Israel said Saturday its military was prepared for any possible retaliatory attacks by Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah or Iran for the killings of their senior leaders.

The news comes amid claims in the Israeli media that there are situational assessments that Hezbollah could attack soon.

Both Hezbollah and Iran have been threatening to retaliate against Israel since a string of figures in Iran-backed militant groups were killed over a span of weeks. Those killings included the death of Hezbollah’s most senior military commander Fu’ad Shukr in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut at the end of July and the assassination of Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Asked about the threats of retaliation, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters Saturday that the military was prepared for any possible attack by either Hezbollah or Iran.

“We take our enemies’ threats seriously and we’ve been ready for a long period. We’re highly prepared both in the offense and defense, but above all, any threat toward the citizens of Israel we identify, we eliminate, and that’s how we’ll continue. Any development that will be, we’ll update the public immediately,” Hagari said.

Hagari was then pressed by a reporter from Israel’s state-run Kan 11 television channel, who said there were situational assessments that Hezbollah could attack soon. The IDF spokesperson did not say whether he was familiar with those assessments, nor did he give any indication of when an attack might be expected.

“We’ve been, like I said, we’ve been ready, first of all, both in offense and defense, for a long time. We operate to eliminate threats and will continue to do so. With any change or development, we will immediately update the public. Our mission is to defend the citizens of Israel,” Hagari said.

A major attack against Israel could risk disrupting the ceasefire talks that US officials have said were at an advanced stage prior to the assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran, which Iran has blamed on Israel. Israel hasn’t confirmed or denied responsibility.

There are currently 109 Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, including 36 believed to be dead, according to data from the Israeli government press office. This week, the bodies of six Israeli hostages were retrieved from tunnels in Gaza in an Israeli military operation in the city of Khan Younis.

Israel’s war in Gaza was launched after Hamas-led militants attacked the country on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli authorities. More than 40,200 people have died in Gaza during the war, according to Palestinian authorities.

German police have detained a suspect accused of stabbing to death three people at a music festival in the western city of Solingen on Friday in an attack which sent shockwaves through the country.

The suspect was detained at a refugee shelter following a major manhunt which saw authorities establish “extensive search measures” throughout the German state of North Rhine Westphalia and deploy special forces. Police had earlier arrested a 15-year-old boy in connection with the incident, but said he was not the alleged attacker.

“We have just recently arrested the real suspect. And now he’s being questioned and everything else is being clarified and then we can also say: Are we right? Do we have enough evidence? I can only tell you that it’s now more than just an assumption,“ Northrhine-Westfalia’s interior minister Herbert Reul told German public broadcaster ARD on Sunday.

“Not only did we have a lead on this person, we also found evidence,“ he added.

Prior to the suspect’s arrest, people in the city of Solingen had been warned to exercise caution and be on alert while the perpetrator remained on the run. For hours after the attack, authorities were unable to present a clear picture of what the suspect might look like.

Those killed have been revealed as two men aged 67 and 56, and a woman aged 56. Eight others were injured, including four with life-threatening injuries.

A motivation for the attack has not yet been determined but terrorism has not been ruled out.

While Islamic State claimed responsibility through its Amaq news service, it offered no evidence to back up its claim.

A police spokesman, Thorsten Fleiß, said the attacker specifically targeted the necks of his victims. “After evaluating the initial images, we assume that it was a very targeted attack on the neck,” he said during a press conference.

Several people were stabbed, apparently at random, in the attack at a central square in the city of Solingen on Friday evening, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) east of Düsseldorf, police said.

Crowds had gathered at the square in Solingen Friday to celebrate the “Festival of Diversity,” a three-day event marking the 650th anniversary of the city’s founding. Police say the attack happened close to the stage where a musical act was performing.

Eyewitness Lars Breitzke said the attack happened just meters away from him. Speaking to local newspaper the Solinger Tageblatt, Breitzke said he realized something was wrong by the expression on the face of the singer on stage. Then, he said, “a person just meters away from me fell down.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the attack as an “upsetting” and “terrible” event.

Friday’s attack came amid rising rates of knife crime in Germany, recently prompting the Interior Ministry to propose tightened laws to tackle the issue.

Police data shows that there were 8,951 incidents of knife crime that caused serious bodily harm in Germany in 2023 – 791 cases more than the previous year.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Officers from France’s anti-fraud office, attached to French customs, took him into custody Saturday evening after he arrived at Bourget Airport on a flight from Azerbaijan, BFMTV reported.

Durov, 39, was wanted under a French arrest warrant due to the lack of moderation on Telegram which led to it being used for money laundering, drug trafficking and sharing pedophilic content, according to BFMTV.

According to BFMTV, the Telegram founder had not regularly travelled to France and Europe since the arrest warrant was issued.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The Israeli military is striking what it says are “terror targets in Lebanon” after identifying that Hezbollah was “preparing to fire missiles and rockets toward Israeli territory.”

“A short while ago, the IDF identified the Hezbollah terrorist organization preparing to fire missiles and rockets toward Israeli territory,” Israel Defense Force spokesperson Daniel Hagari said early Sunday local time.

‎‏”In a self-defense act to remove these threats, the IDF is striking terror targets in Lebanon, from which Hezbollah was planning to launch their attacks on Israeli civilians,” Hagari added.

Flights from Tel Aviv airport in Israel will be temporarily suspended Sunday morning, the airport authority said, after the Israeli military said it is conducting pre-emptive strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Golan Regional Council has instructed all residents in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to remain near shelters until further notice, canceling agricultural, educational, and other public activity.

The Israeli military and Hezbollah have been exchanging fire for months, and the cross-border hostilities have raised the specter of a regional conflagration which have prompted intense diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tensions.

