Trump threatens to make Hormuz US territory 'pretty soon'; Israeli strike kills 11 in south Lebanon

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Israel wants new and more ambitious US-brokered talks with Lebanon after carrying out deadly strikes targeting Hezbollah, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday.

The Israeli strikes against Hezbollah "should jumpstart the talks and make them much more serious, not do the opposite", Netanyahu spokesman Doron Spielman told AFP.

"And I think it will. It will hopefully move these talks along because the enemy here is clear and the enemy is Hezbollah," he said.

Israel said that it carried out the strikes after Hezbollah attacked inside what Israel calls a security zone inside southern Lebanon. Three Israeli soldiers were seriously injured, Netanyahu's office said.

Spielman said Israel was still upholding a US-brokered agreement that calls for Lebanon's fledgling security forces to take gradual control and remove Hezbollah, a Shia movement backed by Iran's clerical state that has long played a central role in Lebanon.

"We believe in the agreement. We very much hope that the Lebanese Armed Forces are going to be able to step into the foray, and together we're going to remove Hezbollah from the picture," Spielman said.

Israel said it responded by attacking a headquarters of Hezbollah's elite Radwan force, killing commander Ali Samir Al-Haj Hassan.

It acknowledged that Hassan's family members were with them and said they were not the target. Lebanese authorities said seven people were killed including several children in the Ansar strike, as well as four more people in a separate strike.

Yemen's Mokha port has suspended commercial and maritime operations after being hit by more than 25 missiles in Houthi attacks over recent days, the port's director said on Saturday.

The attacks killed seven people and caused an estimated $16 million in losses, the director told a news conference.

Flights at the port city of Bandar Abbas resumed on Saturday after repeated interruptions during hostilities with the United States, state media reported.

Kazem Tavassoli, director general of airports in Hormozgan province, said "scheduled flights at Bandar Abbas International Airport on high-traffic domestic routes resumed today," according to the IRNA state news agency.

The reopening comes "following limited flights in recent days", Tavassoli said, adding that passengers can now buy tickets for the Tehran-Bandar Abbas, Mashhad-Bandar Abbas and Bandar Abbas-Isfahan routes, in both directions.

The airport "handled 35 to 40 domestic and international flights per day" before the war, Tavassoli said. The airport has been repeatedly closed since the conflict with the United States began in February.

The death toll in Lebanon following an Israeli strike on the village of Ansar and the Ali al-Taher ridge in the country's south has risen to 11, the Lebanese health ministry said.

Among those killed were three children and two women.

Hezbollah said that Israeli attacks on Lebanon would be met with an "appropriate" response after deadly strikes on the country's south on Saturday, urging authorities to halt "humiliating" negotiations with Israel.

Israel "must clearly understand that its attacks, violations and attempts to impose a fait accompli cannot continue, and will be met with an appropriate response", the Iran-backed group said in a statement, adding that Lebanese authorities "must not insist on continuing along the humiliating path of direct negotiations and providing the enemy with free concessions".

Israel's military claimed on Saturday that its strikes in Lebanon, where authorities reported nine people killed including children, were in response to ceasefire violations by Hezbollah.

The strikes "came in response to a serious breach of the agreement by Hezbollah, after they attacked our forces inside the agreed-upon security zone," Lieutenant Colonel Ella Waweya, an Arabic-language spokeswoman for the Israeli military, wrote on X.

Iran's Armed Forces General Staff said in a letter published by the semi-official Fars news agency on Saturday that it had appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross to help secure the release of three Iranian pilots it says are being held by Qatar.

It said the pilots were held after their aircraft were hit during a March mission against what Tehran described as "an enemy military base" in Qatar.

There was no immediate confirmation from Qatari authorities.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Israeli strikes on the country's south on Saturday were a "clear message" on negotiations between the two countries, ahead of the next round of US-sponsored talks early next month in Rome.

Aoun condemned the "ongoing Israeli attacks" on the south and "repeated violations of the framework agreement... and international law on protecting civilians, which led to the death of an entire family in the village of Ansar", according to a statement from his office, adding that "these violations are a clear message on the negotiation process".

the United Arab Emirates' state-owned oil giant ADNOC said on Saturday one of its vessels came under attack in the Hormuz strait, the latest incident in the waterway at the centre of the US-Iran conflict.

