TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — A powerful typhoon made landfall in Taiwan on Thursday, killing two people and bringing high winds and floods to much of the island’s east coast and northern areas, after barreling past the northern Philippines.
Flights and train service were suspended in Taiwan and 8,600 people moved to shelters.
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In this photo released by Hualien County Fire Department, police check an area destroyed by the wind from Typhoon Kong-rey in Hualien County, eastern Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (Hualien County Fire Department via AP)
In this photo released by Hualien County Fire Department, police check an area destroyed by the wind from Typhoon Kong-rey in Hualien County, eastern Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hualien County Fire Department)
In this photo released by Hualien County Fire Department, a blown roof destroyed by the wind of Typhoon Kong-rey, lay across a road in Hualien County, eastern Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (Hualien County Fire Department via AP)
In this photo released by Hualien County Fire Department, police check a blown roof destroyed by the wind of Typhoon Kong-rey in Hualien County, eastern Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (Hualien County Fire Department via AP)
A woman walks her dog as Typhoon Kong-rey approaches to Taiwan in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
A man rides motorbike as Typhoon Kong-rey approaches in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
A man struggles with his umbrella against gusts of wind generated by Typhoon Kong-rey in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
A man struggles with his umbrella against gusts of wind generated by Typhoon Kong-rey in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
A woman struggles with wind and rain generated by Typhoon Kong-rey in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
People walk in the rain as Typhoon Kong-rey approaches to Taiwan in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
Typhoon Kong-rey was blowing at 184 kilometers per hour (114 miles per hour) with gusts of up to 227 kph (141 mph) as it moved over the eastern county of Taitung. Parts of Yilan and Hualien counties were inundated by heavy rain, but many farmers in the largely rural areas had already brought in their crops in anticipation of damage from the storm.
Kong-rey's winds weakened to 144 kph (89 mph) as of Thursday night, according to Taiwan's Central Weather Administration, and the center of the storm moved off the main island. It is expected to move northeast and will hit Taiwan's outlying islands.
Taiwan authorities reported two dead and 205 injuries from the storm as of Thursday afternoon. One of the deaths occurred when a tree fell on a vehicle. Taipei police reported that another person was killed when an electricity pole fell over, according to Taiwan's Central News Agency.
Officials also said they were trying to contact a pair of Czech tourists who had been hiking in Hualien's Tarako National Park, famed for its steep cliffs and mountain trails. Other travelers were advised to stay where they were.
The capital, Taipei, was largely shut down as it was hit by high winds and heavy rains. Offices and schools across the island were closed. Off the north coast, a tugboat was dispatched to tow a Chinese-registered freighter that floundered and had been abandoned by its crew amid heavy seas.
Earlier Thursday, the typhoon’s eye blew about 110 kilometers (68 miles) east of the northernmost Philippine province of Batanes, a cluster of islands and islets of about 19,000 people. Villagers in northern Philippine provinces evacuated to shelters on Wednesday.
The Philippines weather agency had warned the the storm could blow away roofs and shatter windows and wreak extensive damage to farmland, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.
“It’s so, so powerful and we haven’t seen the extent of the damage yet because the wind outside is still so strong,” Batanes Governor Marilou Cayco told The Associated Press by cellphone before the line was cut off.
Kong-rey, the 12th weather disturbance to hit the Philippine archipelago this year, lashed the Southeast Asian nation while it's still recovering from a storm last week that left 179 dead and missing. Hundreds of thousands of people are still in emergency shelters from Tropical Storm Trami.
China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory and regularly sends planes and warships around the island, largely suspended its patrols, with just eight planes detected around the island between Wednesday and Thursday, according to Taiwan's Defense Ministry.
AP writer Jim Gomez contributed from Manila, Philippines.
