Israel-Hamas war: IDF brings enormous blimp out of retirement to deter Hezbollah

Chosen by us to get you up to speed at a glance
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has brought an enormous radar blimp out of retirement to patrol its border with Lebanon.
The Sky Dew, a white high-altitude balloon which is used to detect missiles and drones, was retired in 2022 amid unspecified setbacks in its development.
But it has now been confirmed to be back in use after being photographed over northern Israel on Saturday.
The experimental blimp’s redeployment comes amid an uptick in clashes between Israel and Hezbollah on the Lebanon border.
The Iran-backed terror group said it launched 62 rockets on an IDF base in northern Israel on Saturday morning in revenge for the death of Hamas’s deputy political chief Saleh Al-Arouri in an Israeli air strike last week.
That’s all for today. Follow our live blog again tomorrow for all the latest developments in the war in Gaza.
Catherine Colonna, France’s foreign minister, has told her Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian that “Iran and its affiliates” must stop “destabilising acts” that could ignite a broader conflict in the Middle East.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Ms Colonna stated that she “delivered a very clear message: the risk of regional conflagration has never been so great; Iran and its affiliates must immediately cease their destabilising acts. Nobody would win from escalation”.
Iran has formed and expanded a network of proxies throughout the Middle East, including the Houthi rebels in Yemen and the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah. Tehran has also supplied drones and munitions to Russia, which have been used in the war in Ukraine. 
Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, the chief of the general staff of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), has toured a Hamas tunnel network with other senior IDF commanders and Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s internal security service. 
Lt Gen Halevi and Mr Bar were filmed alongside Maj Gen Yaron Finkelman, the head of the IDF’s southern command; Maj Gen Aharon Haliva, the head of military intelligence and Brig Gen Dan Goldfus, commander of the 98th Division. 
The military and security chiefs were filmed inside the complex beneath the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis on Friday.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and the head of the Shin Bet security agency Ronen Bar toured a Hamas tunnel network under southern Gaza’s Khan Younis yesterday, the military announces.Halevi and Bar were joined by the head of the Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaron… pic.twitter.com/AGSTPTxjun
Hezbollah has said that two more of its fighters have been killed on the Israel-Lebanon border. 
The Iran-backed Lebanese terror group fired a barrage of 62 rockets on northern Israel on Saturday morning, before the Israeli military launched a wave of retaliatory strikes at targets in southern Lebanon. 
The deaths take the total number of Hezbollah fighters killed in border skirmishes with Israel since the war began to 152.
Britain has warned that six small boats are approaching a merchant vessel about 50 nautical miles south east of the Yemeni city of Mocha.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations organisation said that it had received the report, adding that “no weapons have been sighted and coalition forces are assisting”.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have declared support for Hamas, have vowed to continue targeting shipping in the Red Sea despite US warnings of a military response to further attacks.
More than 20 countries, including the US, UK and France, are contributing to patrols in the crucial global shipping lane to protect commercial traffic. 
Anthony Blinken has concluded talks with Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In the talks, the US secretary of state “emphasised the need to prevent the conflict from spreading, secure the release of hostages, expand humanitarian assistance and reduce civilian casualties,” state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.
Blinken also stressed the need to work toward broader, lasting regional peace that ensures Israel’s security and advances the establishment of a Palestinian state, Mr Miller added.
The only path to peace in the Gaza Strip is the “creation of a Palestinian state”, Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, has said.
Speaking at a news conference in Beirut, Mr Borrell stated that the “the only way [to peace] is the creation of a Palestinian state”.
The prospect would offer a “horizon of hope” to the Palestinians, he added. 
The Israel Defence Forces has brought the enormous Sky Dew radar balloon back into operation in northern Israel, a year and a half after being deactivated. 
The Sky Dew, equipped with advanced missile and aircraft detection abilities, is one of the largest aerial threat warning systems in the world. 
Hundreds of people are protesting outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster for an end to the war in Gaza.
The crowd waved Palestine flags and held placards reading “Ceasefire now”.
The Free Palestine Coalition, which says it is made of “grassroots organisations in London, including Sisters Uncut, Black Lives Matter UK, London for a Free Palestine, and the Palestinian Youth Movement”, is protesting today.
The Metropolitan Police has said the protestors refused to share information about their route.
It has applied the Public Order Act to the protest, meaning they cannot move from Westminster’s Bridge Street and must end the rally by 3pm.
Israeli TV station Channel 12 has released footage of an IDF helicopter shooting down a Hezbollah drone launched towards Israel from Lebanon. 
