Broadcaster Al Jazeera says an Israeli military raid on its Ramallah offices is "criminal" and it will not be "intimidated or deterred by efforts to silence its coverage".
Some 12 hours after the raid that was broadcast live, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released a statement alleging, without evidence, that the office in the West Bank was "being used to incite terror" and "support terrorist activities".
Al Jazeera described the IDF's accusations as "unfounded allegations".
The Qatar-based channel aired live footage of Israeli troops storming the channel's office and handing over a military order for it to close for 45 days before the broadcast was disrupted.
It broadcast live from Amman, Jordan, even as Israeli troops welded shut its office doors in Ramallah and confiscated its equipment.
According to reporting on the Al Jazeera website, masked and heavily armed Israeli soldiers entered the building and handed the order to bureau chief of Jerusalem and Ramallah Walid al-Omari.
They did not provide a reason for the decision, according to Al Jazeera.
"There is a court ruling for closing down Al Jazeera for 45 days," a soldier told al-Omari as Al Jazeera Arabic broadcast the conversation live.
"I ask you to take all the cameras and leave the office at this moment."
In a statement, the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate condemned the Israeli move, saying "this arbitrary military decision is considered a new violation against journalistic and media works, which has been exposing the occupation's crimes against the Palestinian people".
The move marked the first time Israel has ever shuttered a foreign news outlet operating in the country, however, Al Jazeera continues operating in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.
[Datawrapper map]On Saturday, at least 22 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a school that was housing displaced people in Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry said.
In May, Israeli authorities raided a Jerusalem hotel room used by Al Jazeera as its office after the government decided to shut down the AL Jazeera TV station's local operations, saying it threatened national security.
Hezbollah targets base near Haifa after Israeli strike in Beirut
The closure of Al Jazeera's Ramallah office comes as tensions continue to rise over a possible expansion of the war to Lebanon, where electronic devices exploded last week in a likely sabotage campaign by Israel targeting the Shiite militia Hezbollah.
The explosions killed at least 37 people — including two children — and wounded around 3,000 others.
Overnight, Hezbollah announced that it fired a barrage of missiles at a military base deep inside Israel following an Israeli air strike more than a day earlier that killed at least 37 people, including one of the militant group's senior leaders as well as women and children.
It was not immediately clear if any of the rockets had hit their target but Israel's emergency medical services reported that a man was lightly wounded.
Local media reported that rockets shot from Lebanon were intercepted in the areas of Haifa and Nazareth.
The Israeli military said only that it had monitored the launch of "about ten rockets" from Lebanon, of which most were intercepted.
Hezbollah said it had launched "dozens of Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles" — a new type of weapon the group had not used before — at the Ramat David airbase, south-east of Haifa, "in response to the repeated Israeli attacks that targeted various Lebanese regions and led to the fall of many civilian martyrs."