In this photo released by Hualien County Fire Department, police check an area destroyed by the wind from Typhoon Kong-rey in Hualien County, eastern Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (Hualien County Fire Department via AP)
In this photo released by Hualien County Fire Department, police check an area destroyed by the wind from Typhoon Kong-rey in Hualien County, eastern Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hualien County Fire Department)
In this photo released by Hualien County Fire Department, a blown roof destroyed by the wind of Typhoon Kong-rey, lay across a road in Hualien County, eastern Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (Hualien County Fire Department via AP)
In this photo released by Hualien County Fire Department, police check a blown roof destroyed by the wind of Typhoon Kong-rey in Hualien County, eastern Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (Hualien County Fire Department via AP)
A woman walks her dog as Typhoon Kong-rey approaches to Taiwan in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
A man rides motorbike as Typhoon Kong-rey approaches in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
A man struggles with his umbrella against gusts of wind generated by Typhoon Kong-rey in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
A man struggles with his umbrella against gusts of wind generated by Typhoon Kong-rey in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
A woman struggles with wind and rain generated by Typhoon Kong-rey in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
People walk in the rain as Typhoon Kong-rey approaches to Taiwan in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
Hours apart, series of barrages from Lebanon struck northern Israel on Thursday, killing a total of seven people, including four foreign workers. The attacks marked the deadliest strikes to hit Israel since its military invaded southern Lebanon earlier this month.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military warned people to evacuate from more areas of southern Lebanon as airstrikes across the country killed at least eight. Also Thursday, Palestinian officials said an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank killed three people.
The Israeli military said its forces were targeting militants in the area of the Nur Shams refugee camp, which has seen repeated battles in recent months. The military said it eliminated a Hamas militant who was involved in planning attacks on Israelis.
The developments come as mediators are ramping up efforts to halt the wars in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, circulating new proposals to wind down the regional conflict.
Hezbollah’s newly named leader, Naim Kassem, said the militant group will keep fighting in its war with Israel until it is offered cease-fire terms it deems acceptable.
Some 1.2 million people have been displaced by the conflict in Lebanon, according to government estimates. Lebanon’s Heath Ministry said more than 2,800 people have been killed and 12,900 wounded since Oct. 8, 2023, when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel, drawing retaliation. Israeli ground forces invaded southern Lebanon at the beginning of October.
The death toll from more than a year of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has passed 43,000, Palestinian officials reported Monday, without distinguishing between civilians and combatants. The war began after Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others.
Here’s the latest:
BEIRUT — The U.N. children’s agency is calling for an immediate cease-fire, saying that at least one child has been killed in Lebanon each day this month and at least 10 have been wounded.
“The ongoing war in Lebanon is upending children’s lives, and in many cases, inflicting severe physical wounds and deep emotional scars,” UNICEF said in a statement Thursday.
Lebanon’s health ministry says 166 children have been killed and at least 1,168 children have been wounded since the conflict began last year.
“This devastating tally grows by the day,” UNICEF said.
The agency says that thousands children who have survived bombings and attacks are displaying alarming signs of emotional, behavioral and physical distress, such as disrupted sleep, loss of appetite, overwhelming fear, increased anxiety, aggression and difficulty concentrating.
UNICEF said it has reached thousands of children and caregivers with psychological first aid and support since the escalation began last month.
“But true healing can only begin when the violence ends," the agency said.
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel’s rescue service said projectiles fired from Lebanon killed two more people in northern Israel on Thursday, just hours after the deadliest rocket barrage to hit the country since the Israeli military’s invasion of southern Lebanon killed five.
Magen David Adom, Israel’s main emergency medical organization, said its medics confirmed the deaths of a 30-year-old man and 60-year-old woman in a suburb of the northern city of Haifa. They also treated two other people who suffered mild injuries and were hospitalized.
The Israeli military said that roughly 25 rockets crossed into Israel from Lebanon as part of the volley that struck an olive grove where people had gathered for the harvest.
The deadly attack came just hours after officials in Metula, in northern Israel, said that five people were killed, including four foreign workers, in a rocket barrage Thursday that struck an Israeli agricultural area.
