Latest news bulletin | October 4th – Midday
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00:00Israel extends evacuation orders in southern Lebanon as explosions continue in Beirut throughout the night.
00:10EU countries continue to evacuate their citizens from Lebanon as fighting between Israel and Hezbollah escalates.
00:20Two Swedish teenagers are arrested in connection with explosions near the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen on Wednesday.
00:31Volodymyr Zelensky appeals for better air defense cooperation in a bid to strengthen the front line before winter sets in.
00:44The Israeli military has warned people to evacuate communities in southern Lebanon,
00:50signaling that it may widen a ground operation launched earlier this week against Hezbollah.
00:55That announcement comes as a series of massive blasts were heard in the capital Beirut in the early hours of Friday morning.
01:03Israeli forces said they had struck around 200 Hezbollah targets with the IDF promising severe damage against Hezbollah will continue.
01:25Our forces are ready and ready to fight. They are well prepared for the battle in Gaza and their advantage in the battlefield is obvious.
01:35At least nine Israeli soldiers have been killed in clashes with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon,
01:40where Israel announced the start of what it says is a limited ground incursion.
01:45Meanwhile, the World Health Organization says its staff are working in dire circumstances,
01:50with three dozen health facilities in Lebanon closed.
01:53In Lebanon alone, 28 health workers have been killed in the last 24 hours.
02:01Many health workers are not reporting to duty as they fled the areas where they work due to bombardments.
02:11This is severely limiting the provision of mass trauma management and continuity of health services.
02:19Israel says its targeting Hezbollah after nearly a year of rocket attacks that began on October 8th
02:26and displaced around 60,000 Israelis from communities in the north.
02:31Israel has carried out retaliatory strikes over the past year that have displaced tens of thousands on the Lebanese side.
02:37EU countries have continued to evacuate their citizens from Lebanon as hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah escalate.
02:50Germany flew another 130 of its citizens out of the country on board a military plane that landed in Frankfurt.
02:57The German foreign ministry said in a post on X that the evacuation plane also brought five tons of aid,
03:04particularly medical equipment, into the Lebanese capital.
03:08Greece also sent a military transport plane to Beirut on Thursday to bring home both Greek and Cypriot nationals who wanted to leave Lebanon.
03:17The C-130, carrying 38 Cypriots and 22 Greeks, landed in Cyprus before heading to a military airfield near Athens later in the day.
03:27Greece's foreign ministry says it has established hotlines for its citizens living in Lebanon to call if they require assistance in leaving the country.
03:36Spain evacuated the first group of its citizens on Thursday, bringing 250 people home on board two military planes which landed at an airbase near the capital, Madrid.
03:47The Spanish foreign ministry said the situation in Lebanon is so serious that part of the embassy staff will also be airlifted out of Beirut on a second plane,
03:57leaving only a skeleton staff behind to carry out essential diplomatic work.
04:02And France has also started evacuating its citizens with the first group arriving on one of four flights that landed at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.
04:11The French embassy in Lebanon has reportedly negotiated two additional flights to Paris with the Lebanese national airline MEA.
04:19Meanwhile, flag carrier Air France says it suspended all passenger flights to Lebanon until at least the 8th of October.
04:26Two Swedish teenagers have been arrested at Copenhagen train station in connection with two explosions near the Israeli embassy in the Danish capital on Wednesday.
04:42No one was injured in the pre-dawn blasts which happened in a neighbourhood that's home to several foreign diplomatic missions.
04:49The pair were ordered to be held in pre-trial detention for 27 days.
04:53They faced preliminary charges of possessing illegal weapons and carrying five hand grenades.
04:59Two of the grenades blew up when the suspects threw them at a house near the embassy, but the Israeli mission wasn't damaged.
05:06Danish broadcaster DR said the teenagers, aged 16 and 19, are suspected of acting in association and together with prior agreement with one or more perpetrators.