Tehran has imposed an effective blockade of the strait, a vital shipping route for global energy supplies, carrying out strikes on commercial ships since the war began in February.

The Islamic republic has said it wants to charge users for passage, which Washington fiercely opposes.

The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) "confirmed that one of its vessels was attacked while transiting the Strait of Hormuz on the evening of Friday, August 14", according to the official WAM news agency, but reported no injuries.

In its statement, ADNOC stressed the importance of protecting seafarers and safeguarding freedom of navigation and maritime security.

After the attack, UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said the Gulf state would defend its "rights to freedom of navigation" in the Strait of Hormuz.

"The repeated targeting of ADNOC tankers will not deter the UAE from pursuing a balanced and prudent policy based on the three pillars of deterrence, diplomacy, and adherence to international law," he wrote in a post on X.

"We will exert every effort to strengthen a unified Gulf position, as it is a fundamental pillar for protecting the security of the region and the interests of its member states in this ongoing crisis."

The announcement came a day after the UAE accused Iran of attacking two vessels linked to ADNOC as they passed through the strait.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said seven people including two women and three children killed in an Israeli strike on Saturday were not military targets, after Israel said it struck Hezbollah "infrastructure".

"The seven martyrs of the Israeli strike on the village of Ansar are not 'military infrastructure' and the women and children who were killed are not military targets," Salam said, adding that "Israel must halt this escalation", which he said was "extremely dangerous and undermines efforts to consolidate stability in the south".

Several Palestinians, including children, suffered suffocation from tear gas on Saturday after Israeli forces raided the village of Al-Mughayyir, local media said.

This came as settlers attacked the Sha'ab al-Luz neighbourhood, attempting to break into home, as the occupied West Bank witnesses an uptick in settler-related attacks.

Israeli forces then stormed the area, firing tear gas cannisters, which lead to several residents suffering frm suffocation.

The commander of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps said the military organisation has brought "the most armed army in the history of the world to its knees," in reference to the US army in a letter published by the military's publication, Sepah News.

Major-General Ahmed Vahidi, who made the comments, is one of the several military leaders appointed by Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei in a major cabinet reshuffle last week.

Iran has not decided to resume talks with the United States, and messages being exchanged via Qatar and Pakistan do not amount to negotiations, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in an interview published on Saturday.

Araghchi told Iranian news outlet Shahrara News that separate talks with Oman were focused on defining a sea route through the Strait of Hormuz, while the United States would have to meet conditions for shipping to resume through the waterway. 

Lebanese state media said an Israeli strike in the country's south early Saturday killed seven people, the worst toll since deals in June saw a lull in hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.

The National News Agency (NNA) said Israel "escalated its attacks on the south" early Saturday, reporting that "a strike launched by enemy warplanes on a home" on the outskirts of the village of Ansar "killed seven people and wounded three others".

It said the strike destroyed the home and that emergency rescuers were removing rubble and transporting the casualties to hospital.

Violence in Lebanon has significantly decreased since the signing of a US-Iran memorandum of understanding in June on the broader Middle East war, and a US-sponsored framework deal between Lebanon and Israel agreed later that month.

But Lebanon still reports intermittent Israeli strikes occasionally causing casualties, and the broad demolitions of civilian buildings in southern villages and towns.

The NNA said "the valley between Ansar and Zarariyeh was also subjected to a strike, the first at this geographical depth since the ceasefire two months ago".

It also said "Israeli warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes targeting the Ali al-Taher ridge", a strategic hill overlooking the Nabatieh area, also reporting Israeli shelling there.

The news agency said Israeli forces detonated homes in the town of Bint Jbeil near the border.

The Israel-Lebanon framework deal includes the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from south Lebanon and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region, starting in "pilot zones".

On Friday, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem accused Lebanese authorities of subjecting the country's armed forces to undue pressure by implementing the deal.

"How can you accept this ongoing humiliation of the Lebanese army, exposing it to bombardment and Israeli pressures, instead of acting as its protectors?" Qassem said.

This week, Human Rights Watch urged the United Nations to keep an international force in Lebanon after its peacekeepers' mandate ends this year, saying that "the peacekeepers are a crucial deterrent against attacks on civilians and human rights abuses".