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At least 31 people were killed, including three children and seven women, in an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday, the Lebanese health ministry told a televised news conference on Saturday, according to Reuters.
It was previously believed that the strike had killed at least 14 people including a senior Hezbollah leader.
It is 6pm in Gaza, Tel Aviv and Beirut. We will be closing this blog soon, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Israel-Gaza war coverage here and on the Middle East here.
Here is a recap of the latest developments:
The death toll from Friday’s Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb has climbed to 37, the Lebanese health ministry said on Saturday. The number includes three children and seven women. Lebanon’s health minister Firass Abiad told reporters on Saturday that 68 people were also injured of whom 15 remain in hospital. Hezbollah-aligned transport minister Ali Hamieh told reporters at the scene of Friday’s strike that at least 23 people were still missing.
Hezbollah said overnight that those killed on Friday, in the deadliest strike in a year of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, included 16 of its members, and that senior leader Ibrahim Aqil and another top commander, Ahmed Wahbi, were among the dead.
The Israeli army, in posts on X, said Friday’s strike in Beirut hit an underground gathering of Aqil and senior commanders of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces, and had “almost completely dismantled” Hezbollah’s military chain of command.
Heavy cross-border strikes continued on Saturday, with Israeli warplanes carrying some of its heaviest bombardment in 11 months of fighting across Lebanon’s south and Hezbollah claiming rocket attacks on military targets in Israel’s north. Hezbollah said it fired rockets at two military positions in northern Israel on Saturday, as the Israeli military said it was carrying out new strikes against Hezbollah targets. In separate statements, the Iran-backed group said it fired “a salvo of Katyusha rockets” each at two Israeli barracks “in response” to Israeli attacks “on steadfast southern villages and civilian houses”.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Saturday said he was worried about escalation between Israel and Lebanon. Sullivan, speaking with reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, said he still sees a path to a ceasefire in Gaza but that the US is “not at a point right now where we’re prepared to put something on the table”.
Cyprus’s president called for restraint over escalating tensions in the Middle East in separate telephone conversations with the Lebanese and Israeli prime ministers on Saturday, his spokesperson Konstantinos Letymbiotis said in a statement. Cypriot president Nikos Christodoulides “expressed his strong concern” at the escalation of tension in the region said Letymbiotis.
Attacks on Lebanon this week showed that the Israeli government planned to spread the war to the region, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Saturday, calling on western countries to take “deterrent steps” against Israel’s actions. Erdoğan told a press conference on Saturday that Israel’s war in Gaza will top the agenda of his speech at the UN general assembly on Tuesday. “It is time for all countries with the mission of protecting world peace to come up with solutions that will stop Israel,” Erdoğan said.
Erdoğan also said he was prepared to meet with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, with whom Turkey severed relations in 2011, throwing its support behind rebels seeking to overthrow the Assad regime. Erdoğan said he was waiting for a response from Damascus in order to proceed with normalising ties.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Israel is committing “shameless crimes” against children, not combatants. Khamenei said Israel was not even hiding its different forms of “shameless crimes” in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria. It is not combating “fighting men, but ordinary people,” Khamenei told a group of envoys from Muslim countries in Tehran in remarks broadcast on state TV.
Also on Saturday, in a show of strength, Iran unveiled its “jihad” single-stage liquid-fuel ballistic missile with a high-explosive detachable warhead and a range of 1,000 km, according to state TV. The missiles were displayed, along with other military hardware, during a parade marking the anniversary of the start of the 1980-88 war with Iraq.
The dead from an Israeli strike on Saturday on a school turned shelter in the Palestinian territory’s largest city included “13 children and six women”, one of whom was pregnant, said civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal. The Gaza health ministry said at least 22 had died as a result of the strike. Israel’s military said in a statement that the air force had “conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command and control centre in Gaza City”. It said the target was “embedded inside” the Al Falah school, which is adjacent to the Al-Zaytoun school building which was hit.