05:17Denmark's prime minister said it was becoming increasingly dangerous to be a Jew in Europe.
05:23Anti-Semitism is on the rise. I can't take enough distance from it.
05:30I would like to say to both the Danish Jews and everyone else in their well-being, luckily there are a lot of us,
05:38that the authorities are doing everything they can to take care of the Jewish minority in Denmark.
05:44This comes after shots were fired late on Tuesday at the Israeli embassy in Stockholm.
05:49No one was injured and no arrests have been made.
05:53The Danish domestic security service PET said that Swedish authorities had assessed that that attack had links to Iran.
06:06Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has appealed to Western allies for better cooperation in combating Russian airstrikes during his nightly video address.
06:15Zelensky said it was important to strengthen frontline defences before the onset of the bitter Ukrainian winter.
06:45It is important to work in the skies of our part of Europe, in Ukraine, as well as helping to save lives.
06:52Those comments come on the same day that new NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte visited Kyiv and pledged the alliance's continued support.
07:01The NATO chief vowed when he took office on Tuesday to help shore up Western support for Ukraine,
07:07which has been fighting Russia's full-scale invasion since February 2022.
07:11Rutte also said recent steps had been taken to build a bridge to NATO membership for Ukraine,
07:17including 40 billion euros of funding assistance and bilateral security agreements.
07:24Meanwhile, evacuations continue for people living in the eastern city of Dnipro.
07:29Officials there say more than 2,500 people have passed through the transit point for internally displaced people since the end of August.
07:38Local media say Russian forces attacked three districts in the region several times on Thursday using artillery and drones, injuring three people.
07:51The victims of the 2023 train accident in Greece have expressed their strong disagreement
07:57with the candidacy of the Greek Apostolos Gigikostas as Commissioner for Transport.
08:02In February 2023, 57 people, mainly university students, were killed in a train crash in Tempi.
08:10Since then, victims' relatives have claimed that the government is trying to cover up the case,
08:16which is now being investigated by the judiciary.
08:19The Tempi 2023 Association sent a letter to the President of the European Commission.
08:24What we want to emphasize is that the documents that are being given to Greeks
08:33who belong to the ruling party for a case that is under development and concerns the government,
08:40are completely absurd. We do not understand their logic and we believe that there is a conflict of interest.
08:48Maria Karistiano was in Brussels to denounce also the choice of MEP Elisa Vosenberg as Chair of the Transport Committee of the European Party.
08:57She says these nominations are aimed at avoiding accountability for the rail tragedy.
09:02Speaking to Euronews, Vosenberg has denied the allegations.
09:18We will coordinate the government in a collusion or in a discrediting of the facts that should be made public.
09:28On the 4th of November, the European Parliament will start the hearings of the designated commissioners
09:34to approve them for the job or reject them.
09:40The electric car market in Europe is not taking off and the industry already seems to be in crisis.
09:45An example of this is the Audi plant in Brussels.
09:49A factory founded in 1948 and renovated with cutting edge, low emission technologies.
09:55After 2025, production of the SUV Q8 e-tron, the electric flagship model,
10:01that is on sale in Belgium for 80,000 euros, will be stopped.
10:05But the unions are on a war footing.
10:08With the loss of 3,000 jobs plus another 1,000 in related industries,
10:12they are preparing new strikes and criticizing the strategies of the car brands.
10:16The car manufacturers wanted to make a lot of money on the electric car market.
10:22They did not accept that the phrase of transition is less profitable.
10:28So they bet everything on very luxurious, very expensive models that European citizens can not afford to buy.
10:33So we have a European overcapacity that makes groups like Volkswagen want to close sites in Belgium and Germany.
10:47which are much cheaper than European ones.
10:49On top of that, new investment projects are planned for the industry.
11:17In the first eight months of 2024, just over 902,000 electric cars were purchased in European Union countries,
11:23which represents only 12.6% of the total.
11:27Petrol cars, on the other hand, are still bestsellers.