תיעוד: כך מסוק קרב הפיל כטב”ם חיזבאללה – יום קרב בצפון עם מטח כבד על מירון ושיגורים רבים לגליל https://t.co/ZG0MZ2FDLi pic.twitter.com/w3AnVZD3WE
The mother of Israeli hostage Tamir Adar, 38, whose death was confirmed yesterday, has said that her son would have been saved if the Israeli state “had been functioning”.  
“Tamir was kidnapped while wounded and alive. Tamir was murdered in the absence of immediate medical attention,” Yael Adar wrote in a post on Facebook. 
“Everything needs to be done to release all the hostages alive now, before it is too late for them… We lost the most precious thing. Don’t let the other families lose their loved ones,” Ms Adar added. 
Tamir Adar was part of Kibbutz Nir Oz’s emergency response squad that fought Hamas terrorists during the October 7 attacks on southern Israel. It is believed he was later killed before his body was taken to the Gaza Strip. 
The Lebanon-based Sunni Islamist Jama’a Islamiya group has fired two volleys of missiles at northern Israel.
It said it had fired rockets on Kiryat Shmona, a city just miles from the Lebanon border, early on Saturday afternoon.
The intensifying border clashes between Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) could drag other countries into the war, the European Union’s foreign policy chief has warned.
Josep Borrell told a press conference in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, that it was “absolutely necessary” that “regional escalation” is avoided.
“It is imperative to avoid regional escalation in the Middle East,” he said. “It is absolutely necessary to avoid Lebanon being dragged into a regional conflict.”
The United States is offering up to $10million (£7.8m) for information on five key Hamas financiers.
The State Department said on Friday that the men had all previously been designated as terrorists.
Abdelbasit Haza Elhassan Khair, known as Hamza, is based in Sudan and manages Hamas’s investment portfolio, the department said.
Amer Kamal Sharif Alshawa, Ahmed Sadu Jahleb and Walid Mohammed Mustafa Jadallah are said to live in Turkey and are involved in managing a network of investments there.
Muhammad Ahmad ‘Abd Al-Dayim Nasrallah has helped transfer tens of millions of dollars to Hamas and also has close ties to Iranian entities.
The rewards will be given for information on Hamas’s revenue sources, major donors and front companies, as well as criminal schemes which benefit the terror group and financial institutions which facilitate its transactions.
Antony Blinken will push Israel to enable displaced Palestinians to return home by adapting the way it is fighting in Gaza.
A senior US administration official told AFP that the secretary of state would press Israel to move to a new, more targeted phase of the war that would allow Gazan refugees to move out of densely-packed refugee camps.
He will also urge Benjamin Netanyahu to increase the flow of aid into the enclave, the official added.
Mr Blinken is on a whirlwind week-long tour of the region, his fourth since October 7.
He met Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on Saturday and will also travel to Greece, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, the West Bank and Egypt before returning to the USA on Thursday.
The official said Mr Blinken’s discussion with Arab leaders would focus on how Gaza will be governed after the war.
He also discussed Sweden’s accession to Nato with Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan, the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement. 
Mr Blinken will hope to win assurances that a ratification vote on Sweden’s accession to Nato will be held soon by Turkey’s parliament.
Turkey, a Nato member, has been able to its veto power to impel Sweden to take a tougher stance on Kurdish groups in Stockholm that Ankara sees as “terrorists”.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has released footage of an elite commando unit fighting Hamas in a school on the outskirts of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. 
The unit killed three gunmen, the IDF said, and found stashes of rocket-propelled grenades as well as “a lot of intelligence information” about Hamas forces operating in Khan Younis.  
The home of a Hamas commander was also raided in the operation, the IDF added.
The UN has warned that the Gaza Strip has been rendered “uninhabitable” by three months of war.
With much of the besieged enclave reduced to rubble, UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on Friday that “Gaza has simply become uninhabitable”.
Civilians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip face widespread displacement, destruction and a deepening humanitarian crisis.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has detained a team of Al Jazeera journalists at Kibbutz Be’eri for filming in a closed military area without permission, Israel’s Kan public broadcaster has reported.
Kan said the journalists filmed IDF soldiers and that police were called to the scene.
The journalists told Oren Ziv, a reporter for +972 magazine, that they had not filmed any soldiers and “were detained before taking out a camera”.
The IDF is yet to comment.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was reported in November to want to ban Qatar-owned Al Jazeera from Israel. The Times of Israel reports that it has not done so because of Qatar’s role in ongoing hostage release negotiations.
The death toll from a suicide bombing in Iran claimed by Islamic State has risen from 89 to at least 91, Iranian state TV reported on Saturday.