Israel’s latest strike aimed at Hezbollah targets in Lebanon come after its military said on Saturday that it was prepared for any possible retaliatory attacks by Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah or Iran for the killings of their senior leaders. The news comes amid claims in the Israeli media that there are situational assessments that Hezbollah could attack soon.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic and disturbing descriptions of sexual violence.

Ibrahim Salem, 34, said he felt a deep sense of dread when a soldier ordered him to undress during his captivity in Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman prison.

“They told me to strip,” the Palestinian said, reflecting on the torment he endured during his eight months in Israeli detention. “That’s when I knew I was beginning my journey to hell.”

He and other Palestinians at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia were handcuffed, blindfolded, and transported on trucks “like animals,” he recalled.

No one heard from him for eight months.

On May 23, Saja Mishreqi, a lawyer at the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), who represented Salem, was informed by the Israeli Supreme Court that he was in Ktzi’ot Prison, a detention facility in the Negev run by the Israel Prison Service (IPS). He was eventually released without charge on August 1.

Ordered to strip naked

During interrogations, Salem said, he would be asked: “Where are the hostages? Where are Hamas’ weapons? Are you Hamas? Are you Qassam (Hamas’ military wing)? Are you Islamic Jihad?”

Salem alleges to have been beaten, verbally abused, had hot water poured on him, and told by soldiers that the rest of his family had been killed.

But the worst part, he said, was the sexual abuse.

Salem said much of prisoners’ time in detention was spent in their underwear, but before each interrogation session, soldiers would order him to strip naked.

“They would bring the metal detector and run it all over our bodies, then they would hover it over private parts and hit me there,” he said. As he crouched in pain, naked, with five or six soldiers looking, he said he felt the troops violate him from behind.

“With the pain, I would lean forward. Then suddenly, they would push it (a baton) into my butt,” he said. “Inside.”

After interrogation, he was given only “seconds” to put his underwear back on, he said, adding that any perceived delay in doing so would result in another beating from the soldiers.

The IDF added that it “cannot address the conditions of his arrest and detention for most of that period,” noting that misconduct during detention is “contrary to the law and IDF orders, and is therefore strictly prohibited.”

Salem was released to the Gaza Strip on August 1 after an assessment found that releasing him wouldn’t pose a risk to national security, the IDF said, adding that he was brought before a judge in a district court for a judicial review during his detention.

Taunted with pictures of exhumed bodies

Salem said an interrogator showed him a picture of what he was led to believe were exhumed remains of six family members he had buried in the yard of Kamal Adwan Hospital. Salem said the interrogator taunted him, making him count six bodies in the picture.

“On what grounds do you take away bodies and desecrate them?” Salem recalled telling the interrogator. “These bodies are ours. We need to bury them.”

The interrogator responded that the bodies “might be hostages” abducted by Hamas on October 7, to which Salem said he responded, crying: “My nephews, are they hostages? Five years old?”

More than 40,200 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 93,000 injured in Israel’s assault on the strip, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Leaked surveillance footage last month from the Sde Teiman prison provided a rare glimpse into the facility.

CCTV video obtained by Israel’s Channel 12 showed Israeli soldiers selecting one of more than two dozen Palestinian detainees lying on the ground. Behind a wall of shields obstructing the view of security cameras, the soldiers allegedly sodomize the detainee. The victim was taken to a hospital with injuries to his rectum, according to Israeli non-profit organization Physicians for Human Rights Israel. The Israeli military has declined to comment on the video.

Shortly after the incident, 10 Israeli soldiers were arrested over the alleged abuse of a Palestinian detainee at the facility, according to IDF. Five have so far been released, and five are under house arrest.

‘Systematic policies’

Mishreqi said that Salem was detained under Israel’s controversial Unlawful Combatants Law, which rights watchdog Human Rights Watch has said “strips away meaningful judicial review and due process rights.”

The law permits the military to detain people for up to 30 days without a detention order, after which they must be transferred to prison, according to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), a Jerusalem-based non-governmental organization (NGO). Over 4,000 Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip have been detained by Israel since the war began, PCATI said in a report last month, adding that the law deprives detainees of their rights as prisoners of war and the protections for civilian populations under humanitarian law in occupied territories.

As of April, more than 9,500 Palestinians were being held in Israeli prisons, including more than 3,500 without charge, according to Addameer Prisoner’s Support and Human Rights Association, a Palestinian NGO. The figure doesn’t include detainees from Gaza, the group said.

Salem is one of many former detainees who have recalled harrowing stories from their time in Israeli prisons to human rights groups and news outlets. Their testimonies have led to calls for reforms across all of Israel’s prisons.

Israel has greatly reduced the number of people being held at Sde Teiman in the wake of calls for its closure. In June, a state attorney told Israel’s Supreme Court that hundreds of Palestinian detainees have been transferred out of the facility.

A report published by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem this month documented “abuse and inhuman treatment of Palestinians” held in Israeli custody since October 7. The report, which collected testimonies from 55 Palestinians, showed “the rushed transformation of more than a dozen Israeli prison facilities, military and civilian, into a network of camps dedicated to the abuse of inmates as a matter of policy.” The IDF has repeatedly denied allegations of systematic abuse.

Salem said there were some 150 detainees with him in the second facility where he was held.

On the day of his release, Salem said he was taken to the Gaza border by the IDF but was told he couldn’t return to his home in Jabalya, in northern Gaza. He is now living in a displacement camp in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

He has moved from detention tents to displacement tents throughout his ordeal, he said, and the memories of the abuse he said he experienced continue to live with him.

He has yet to reunite with his wife and children, who remain in northern Gaza, and can only communicate with them by phone. Two of his children require surgeries for injuries sustained in the Israeli airstrike, he said.