At least 41,391 Palestinians have been killed and 95,760 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday. Gaza’s ministry of health does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, postponed his trip to the US by a day due to the security situation in the country’s north. Netanyahu was due to travel to New York on 24 September, during which he is expected to address the annual UN general assembly. He issued a short statement after the Beirut airstrike, saying: “Our goals are clear, and our actions speak for themselves.”
The UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, denounced the pager and walkie-talkie attacks in Lebanon, saying that they violated international law and could constitute a war crime. The UN’s political affairs chief, Rosemary DiCarlo, warned that if violence continues between Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah, then “we risk seeing a conflagration that could dwarf even the devastation and suffering witnessed so far”.
Israeli soldiers have been filmed pushing three apparently lifeless bodies from a rooftop during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Thursday. The incident took place in the town of Qabatiya in the northern West Bank, where the Israeli military has been carrying out large-scale raids since late August that the Palestinian health ministry says have killed dozens of people. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement: “This is a serious incident that does not coincide with IDF values and the expectations from IDF soldiers. The incident is under review.”
In the UK, several thousand people gathered in Liverpool city centre on Saturday to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and for the government to cease arms trading with Israel. Sky News reported that protesters carrying Palestinian flags and banners planned to march through the city centre towards the docks where the Labour party’s political conference will begin on Sunday. Organisers claimed it was the first ever national march for Palestine to take place outside London.
Here are some of the latest images that have been shared on the newswires today:
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Saturday said he was worried about escalation between Israel and Lebanon, reports Reuters.
Sullivan, speaking with reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, said he still sees a path to a ceasefire in Gaza but that the US is “not at a point right now where we’re prepared to put something on the table”.
The death toll from Friday’s Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb has climbed to 37, the Lebanese health ministry said on Saturday, according to Reuters. The number includes three children and seven women,
Hezbollah said overnight that those killed in the deadliest strike in a year of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel included 16 of its members, and that senior leader Ibrahim Aqil and another top commander, Ahmed Wahbi, were among the dead.
According to Reuters, the Israeli army, in posts on X, said the strike hit an underground gathering of Aqil and senior commanders of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces, and had “almost completely dismantled” Hezbollah’s military chain of command.
Heavy cross-border strikes continued on Saturday, with Israeli warplanes carrying some of its heaviest bombardment in 11 months of fighting across Lebanon’s south and Hezbollah claiming rocket attacks on military targets in Israel’s north.
Reuters report that Friday’s strike sharply escalated the conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed group, and inflicted another blow on Hezbollah after two days of attacks this week in which pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded. The total death toll in those attacks has risen to 39, and more than 3,000 were injured.
The attacks on communications devices were widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
Hezbollah-aligned transport minister Ali Hamieh told reporters at the scene of Friday’s strike that at least 23 people were still missing. “The Israeli enemy is taking the region to war,” he said.
The ministry had dispatched vehicles and equipment to help rescuers dig through the collapsed buildings, reports Reuters. “We’ve been taking out women and children from under the rubble,” he said.
Attacks on Lebanon this week showed that the Israeli government planned to spread the war to the region, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Saturday, calling on western countries to take “deterrent steps” against Israel’s actions.
Erdoğan told a press conference that Israel’s war in Gaza will top the agenda of his speech at the UN general assembly on Tuesday, reports Reuters.
“In order for our region not to be dragged into a great disaster, the pressure on Israel must be increased even more,” Erdoğan told a press conference in Istanbul.
He was commenting on attacks in Lebanon this week, including the explosion of Hezbollah members’ pagers and walkie-talkies that killed 39 people.
The attacks on communications devices were widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
“It is time for all countries with the mission of protecting world peace to come up with solutions that will stop Israel,” Erdoğan said.
“In order to end this oppression that has been going on for almost a year, to establish a permanent ceasefire and to ensure the unhindered flow of humanitarian aid, all of us, the whole world and especially the UN, have important duties,” he said.
