2 Swedish teens are held in custody over blasts near Israeli Embassy in Copenhagen

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Two Swedish teenagers were jailed Thursday in pre-trial detention in connection with two predawn explosions in the vicinity of the Israeli Embassy in Copenhagen a day earlier.

Prosecutors said investigators were establishing “whether the motive could be a terror attack.” No one was injured in the blasts on early Wednesday in a neighborhood with several foreign diplomatic missions, though the nearby Jewish school was closed following the explosions.

The pair, who cannot be identified under a court order, were ordered held for 27 days. They faced preliminary charges of possessing illegal weapons and carrying five hand grenades. Two of the grenades blew up when the suspects threw them at a house near the embassy, prosecutor Søren Harbo said.

“This was pretty close to the Israeli Embassy,” Harbo said before Thursday's court hearing. The explosions caused damage to a roof terrace of a nearby house. The diplomatic mission was not harmed.

Thursday's hearing was held behind closed doors after the preliminary charges were read. Reporting from inside the court room, Danish 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.”

Both denied the charges, local media reported.

The two suspects were arrested Wednesday shortly before noon on a train at Copenhagen’s central station. Danish media ran photos of a man in a white hazmat suit being taken away by police on a train platform at the station. A third suspect, aged 19, who had been arrested near the embassy, has been released, police said Thursday.

In Denmark, the charges are one step short of formal charges and allow authorities to keep criminal suspects in custody during an investigation.

In Stockholm, the operative of Sweden’s domestic security agency SAPO, Fredrik Hallström, said “the latest incident at the Israeli embassy is not classified as a terrorist crime at the moment.” His counterpart at the Swedish police’s National Operations Department, Johan Olsson, told the same press conference that the charges were of “aggravated weapons offenses, causing danger or other serious illegal threats and damage.”

Separately, shots were fired late Tuesday at the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm. No one was injured. No arrests have been made.

Copenhagen Police investigate two explosions near the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (Emil Nicolai Helms/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)

Military police officers stand guard as police investigate two explosions near the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (Emil Nicolai Helms/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)

Police investigate explosions near the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (Emil Helms/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)

2 Swedish teens are held in custody over blasts near Israeli Embassy in Copenhagen

2 Swedish teens are held in custody over blasts near Israeli Embassy in Copenhagen

A police vehicle is seen near the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen, as police investigate two explosions near the site, on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (Emil Helms/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)

BEIRUT (AP) — The Israeli military on Thursday warned people to evacuate a city and other communities in southern Lebanon that are north of a U.N.-declared buffer zone, signaling that it may widen a ground operation launched earlier this week against the Hezbollah militant group.

Israel has told people to leave Nabatieh, a provincial capital, and other communities north of the Litani River, which formed the northern edge of the border zone established by the U.N. Security Council after the 2006 war in a resolution that both sides accuse the other of violating.

At least eight Israeli soldiers have been killed in clashes with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, where Israel announced the start of what it says is a limited ground incursion earlier this week. The region was meanwhile bracing for Israeli retaliation following an Iranian ballistic missile attack.

The Lebanese Red Cross said an Israeli strike wounded four of its paramedics and killed a Lebanese army soldier as they were evacuating wounded people from the south. It said the convoy near the village of Taybeh, which was accompanied by Lebanese troops, was targeted Thursday despite coordinating its movements with U.N. peacekeepers. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

An Israeli airstrike on an apartment in central Beirut late Wednesday killed nine people, including seven Hezbollah-affiliated civilian first responders. Israel has been pounding areas of the country where the militant group has a strong presence since late September, but has rarely struck in the heart of the capital.

There was no warning before the strike late Wednesday, which hit an apartment not far from the United Nations headquarters, the prime minister’s office and parliament. Hezbollah’s civil defense unit said seven of its members were killed. Lebanon's Health Ministry said a total of nine people were killed.

Residents reported a sulfur-like smell following strike in Beirut, and Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency accused Israel of using phosphorous bombs, without providing evidence. Human rights groups have in the past accused Israel of using white phosphorus incendiary shells on towns and villages in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hezbollah has an armed wing with tens of thousands of fighters but it also has a political movement and a network of charities staffed by civilians.

The escalating violence in Lebanon has opened a second front in the war between Israel and Iran-backed militants that began nearly a year ago with Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 attack from the Gaza Strip into Israel.

The Israeli military said Thursday that it killed a senior Hamas leader in an airstrike in the Gaza Strip around three months ago. It said that a strike on an underground compound in northern Gaza killed Rawhi Mushtaha and two other Hamas commanders.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas. Mushtaha was a close associate of Yahya Sinwar, the top leader of Hamas who helped mastermind the Oct. 7 attack. Sinwar is believed to be alive and in hiding inside Gaza.

In recent weeks, Israelis strikes in Lebanon have killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and several of his top commanders. Hundreds more airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon since mid-September have killed at least 1,276 people, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

The Israeli military said Thursday that it had struck around 200 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and observation posts. It said the strikes killed at least 15 Hezbollah fighters. There was no independent confirmation.

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes, as Israel has warned people to evacuate from around 50 villages and towns in the south, telling them to relocate to areas that are around 60 kilometers (36 miles) from the border and considerably farther north than the Litani River.

Under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the monthlong 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, the militants were to withdraw north of the Litani, and Lebanon's armed forces were to patrol the border region along with U.N. peacekeepers.

Israel says Hezbollah remained in the zone and built an extensive military infrastructure in towns and villages along the border, while Lebanon has accused Israel of violating other parts of the resolution.

Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah after nearly a year of rocket attacks that began Oct. 8 and displaced some 60,000 Israelis from communities in the north. Israel has carried out retaliatory strikes over the past year that have displaced tens of thousands on the Lebanese side.

The vast majority of recent strikes have been in areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence, including the southern suburbs of Beirut known as the Dahiyeh. But Israel has also carried out strikes in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, and a strike in central Beirut earlier this week killed three members of a leftist Palestinian militant group.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen said they had launched two drones at Tel Aviv overnight. The military said it identified two drones off the coast of the bustling metropolitan area, shooting one of them down while the other fell in the Mediterranean Sea.

Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis are part of the Iran-led Axis of Resistance, which also includes armed groups in Syria and Iraq. They have launched attacks on Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians, drawing retaliation in a cycle that has repeatedly threatened to set off a wider war.

The region once again appears on the brink of such a conflict after Iran’s missile attack on Tuesday, which it said was a response to the killing of Nasrallah, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general who was with him, and Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, who was killed in an explosion in Tehran in July that was widely blamed on Israel.

Both Israel and the United States have said there will be severe consequences for the missile attack, which lightly wounded two people and killed a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank. The United States has rushed military assets to the region in support of Israel.

This story has been corrected to show that the four Red Cross paramedics were wounded in an Israeli strike, not killed.

Jeffery reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press staff writers Abby Sewell and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut and Zeina Karam in London contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

A man documents the damaged buildings at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

A woman reacts in front an apartment in a multistory building hit by Israeli airstrike, in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Hezbollah paramedic stuff left on the debris after an airstrike hit an apartment in a multistory building, in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Hezbollah paramedics walk between debris after an airstrike hit an apartment in a multistory building, in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Lebanese women stand in front an apartment in a multistory building hit by Israeli airstrike, in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)