BBC News Briefing

10 March, 2026

Sofia has long brown hair and brown eyes and is wearing a green top

Sofia Lotto Persio

Hello. The Ramada Plaza hotel in central Beirut has been damaged following an Israeli strike on 8 March. My colleague Alice Cuddy reports on the attack's aftermath. In the latest episode of From Our Own Correspondent, Lucy Ash attends the last event put on by an Israeli-Palestinian restaurant in Berlin before it shuts down. And finally, see Death Valley in bloom.

TOP OF THE AGENDA

Lebanon's president calls for direct talks

Two women wearing black hijabs stand near the damaged Ramada Plaza hotel following an Israeli strike that the Israeli military says killed four Iranian Revolutionary Guards, in Raouche, Beirut.

Nearly 500 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israeli air strikes resumed a week ago, according to official figures. Credit: EPA

Israel's air strike on the four-star Ramada Plaza hotel marked the first time in this war that Beirut's city centre was struck. Lebanon's president has since called for direct talks with Israel to end the escalating conflict with Hezbollah. The Israeli army said the strike killed five men working for Iran's elite Quds Force, the overseas operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Lebanon's health ministry said four people had been killed and 10 injured, but it did not identify them. Iran's mission to the UN in New York published a letter accusing Israel of what it called an "assassination of four diplomats of the Islamic Republic of Iran". While the strike hit only a small area of the hotel, bystanders were among those injured and fear spread through the local community, Alice Cuddy reports.

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AT THE SCENE

Berlin, Germany

Bridging divides at the dining table

the window front of the Kanaan restaurant in Berlin. Some outside tables are arranged on top of the other while a poster displays a rainbow flag with a peace sign drawn above it, along with the words 'make hummus not war'

Based in Berlin's fashionable Prenzlauer Berg district, Kanaan has faced rising costs and fewer customers. Credit: Getty

From Our Own Correspondent: Kanaan, a renowned restaurant that cast itself as a symbol of breaking bread across religious and political divides has just gone out of business. During Kanaan's "Last Supper", news of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's death brought a reminder of the conflicts from which the restaurant tried to offer respite.

Lucy Ash, BBC News

For the past decade, Kanaan has been a fixture in Berlin’s fashionable Prenzlauer Berg district. Named after the Old Testament’s Promised Land, a region spanning parts of modern-day Israel through to western Jordan, it was never just somewhere to eat. Its founders, Oz Ben David, an Israeli, and Jalil Dabit, a Palestinian, insisted their 120-seat dining room was a place to promote co-existence and break down barriers.

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Both Israeli citizens, the owners could not be more different. Oz is the grandson of Holocaust survivors, raised among right-wing Jewish settlers, while Jalil is a Palestinian from Ramla, near Tel Aviv, a Muslim and the son of a communist. They met trying to import tahini into German supermarkets. “We managed not just to build a business together, which is amazing and crazy - we also created a vision for the future,” said Oz.

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