- United States President Donald Trump says in an interview he wants to “take the oil in Iran” as Tehran accuses Washington plotting a ground attack despite publicly pushing for a negotiated deal.
- Kuwait says an Indian worker has been killed in an Iranian attack on a power and desalination plant, as Gulf states report intercepting drones and missiles.
- US-Israeli strikes hit a petrochemical plant in Iran’s Tabriz and knock out power across parts of Tehran, as Iranian forces target an industrial zone in southern Israel, sparking a fire and fears of a chemical leak.
- Israel intercepts two drones fired by Yemen’s Houthis, as the UN reports the killing of a peacekeeper in an attack in southern Lebanon.
- Foreign ministers from Pakistan, Egypt, Turkiye and Saudi Arabia meet in Islamabad and say they are committed to paving a path to de-escalation in the US-Israel war.
- Visit our live tracker for the latest casualty figures from across the region.
Markets in Indonesia, Malaysia slide
The Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) has fallen anew after slightly recovering last week, hovering at about 7,060 as of 04:00 GMT on Monday, down 0.38 percent from the last trading day.
According to the Jakarta Globe, as of March 29, the IDX had already lost 31 trillion Indonesian rupiah ($1.8bn) in market capitalisation over the past week, as escalating tensions in Iran “drove oil prices higher and triggered capital outflows from equities”.
Following the decline, the IDX’s total market capitalisation stood at 12,547 trillion rupiah ($740.9bn).
Malaysia’s FTSE is also down by about 23.44 points to 1,689.21 as of 04:00 GMT on Monday, about 1.37 percent than previous trading.
What does Netanyahu’s declaration mean on the ground inside Lebanon?
The Israeli prime minister has confirmed what we’ve been hearing from other senior Israeli politicians, signifying their intention to create what they have called a security zone in southern Lebanon, stretching all the way to the Litani River.
In some places, the river is only a couple of kilometres from the Israeli border. In others, it stretches as much as 30 kilometres deep into southern Lebanon.
The Israelis have issued sweeping, forced evacuation orders, covering everyone living, not just south of the Litani River, but all the way up to the Zahrani River. And those orders, combined with the ones that are still in place for the southern suburbs of Beirut, means that more than 1 million Lebanese are currently displaced.
In terms of the ongoing Israeli ground invasion across the south, there’s been activity at multiple locations over the past 24 hours, from the town of Naghoura and the villages to the north there, and along the coastline, and then all the way to the east.
We’re still seeing activity in and around the town of Khiam. Just in the last couple of hours, Hezbollah has claimed once again that they targeted Israeli troops that are operating in and around the detention centre in Khiam with a rocket barrage, and we’ve seen them claiming attacks on Israeli troops that are part of that ground operation inside Lebanon, and also Israeli settlements across the border and Israeli troop concentrations and sites in northern Israel as well.
So we are seeing a continued effort by Hezbollah to mount some form of resistance to this Israeli ground invasion. They say that they’ve been engaging with troops at multiple locations, so not just Khiam in the last couple of days, but also in and around the Naghoura and multiple locations across that border area where the Israelis are trying to push further and deeper into southern Lebanon.