The report quoted Babak Yektaparast, a spokesman for Iran’s emergency services, as saying an 8-year boy and a 67-year-old man who were wounded in the attack have now died.
On Wednesday, two blasts tore through crowds in Kerman at a memorial service for Qassim Soleimani, an Iranian general killed by a US drone strike in 2020.
Iranian officials initially appeared split over blaming Israel and the US directly for the attacks, before Islamic State-affiliated Telegram channels claimed responsibility on Thursday. 
White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the United States was in no position to doubt Islamic State’s claim that it was responsible for Wednesday’s attack.
חוליית מחבלים, עמדת שיגור, מבנים צבאיים ותשתיות טרור; צה”ל השלים שורת תקיפות בשטח לבנון>> pic.twitter.com/MH0HY5JRR6
At least 22,722 Palestinians have been killed and 58,166 wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 7, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Saturday. 
Some 122 Palestinians were killed and 256 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.
Houthi rebel strikes on shipping in the Red Sea may impact the UK economy, the Chancellor has said. 
Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme on Saturday, Jeremy Hunt was asked whether attacks by the Iran-aligned militants could mean rising prices in Britain. 
“We obviously have to monitor what’s happening in the Red Sea,” he said. “It may have an impact and we’ll watch it very, very carefully.”
The US, UK and 10 other states warned the militant group on Wednesday that they will face military action if they continue to attack commercial shipping. 
However the group, who have declared support for Hamas, vowed to continue targeting vessels they consider linked to Israel.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has confirmed that one of its bases was targeted by a Hezbollah missile barrage on Saturday morning, Lizzie Porter reports.
“No IDF injuries were reported, but we can confirm that there was damage caused as a result of the barrage,” an official told The Telegraph.
“However we are unable to say the extent or what was damaged as of right now.”
The Lebanon-based terror group earlier said it fired 62 rockets at a “military installation” near Mount Meron in northern Israel.
The IDF said it launched a wave of retaliatory strikes at targets in the southern Lebanon villages of Ayta ash-Shab, Yaroun and Ramyah.
The United Nations women’s agency is investigating a top official for endorsing 153 pro-Palestinian social media posts. 
Sarah Douglas, the deputy chief of UN Women’s peace and security office, was accused of breaching the UN’s impartiality code after Geneva-based advocacy group UN Watch reported her consistent ‘liking’ of pro-Palestinian posts since October 7. 
One tweet liked by Ms Douglas read: “We are currently witnessing all the forces of empire team up to annihilate the Palestinian people and struggle for freedom.” 
Another post liked by Douglas included an accusation that America was “funding and arming the genocide in Gaza”.
US senators Rick Scott and Marsha Blackburn have called for Ms Douglas to be fired.
When asked about Douglas’s social media activity, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said last week: “I understand there was a violation of the Code of Conduct by this individual.”
“We are aware of reports relating to a mid-level manager and the incompatibility of her social media activity with the standards of conduct required of UN staff members,” UN Women said in a statement to reporters. 
Israeli soldiers found Hamas body armour hidden in UN aid bags at a Gaza medical clinic, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said.
It published images of combat vests which it said had been used by Hamas’s elite Nukhba force and were found inside a UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) sack at the facility in Gaza City.
The IDF added that RPGs, Kalashnikovs and other munitions were discovered in a building near the clinic.
The United States’s “blind support” for Israel is to blame for civilian deaths in Gaza, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has said.
The remarks came as US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken begins a crisis tour of the Middle East starting in Turkey, where he will meet president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Saturday.
“We hope that Mr Blinken learned lessons from the past three months and realised the extent of the mistakes the US has made by blindly supporting the Zionist occupation and believing its lies, which resulted in unprecedented massacres and war crimes against our people in Gaza,” Mr Haniyeh said in a speech.
More than 20,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to the strip’s Hamas-run health ministry. 
Hezbollah launched a barrage of 62 missiles on northern Israel on Saturday morning in what it said was an “initial response” to the death of Hamas deputy chief Saleh Al-Arouri.
The terror group’s deputy political leader was killed on January 2 in an Israeli drone strike on Beirut, Lebanon’s capital.
Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday that the terror group would retaliate for the killing.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said approximately 40 rockets were fired towards the Mount Meron area.
Hezbollah claimed responsibility and said it fired 62 missiles at a “military installation” there.
The IDF added that it had launched retaliatory strikes on the terror group’s positions in southern Lebanon. It said it successfully it “struck a terrorist cell that took part in the launches”.
There are no reports of deaths or injuries as things stand.