Middle East crisis live: Hezbollah confirms death of seventh senior leader in Israeli airstrike | Lebanon

• Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, said the killing of Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) deputy commander, by Israel was a “horrible crime” that would not go unanswered. Nilforoushan was killed in the Israeli strikes on Beirut on Friday, in which Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was also assassinated.

• Nasrallah’s body has been recovered intact from the site of Friday’s strike, a medical source and a security source told Reuters.

• Israel said that it killed 20 Hezbollah figures alongside Nasrallah in its attack on the group’s underground headquarters on Friday. Ali Karaki, leader of Hezbollah’s southern front, and Ibrahim Hussein Jazini, head of Nasrallah’s security unit, were also among those killed, the IDF said.

• The Israeli military also said on Sunday that it killed senior Hezbollah figure Nabil Kaouk in an airstrike in Lebanon yesterday. Hezbollah later confirmed his death. He is the seventh senior leader of the Lebanese militant group to be killed since 20 September.

• The Israeli military has carried out new attacks on Lebanon today, including on Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of the capital, Beirut, and on Bekaa Valley in north-eastern Lebanon. Hezbollah was reported to have fired rockets at the Ofek military base in northern Israel earlier today and has been targeting Israel’s Sa’ar settlement with rocket strikes.

• European foreign ministers, including officials from the UK, Germany and France, have stepped up calls for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah amid fears of the conflict spreading across the region.

• The Lebanese army said it “calls on citizens to preserve national unity and not to be drawn into actions that may affect civil peace at this dangerous and delicate stage”. The country’s prime minister, Najib Mikati, urged Lebanese people “to come together” to preserve civil order. Diplomatic efforts for a ceasefire with Israel are ongoing.

• The UN World Food Programme (WFP) launched an emergency operation to provide food for up to 1 million people affected by the conflict in Lebanon. More than 1,000 people have been killed in Lebanon and more than 6,000 injured as a result of Israeli attacks in the past two weeks, the health ministry said, and about one million Lebanese people have been displaced by Israeli strikes.

• At least 41,595 Palestinian people have been killed and 96,251 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said.

Hezbollah has denied Israeli claims to have assassinated Abu Ali Rida, the commander of the group’s Bader Unit in south Lebanon (see earlier post at 13.30 for more details).

“There is no truth to the Zionist propaganda about the assassination of the brother and fighter Abu Ali Rida, he is alive and well,” the group said in a statement to the press.

The body of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been recovered from the site of the Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs and is intact, sources have told Reuters. The Guardian has not yet been able to verify this information.

Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah for more than three decades, was killed by Israel in a series of strikes on the group’s underground headquarters in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, on Friday.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, yesterday announced five days of national mourning to honour what he called the “martyrdom of the great Nasrallah”. Israel’s military said Nasrallah had “the blood of thousands… on his hands”.

The Israeli military says it killed over 20 Hezbollah members of different ranks when they assassinated the Lebanese Shiite militant group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, at Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut on Friday.

“More than 20 other terrorists of varying ranks, who were present at the underground headquarters in Beirut located beneath civilian buildings, and were managing Hezbollah’s terrorist operations against the state of Israel, were also eliminated,” the military said.

Some of the Hezbollah figures the military says were killed include:

• Ali Karaki, a member of Hezbollah’s Jihad council and the commander of the organisation’s southern front.

• Ibrahim Hussein Jazini, head of Hassan Nasrallah’s security unit.

• Samir Tawfiq Dib, who the IDF describes as “Nasrallah’s long-time confidant and adviser”.

Hezbollah has confirmed that Nabil Kaouk, another of its senior leaders, was killed in an Israeli airstrike, the Associated Press are reporting.

The Israeli military said earlier on Sunday that it had killed Kaouk in an airstrike the day before. He is the seventh senior leader of the Lebanese militant group to be killed since 20 September, including Hassan Nasrallah, who was Hezbollah’s top leader for 32 years.

William Christou is reporting for the Guardian from Beirut

Initial reports in Israeli media suggest the target of Israel’s strike on Beirut on Sunday afternoon was Abu Ali Rida, the commander of the group’s Bader Unit, which is responsible for the second line of defence in south Lebanon after the initial border zone.

Rida was the last remaining senior military commander of Hezbollah that remained alive, which, if reports of his death were true, would leave Hezbollah without any of its senior military leadership. The Guardian was not able to independently verify Israeli media reports and Hezbollah had not yet issued a statement.

Anti-war rally held in Cyprus

Helena Smith

Over in Cyprus, the EU’s nearest member state to the Middle East, an anti-war rally has been held outside a British Sovereign base that activists have accused of “facilitating” Israel’s armed action.

Hundreds of protestors, chanting “No to war” and “Out, Out, British bases out,” rallied within metres of the gates of RAF Akrotiri amid mounting fears of the Mediterranean island being drawn into a wider conflict if hostilities spiral out of control. The leftwing Akel party official Haris Karamanou told demonstrators:

We are here, right outside the British Air Force airport in Akrotiri, because from here British spy planes are assisting the occupying forces of Israel in gathering information on the ‘operations’ in Gaza. And because hundreds of tons of bombs and ammunition have passed through here to aid the total destruction of Gaza.

Speaking to the Guardian, Nicoletta Charalambidou, a prominent human rights lawyer also attending the rally said:

The government of Cyprus has failed to take a clear stance against the war and we are against the facilitation it has granted that has allowed the British bases to indirectly support Israel’s war in Palestine, Gaza and Lebanon.

Others activists said they were furious at the growing use “on Cypriot land” of the installation, one of two bases retained by Britain, a former colony.

In a statement urging people to attend Sunday’s protest, the left-wing backed Cyprus Peace Council said it was imperative the island’s government took a clear stance if the country was to avoid becoming a target for attack. It said:

The large military activities carried out these days on the ground and air around the Akrotiri base as well as the large concentration of US military forces in our country to prepare for a broader war, heightens the feeling of concern that Cyprus may become a target for an attack.

The statement came hours after the UK announced it was “bolstering contingency teams” in the region, moving 700 troops to the island in preparation of mass evacuations from Lebanon

Earlier this year protestors conducted a similar rally outside Akrotiri to demonstrate against the British bases being used as an “aggressive launch pad” for the war in Gaza amid revelations of its deployment as a staging point for fighter jets involved in strikes against pro-Palestinian Houthi militia in Yemen.

UK defence officials have robustly denied accusations of the bases being used to funnel weapons to Israel. On Sunday, the Cyprus Mail quoted a British bases spokesperson as saying: “No RAF flights have transported lethal cargo to the Israeli Defence Forces.” It was standard practice the spokesperson said “for the UK Ministry of Defence to routinely authorise requests for a limited number of allies and partners to access the UK’s air bases.”

Under the terms of the bases’ establishment, Britain is not formally obliged to seek permission from Cyprus for operations conducted out of the military installations.