The back-to-back attacks made Thursday one of the deadliest days for civilians in Israel since the Israeli military invaded southern Lebanon on Oct. 1 as part of a widening campaign against the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group.
Hezbollah began firing on Israel in October 2023 in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. The conflict escalated from a regular but restrained exchange of cross-border fire into an Israeli military ground operation and airstrikes inside Lebanon. The Israeli campaign over the past year has killed over 2,800 people in Lebanon, according to the country’s health authorities.
LONDON — Ireland’s military says a base for Irish peacekeeping troops in southern Lebanon was hit by a rocket fired towards Israel. No one was injured.
Lt. Gen. Sean Clancy, chief of staff of Ireland’s defense forces, said the Katyusha rocket landed in an unoccupied area of Camp Shamrock on Wednesday, causing “minimal damage.”
He said the rocket was travelling towards Israel, and it was unclear whether it fell or was taken down by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.
About 350 Irish soldiers are currently deployed as peacekeepers with the United Nations mission Lebanon known as UNIFIL.
Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris described the incident as “extremely serious” and said not enough was being done to protect peacekeeping troops amid the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
“I really reiterate my call in relation to the need for people to respect international law and respect the specific protections that are provided to peacekeepers in relation to that,” he said.
JERUSALEM -- Israel’s military said Thursday that it struck Hezbollah weapons depots and bases in Syria.
According to a military statement, the air force hit targets near Qusair, a city in western Syria along the border with Lebanon. The military claims Hezbollah recently began storing weapons along the Syrian-Lebanese border in an attempt to smuggle arms into Lebanon.
Since the start of Israel’s ground invasion into Lebanon, the military has struck border crossings between Lebanon and Syria multiple times, claiming they served as arms-smuggling routes. The strikes, humanitarian groups say, intensified an already severe humanitarian crisis by blocking key routes for supplies and impeding access for those fleeing to safety.
Three of the six official border crossings between the two countries have closed as a result of airstrikes, forcing people fleeing from Lebanon to take long detours or cross on foot.
DEIR AL-AHMAR, Lebanon — Thousands of Lebanese have flocked to a Christian area in the eastern Bekaa Valley after Israel warned civilians to leave the city of Baalbek and surrounding areas ahead of airstrikes this week.
Jean Fakhry, head of the Union of Municipalities of the area of Deir al-Ahmar, described a “massive human influx” in the wake of the warning, with the road turning "into a parking lot.”
"This is the first time we’ve witnessed such a major disaster,” Fakhry said.
About 12,000 displaced people are now staying in the area — about 2,500 of them in shelters and the rest hosted in private homes, he said.
At one of the shelters, displaced families were still arriving toting luggage on Thursday while women cooked and tidied up mattresses and blankets.
“Our homes were destroyed,” said Zahraa Younis, from the village of Bouday. “We came with nothing — no clothes or anything else — and took shelter here.”
Fadwa Qasim from the village of Douris said, her family came with their neighbors.
“We hope the situation calms down so we can return to our homes, if we still have homes,” she said. "My children are scattered, each in a different area.”
Lebanese officials estimate that 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon as a result of the ongoing war.
JERUSALEM — Projectiles fired from Lebanon into northern Israel killed five people on Thursday, including four foreign workers, authorities said. It was the deadliest such attack since Israeli troops invaded Lebanon earlier this month to battle the Hezbollah militant group.
Hezbollah has been firing rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel for more than a year, drawing retaliatory strikes. Sixty-eight people have been killed in rocket attacks in northern Israel since the conflict began last year.
The Metula regional council reported the attack. The nationalities of the workers were not immediately known.
Metula, Israel’s northernmost town, which is surrounded by Lebanon on three sides, has suffered heavy damage from rockets. The town’s residents evacuated in October 2023, and only security officials and agricultural workers remain.
BEIRUT — The Israeli military has warned people to evacuate from more areas of southern Lebanon, including a built-up Palestinian refugee camp. Israeli airstrikes, meanwhile, killed at least eight people in different parts of the country on Thursday.
