday at noon, the new pope will make his second public appearance in St. Peter’s Square for the traditional Sunday prayer. This weekly event is often an opportunity for the pope to speak on major international issues.

The solemn inauguration Mass of Pope Leo XIV will take place on Sunday in St. Peter’s Square

Traditionally attended by foreign heads of state and government. During the ceremony, he will receive the symbols of papal authority, including the imposition of the pallium and the presentation of the Fisherman’s Ring.

The pallium is a white woolen vestment adorned with six black crosses and made up of two strips. It is worn by the pope and archbishops during major liturgical celebrations and symbolizes the unity of the Church and the pastoral role of bishops.

The Fisherman’s Ring, another powerful symbol of papal authority, was once used to seal official documents. It is rendered unusable after the death of each pope.

Europe’s leading airline group, Lufthansa, has announced it will extend the suspension of its flights to and from Tel Aviv until May 18, amid escalating tensions between Israel and Iran.

"Due to the current situation, the Lufthansa Group airlines will suspend their flights to and from Tel Aviv until Sunday, May 18 inclusive," the German company said in a statement, extending a previous suspension that was set to end on May 11.

The Israeli army announced Friday that it had intercepted a missile fired from Yemen, as dull explosions echoed over Jerusalem, according to AFP journalists.

"Following the sirens that sounded recently in several regions of Israel, a missile fired from Yemen was intercepted," the army said in a statement.

(Photo provided by the Hezbollah press office)

Hezbollah and residents of Halloussieh in south Lebanon held the funeral of Adnan Mohammad Saddeq Harb, who was killed the day before in massive Israeli airstrikes on the Nabatieh region. The bombings killed two party members. A large crowd attended the ceremony, chanting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans.

The funeral procession was preceded by ambulances from the Islamic Health Committee, Hezbollah's civil defense, and members of the party's scouts.

Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 11 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes targeting the Gaza Strip since Friday morning.

A fisherman was killed by Israeli army fire on his boat northwest of Gaza City, according to the local correspondent for the Qatari outlet.

The Trump administration is reportedly pressuring Israel to reach an agreement with Hamas before the U.S. president's planned visit to the region on May 13, according to Haaretz. A source cited in the Israeli media outlet emphasized that Washington considers this move crucial and warned that if it refuses, Israel could find itself isolated on the international stage.

Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, with whom Donald Trump spoke on Thursday, has not officially commented on this pressure.

Meanwhile, Steve Witkoff, a senior U.S. official, reportedly met with hostage families this week, saying that military pressure on Gaza is jeopardizing any release. He also reportedly warned that Israel risks missing strategic agreements, such as the one with Saudi Arabia, if it does not cooperate. His office, contacted by Haaretz, denied any official pressure on Israel.

Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least eight people have been killed by continued Israeli bombardments across the Gaza Strip since this morning.

Among the victims were a couple of parents from the Hamdan family and their child who died following a raid on a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, while another person was killed in a drone strike targeting the al-Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City, in the center of the enclave, which also injured several others, Al Jazeera's local correspondents reported.

Local sources also reported that Israeli military vehicles fired heavily on the eastern areas of Gaza City.

Two Israeli soldiers, members of a civil engineering unit of the Golani Brigade, were killed yesterday in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, an Israeli army spokesperson announced. They added that an officer and another soldier from the same unit were "severely wounded."

The day before, the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, announced in a statement that it "killed two occupation soldiers and wounded 19 others in the al-Tanour neighborhood," east of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, as part of a series of operations called "Gates of Hell."

Several drones are flying over Saida and its outskirts, as well as the coastline of Rmeileh and Jiyeh, further north, according to L'Orient Today's correspondent.

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U.S. President Trump met with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, a trusted aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Axios reported. The confidential meeting took place on Thursday at the White House, the U.S. media outlet said, citing two sources briefed on the meeting, who indicated that the discussions addressed ongoing negotiations between Washington and Tehran and Israel's new plans for its offensive against the Gaza Strip.

The meeting took place days before the fourth round of Iranian nuclear talks between U.S. and Iranian officials on Sunday in Oman, and ahead of Donald Trump's Middle East tour beginning next Monday.

"We were shocked that the Trump administration didn't tell us anything and that we learned about it on television," an Israeli official told Axios. Regarding the cease-fire agreement Washington reached this week with Houthi rebels, shortly after major Israeli strikes on a major Yemeni port and Sana'a airport in response to Houthi missile attacks on Ben Gurion Airport.

The United States announced Thursday that a new foundation would soon be tasked with managing humanitarian aid in the Israeli-blockaded, war-torn Gaza Strip.

"While we have nothing specific to announce today, and I will not speak on behalf of the Foundation, which will do the work, we welcome initiatives to quickly deliver urgently needed food aid to Gaza so that food aid actually reaches those for whom it is intended," State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters. "We are one step closer to that solution, to being able to deliver aid and food" to Gaza, she added, stressing that the foundation would make an announcement "soon," without providing further details.

Since March 2 and the resumption of the Israeli offensive, no humanitarian aid has been allowed to enter the Palestinian territory where 2.4 million people live.

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A new documentary was recently released online, claiming to have identified the Israeli soldier suspected of being responsible for the death of al-Jazeera correspondent in the occupied West Bank, Shireen Abu Akleh, in May 2022.

Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American woman who had worked for al-Jazeera since 1997, was killed while covering a story in Jenin. Human rights organizations and news agencies documented after her death that Palestinian fighters initially accused by Israel of firing the gun that killed the journalist were far from the scene, and in September, Israel acknowledged there was a "high probability" that its forces had "accidentally" killed the journalist.

Contributors to the documentary "Who Killed Shireen?," released Thursday by Zeteo, suggested that Abu Akleh's assassination reinforced a sense of impunity among Israeli soldiers, contributing to the deaths of more than 200 journalists killed by the Israeli army and settlers in the West Bank. According to the book, the identified soldier has since been killed in Jenin.

In south Lebanon, after a violent Thursday marked by a series of Israeli strikes on the Nabatieh region, which killed two Hezbollah members, the morning was relatively calm. In Kfar Kila (Marjeyoun), a drone dropped a sound bomb on an industrial building, with no injuries reported so far.

A Hamas delegation held talks on a Gaza truce in Doha on Wednesday and Thursday with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, but the talks failed to produce any breakthrough, two sources close to the Palestinian movement told AFP.

"Egyptian officials involved in the negotiations met twice with a high-level Hamas delegation led by [chief negotiator] Khalil Hayyeh [and] Qatari officials for the negotiations, on Wednesday and Thursday in Doha," one of these sources said. The negotiations were "serious" but did not lead to "any tangible progress," the second said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is scheduled to travel to Saudi Arabia and Qatar tomorrow, Saturday, ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump's trip to the Middle East scheduled for next week, Iranian diplomats announced. Araghchi will first travel to Riyadh to "meet and discuss with senior Saudi officials" and then to Doha "to participate in the Iran-Arab World Dialogue Conference," according to a statement published on the Iranian Foreign Ministry's website.

Trump is expected to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates from May 13 to 16. This trip would have been the U.S. president's first foreign trip since returning to office in January, had it not been for his brief trip to Rome for Pope Francis's funeral. On Wednesday, Trump said that he would "make a decision" on how the United States refers to the Gulf, after several American media outlets attributed his intention to call it the "Arabian Gulf" or "Arabian Gulf" rather than the "Persian Gulf." This decision would offend Iran at a time when Washington is holding nuclear talks with Tehran.

Araghchi said such a move would signal "hostile intent directed against Iran and its people."