A Hezbollah official acknowledged that a truck carrying explosives seized by Lebanese authorities last week belonged to the group, saying the materials were intended for use against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah dismissed allegations that the explosives were part of an assassination plot as “baseless.”

The statement marked the group’s first comment on the seized explosives.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that the country was facing its most intense blockade since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, accusing the United States of seeking to provoke public protests.

"Over the 48 years since the Revolution, we have never faced such intense blockade, war and difficulties as we are facing now," Pezeshkian said in a speech broadcast by state television.

He accused Washington of seeking to make life difficult for Iranians in order to fuel public anger and trigger unrest, adding the US was focusing its efforts on making "the people become upset and face difficulties, and then for social protests to emerge so that they can achieve their sinister objectives".

Voting in Israel’s general elections began at Israeli diplomatic missions abroad, nearly two weeks before the nationwide vote scheduled for October 27, The Times of Israel reported.

Voting for diplomatic staff and their family members will last about 30 hours, with 101 polling stations operating across 99 missions to serve around 4,800 eligible voters, according to the daily.

Türkiye has condemned Colombia’s decision to relocate its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to West Jerusalem.

“This step violates relevant United Nations resolutions, particularly UN Security Council resolutions 476 (1980) and 478 (1980), and contradicts the legal principles set out in the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“East Jerusalem is an integral part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” said the ministry.

“We reiterate that the establishment of an independent, sovereign, and contiguous State of Palestine on the basis of the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, is the only way to achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace in the region,” it added.

The Israeli army has arrested 11 Palestinians, including former prisoners and a woman, during raids across the occupied West Bank, seizing money, mobile phones and a car, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Media Office.

The Palestinian Prisoners Media Office condemned the continued arrest campaigns across the occupied West Bank, emphasising that the incidents were part of an ongoing policy of pursuing and restricting Palestinians.

The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said that it intercepted and destroyed a cruise missile over the Medina region in western Saudi Arabia.

Coalition spokesperson Maj. Gen. Turki al-Maliki announced the interception in a brief statement on X.

The statement did not identify who launched the missile or its intended target, and provided no details on possible casualties or damage.

Israeli forces raided a house and set it ablaze along with an animal feed warehouse in southern Syria’s Daraa province, Syrian media reported, amid near-daily violations of Syrian territory.

State-run Alikhbaria TV said Israeli troops stormed a house in the Wadi al-Raqqad area of the western Daraa before setting fire to the property and a nearby warehouse used to store animal feed.

A Syrian military court has sentenced two people to death and a third to 12 years in prison over their alleged involvement in deadly violence in the country’s coastal region in March 2025, state media reported.

State-run Alikhbaria TV said the Military Criminal Court in Aleppo handed down death sentences to al-Waddah Ismail and Maher Ali for offenses including inciting civil war and sectarian fighting and leading armed groups to attack government forces.

A third defendant, Maher Othman, received a 12-year prison sentence. The court did not immediately specify the charges against him.

The Yemeni army said that its forces repelled an attack by the Houthi militia on the strategic Jabal Han mountain west of Taiz city in southwestern Yemen.

In a statement, Col. Abdul Basit al-Bahr, deputy head of the Moral Guidance Department at the army’s Taiz Military Axis, said army forces thwarted the Houthi attack on Jabal Han, west of Taiz, “after hours of the fiercest clashes and most intense fighting.”

He added that the attack was repelled after the Houthis had “set fire to (…) Jabal Han, the entire western front and residential neighbourhoods with shells and heavy artillery.”