The Rashidiyeh refugee camp near the port city of Tyre is one of several dating back to the 1948 Mideast war, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven out of what is now Israel.
Israel invaded Lebanon at the start of October, after nearly a year of trading fire with Hezbollah. The militant group began firing rockets, missiles and drones on northern Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack triggered the war in Gaza. Iran backs both groups.
Israel has warned people to evacuate from large areas of the country, including major cities in the south and east. Over a million people have already fled their homes.
Israeli strikes killed seven people in eastern Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News agency. Another strike killed a man on a motorcycle on the coastal highway between Tyre and Sidon.
The news agency also reported a strike on a car on a main highway running through the mountains outside the capital, Beirut. It said the strike closed the highway, diverting traffic through nearby villages. There was no immediate word on casualties.
JERUSALEM — Israeli police said Thursday they have arrested a couple accused of spying on Israeli intelligence sites and collecting information on an Israeli academic on behalf of Iran.
Israeli security services say they have uncovered several Iranian spy networks in recent months. The two archenemies have waged a long-running shadow war that has burst into the open since the outbreak of the war in Gaza. They exchanged fire directly for the first time in April and then again this month.
In a statement released Thursday, the police and the Shin Bet internal security agency said that the man arrested, Rafael Guliev, from the central city of Lod, had surveilled Israel’s Mossad spy headquarters for the Iranians and collected information on an academic working at the Institute for National Security Studies, a prominent Israeli think tank. It did not identify the scholar.
The statement said Guliev was also entrusted with finding an assassin, though the statement did not make clear if he had actually done so.
Guliev’s wife, Lala, assisted in the activities, the statement said.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian officials said an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank killed at least three people.
The military said its forces were targeting militants in the area of the Nur Shams refugee camp, which has seen repeated battles in recent months. The military said it eliminated a Hamas militant in the area who was involved in planning attacks on Israelis.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said Thursday that two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike and third by Israeli gunfire.
Israel said its forces were still in the area.
At least 763 Palestinians, including over 165 children, have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered the war there, according to the Health Ministry.
Most appear to have been militants killed during army operations, but the dead also include civilian bystanders and people killed during violent protests.
Palestinians have carried out dozens of stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks against Israelis since the start of the war.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and the Palestinians want it to form the main part of their future state. Israel has built scores of settlements there that are now home to over 500,000 Israeli settlers.
The 3 million Palestinians in the territory live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority exercising limited self-rule in population centers.
Relatives of Palestinian Husam Mallah, 28 take the last look at his body in the morgue of a local hospital, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Relatives of Palestinian Husam Mallah, 28, center, Abdulaziz Abu al-Samen, 21, right and Ahmad Fahmawi, 19, in the morgue of a local hospital, as the Palestinian Health Ministry said two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike and a third by Israeli gunfire, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Israeli army units secure the parameter of the Nur Shams refugee camp during the ongoing army operation, after the Palestinian Health Ministry said two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike and a third by Israeli gunfire, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
An Israeli army bulldozer operates at the parameter of the Nur Shams refugee camp during the ongoing army operation, after the Palestinian Health Ministry said two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike and a third by Israeli gunfire, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Rescue workers use an excavator to clear the rubble of a destroyed building hit Tuesday night in an Israeli airstrike, as they search for victims, in Sarafand, southern Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
A civil defence worker searches for victims in the rubble of a destroyed building hit in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday night, in Sarafand, southern Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People watch Hezbollah's newly named leader Naim Kassem delivering a televised speech, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
President of Cyprus Nikos Christodoulides speaks to the media after meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
Israeli soldiers mourn during the funeral of reservist Yedidia Bloch, 31, at Mevo Horon settlement, West Bank, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. Bloch died on Tuesday 29 after he was injured in Lebanon. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Rescue workers use excavators to remove the rubble of a destroyed building that was hit Tuesday night in an Israeli airstrike, as they search for victims in Sarafand, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
