Israel-Iran War LIVE: IDF strikes central Beirut for the first time since 2006, 6 killed

China called on the United Nations Security Council to take "urgent actions" to de-escalate the situation in the Middle East as Israel launched fresh air strikes in Lebanon. China's permanent representative to the U.N., Fu Cong, said during a Security Council briefing on Wednesday, that it needed to make clear and unequivocal demands to stop the cycle of violence over the Israeli-Lebanon conflict.

"The Security Council bears the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security," the official Xinhua news agency reported Fu as saying, noting that all parties concerned "must return to the track of political and diplomatic solutions".

The Israeli army said sirens that sounded early on Thursday in the community of Nahal Oz near the Gaza strip were determined to be due to a "false identification". It did not provide further details.

United Nations General Secretary António Guterres condemned Iran’s Missile attack on Israel and said, "Millions of people across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory were forced to seek shelter. One person was killed during the Iranian strikes, a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank. 

The United Nations on Wednesday called Israel’s ban on Secretary-General Antonio Guterres entering the country a political statement by its foreign minister and stressed that the world body’s contacts with Israel will continue “because they have to.” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters that Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz deeming the U.N. chief “persona non grata” is also “one more attack on the United Nations staff that we’ve seen from the government of Israel.”

Israel’s accusations of U.N. bias and antisemitism date back decades, but the rift has intensified since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in the country’s south killed about 1,200 people and launched the war in Gaza. Israel’s offensive against the militant group has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters but that a little more than half were women and children.

An American from Dearborn, Michigan, was killed in Lebanon in an Israeli airstrike, according to the man's daughter, friend and the US congresswoman representing his constituency. On Wednesday, Democratic US Representative Rashida Tlaib's office said it was in touch with Kamel Ahmad Jawad's family, adding he was the Palestinian American congresswoman's constituent and a US citizen.

His daughter, Nadine Jawad, said in a statement that her father was killed in an Israeli strike in Lebanon on Tuesday "while trying to save innocent lives." She added that in his final days, her father chose to stay near a hospital to help the elderly and the disabled.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Hezbollah leader Syyed Hassan Nasrallah to flee Lebanon days before he was killed in an Israeli strike and is now deeply worried about Israeli infiltration of senior government ranks in Tehran, three Iranian sources said. In the immediate aftermath of the attack on Hezbollah's booby-trapped pagers on Sept. 17, Khamenei sent a message with an envoy to beseech the Hezbollah secretary general to leave for Iran, citing intelligence reports that suggested Israel had operatives within Hezbollah and was planning to kill him, one of the sources, a senior Iranian official, told Reuters.

More than 1,900 people have been killed and over 9,000 wounded in Lebanon in almost a year of cross-border fighting, with most of the deaths occurring in the past two weeks, according to Lebanese government statistics.

More than 1,900 people have been killed and over 9,000 wounded in Lebanon in almost a year of cross-border fighting, with most of the deaths occurring in the past two weeks, according to Lebanese government statistics.

Warning sirens are activated in Bat Yam due to what the IDF says is a suspected hostile aircraft, with the Home Front Command instructing residents of the coastal city just south of Tel Aviv to take shelter in protected areas, Times of Israel reported.

Biden joined a call with Group of Seven major power leaders on Wednesday to coordinate a response, including new sanctions against Tehran, the White House said. G7 leaders voiced "strong concern" over the Middle East crisis but said a diplomatic solution was still viable and a region-wide conflict was in no one's interest, a statement said.

Rescue workers survey an apartment hit by an airstrike in Beirut, Lebanon

Smoke rises from a destroyed resident complex hit by Israeli airstrikes in Dahieh, Beirut, Lebanon

A rescue worker surveys an apartment building hit by an airstrike in Beirut

A firefighter stands in front of an apartment hit by an Israeli airstrike, in Beirut, Lebanon

People collecting remains of victims after an airstrike that hit an apartment in Beirut

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon

US President Joe Biden said he would not support any Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear sites in response to its ballistic missile attack and urged Israel to act "proportionally" against its regional arch-foe. Biden joined a call with Group of Seven major power leaders on Wednesday to coordinate a response, including new sanctions against Tehran, the White House said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a condolence video, said: "We are at the height of a difficult war against Iran's Axis of Evil, which wants to destroy us. "This will not happen because we will stand together and with God's help, we will win together," he said.

Israel bombed central Beirut in the early hours of Thursday, killing at least six people, after its forces suffered their deadliest day on the Lebanese front in a year of clashes against the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah. Israel said it conducted a precise air strike on Beirut. Reuters witnesses reported hearing a massive blast, and a security source said it targeted a building in central Beirut's Bachoura neighbourhood close to parliament, the nearest Israeli strikes have come to Lebanon's seat of government.

At least three explosions shook Beirut’s southern suburbs twenty minutes before midnight. Thick smoke quickly obscured the lights on the mountains above, drifting across the heart of the city. Another night of air strikes has begun, CNN reported.