Israeli soldiers have been filmed pushing three apparently lifeless bodies from a rooftop during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, in the latest in a series of suspected violations by Israeli forces since the start of the Israel-Hamas war that rights groups say show a pattern of excessive force toward Palestinians.
The incident took place in the town of Qabatiya in the northern West Bank, where the Israeli military has been carrying out large-scale raids since late August that the Palestinian health ministry says have killed dozens of people.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement:
This is a serious incident that does not coincide with IDF values and the expectations from IDF soldiers. The incident is under review.”
The IDF declined to comment when asked if the soldiers involved were being investigated.
The Associated Press (AP) said one of its journalists had witnessed the incident. The agency could not immediately confirm the identities or whereabouts of the bodies, nor the death toll from the Israeli raid.
Israel said its troops had killed seven militants on Thursday, four during a gun battle and three in an airstrike on a car carrying people who had fired at its soldiers. As of Friday, no militant group had claimed any of the dead as its fighters.
Ameed Shehadeh, a correspondent for Al-Arabi who also witnessed the incident, told CNN:
A bulldozer tried to demolish the house to bring the bodies down. That didn’t work. Soldiers went up and kicked and pushed the bodies off the roof, as we have seen.”
He said a fourth body had been thrown off an adjacent roof a few metres below.
You can read the full piece here:
The dead from an Israeli strike on Saturday on a school turned shelter in the Palestinian territory’s largest city included “13 children and six women”, one of whom was pregnant, said civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal.
Israel’s military said it targeted Hamas militants.
There were “around 30 injured, including nine children (needing) limb amputations, as a result of an Israeli bombing on Al-Zaytoun school C” in Gaza City, he said. Thousands of displaced people had sought shelter at the school, Bassal added.
Israel’s military said in a statement that the air force had “conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command and control centre in Gaza City”. It said the target was “embedded inside” the Al Falah school, which is adjacent to the Al-Zaytoun school buildings.
An Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporter at the scene confirmed that Al-Zaytoun school C had been hit.
Witnesses told AFP that before the strike, orphans had gathered there because they were due to receive sponsorship from a local NGO for humanitarian assistance.
Israel’s military did not provide a death toll but said “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence”.
It was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced people in Gaza.
A strike on the UN-run Al-Jawni school in central Gaza on 11 September drew international outcry after the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) said six of its staffers were among the 18 reported fatalities.
The Israeli military accuses Hamas of hiding in school buildings where many thousands of Palestinians have sought shelter – a charge denied by the Palestinian militant group.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it fired rockets at two military positions in northern Israel on Saturday, as the Israeli military said it was carrying out new strikes against Hezbollah targets, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
In separate statements, the Iran-backed group said it fired “a salvo of Katyusha rockets” each at two Israeli barracks “in response” to Israeli attacks “on steadfast southern villages and civilian houses”.
AFP correspondents reported heavy Israeli strikes in several areas of south Lebanon.
Hezbollah said on Saturday that it had fired rockets at two north Israel barracks, according to a report by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
More details soon …
Reuters reports that the Gaza health ministry said an Israeli strike on a school sheltering people in southern Gaza City took at least 22 lives on Saturday. Earlier, Gaza’s civil defence agency put the death toll at 17 (see 11.36am BST).
Israel said the attack was targeting a Hamas command centre. However, the Gaza health ministry said most of the victims were women and children.
The Hamas-run government media office said 13 children, including a three-month-old baby, and six women had died in the strike.
In the UK, several thousand people gathered in Liverpool city centre on Saturday to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and for the government to cease arms trading with Israel.
Sky News reports that protesters carrying Palestinian flags and banners plan to march through the city centre towards the docks where the Labour party’s political conference will begin on Sunday.
Organisers claim it is the first ever national march for Palestine to take place outside London.
Several thousand people have gathered in Liverpool to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
— Sky News (@SkyNews) September 21, 2024
Sky's @ShingiMararike says it is the first pro-Palestinian national march to be held in the UK outside of London.
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