Israel’s war on Gaza updates: Nine killed as Hezbollah pagers explode

For a deeper understanding of how hundreds of pagers belonging to the Lebanese group Hezbollah simultaneously exploded across Lebanon, read our explainer, here.

The United States downplayed its ability to prevent a broader Middle East war after Lebanon’s pager blast. Read more, here.

And you can always find all our latest coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza, here.

We’ll be closing this live page soon. Here’s a recap of the day’s main developments:

• At least nine people were killed and 2,750 wounded in simultaneous explosions of handheld pagers used by Hezbollah members across Lebanon.
• The Lebanese group says it holds Israel “fully responsible” for the deadly blasts, while Lebanon’s cabinet also blamed Israel. There has been no immediate comment by Israel.
• Israel’s war cabinet agreed to expand its Gaza war objectives to include the “safe return of the residents of the north [of Israel] to their homes”, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
• At least 22 Palestinians were killed in various Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, according to the Civil Defence agency.
• The Palestinian Education Ministry said 11,001 students were killed and 17,772 injured in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank since the start of Israel’s war on October 7.
• People in Gaza are only eating an average of one meal per day as the Israeli army blocks 83 percent of food aid needed from reaching the besieged enclave, aid organisations said.

Two weeks after the assassination of Hamas’s politburo head Ismail Haniyeh, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said: “Non-tactical retreat leads to the wrath of God.”

He was speaking to officials amid international speculation about whether Iran would respond to the killing in its capital that it has blamed on Israel.

Tehran faces a stark choice: It needs to restore deterrence while avoiding regional war with Israel.

Read the full story here.

The Lebanese Red Cross says it provided 150 units to hospitals across Lebanon through its blood banks and said centres are accommodating those who still wish to donate, after simultaneous explosions of pagers across Lebanon killed nine people and wounded more than 2,700 others.

The Red Cross said it responded with “130 ambulances and more than 500 EMTs” (emergency medical technicians), shortly after the incident.

In a post on X, it shared a video of ambulances and volunteer medics.

#LebaneseRedCross volunteers responding to the latest bombings in #Lebanon pic.twitter.com/WQjJt0zFEe

— Lebanese Red Cross (@RedCrossLebanon) September 17, 2024

British Airways has suspended flights to Israel for Wednesday. Air France announced it’s suspending flights connecting Paris with Beirut and Tel Aviv through Thursday because of security concerns.

German airline group Lufthansa also said it’s suspending all flights to Tel Aviv and Tehran through to Thursday, as tensions in the region soar following pager explosions across Lebanon.

“Due to the recent change in the security situation, the Lufthansa Group airlines have decided to suspend all connections to and from Tel Aviv [TLV] and Tehran [IKA] with immediate effect,” it said in a statement. “This applies up to and including September 19. During this period, the Israeli and Iranian airspace will also be bypassed by all Lufthansa Group Airlines.”

Lufthansa added that it was closely monitoring the situation and “will assess it further in the coming days”.

Palestinians appealed to the UN General Assembly to vote for a resolution calling for Israel’s withdrawal from occupied Palestinian territory.

“Please stand on the right side of history with international law, with freedom, with peace. The alternative is what you witness every day on your TV screens and what the Palestinian people are enduring in their flesh,” said Riyad Mansour, Palestine’s envoy to the UN.

“Those who think the Palestinian people will accept a life of servitude, a life of apartheid, are the ones who are not being realistic,” he said. “Those who claim that peace is possible in our region without a just resolution for the question of Palestine are the ones who are not being realistic.”

Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon sharply criticised the move, describing it as “an attempt to destroy Israel through diplomatic terrorism”.

“We gather here to watch the Palestinians’ UN circus – a circus where evil is righteous, war is peace, murder is justified and terror is applauded,” Danon said. “How dare you continue this tradition of passing one-sided resolutions against Israel without even posing to consider what the Israeli people have endured.”

Syria expressed solidarity with the Lebanese people and says it “stands by their side in their right to defend themselves”.

The series of pager blasts, it said, reflects “Israel’s desire to expand the scope of the war and its thirst to shed more blood,” in the region, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency SANA.

It called on nations to “unequivocally condemn this aggression”.

The Israeli army urged its citizens to exercise caution after Hezbollah promised retaliation for a series of deadly handheld pager explosions across Lebanon.

“The Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi held a situational assessment this evening with the participation of the General Staff Forum, focusing on readiness in both offence and defence in all arenas,” the military said in a statement.

“At this time there is no change to the Home Front Command defensive guidelines. The public is asked to remain alert and vigilant, and any change in policy will be updated immediately.”

Lebanon’s Hezbollah is one of the most powerful militias in the world.

If Hezbollah and Israel go to war, it could cause unprecedented destruction. But why would this happen, and how did Israel help give rise to Hezbollah in the first place?

Gaza’s Civil Defence agency says its teams pulled the bodies of two Palestinians from the rubble of a home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood after an Israeli attack.

At least eight others were wounded, it added. This brings the total number of Palestinians killed across Gaza today to 22.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory since October 2023. The war has caused vast destruction and displaced about 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.

The World Health Organization chief says Israeli tanks fired on an aid convoy cleared to travel back from war-ravaged northern Gaza.

“Last Saturday, on the way back from a mission to the northern Gaza [Strip] and after a WHO-led convoy got clearance and crossed the coast road checkpoint, the convoy encountered two Israeli tanks,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

“Shots were fired from the tanks near the convoy. Luckily nobody was hurt. This is unacceptable.”

The incident came just a week after the United Nations said a convoy carrying workers for a polio vaccination campaign in Gaza had been held at gunpoint at an Israeli military checkpoint.

Last Saturday, on the way back from a mission to the northern #Gaza and after a @WHO-led convoy got clearance and crossed the coast road checkpoint, the convoy encountered two Israeli tanks. Shots were fired from the tanks near the convoy. Luckily nobody was hurt.

This is… pic.twitter.com/jDstTVatyv

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) September 17, 2024

Palestinian Civil Defence agency spokesman Mahmoud Bassal says at least 12 people have been killed in three separate attacks in northern Gaza City.

At least seven people died in two separate attacks in Gaza’s central area. And the body of one person has been retrieved from Rafah, in Gaza’s south, he said.

Bassal also reported several injuries across the Gaza Strip, without providing exact figures.

UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert says she deplores the attacks across Lebanon, warning they “marked an extremely concerning escalation”.

Earlier, pagers used by Hezbollah detonated in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon, wounding 2,750 people and killing at least nine, including a girl.

Hezbollah began striking Israel almost immediately after the Hamas attacks on October 7, which sparked Israel’s war on Gaza.

Since then, Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire almost daily, coming close to a full-blown war on several occasions and forcing tens of thousands on both sides of the border to evacuate their homes.

US Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris calls for an end to the Israeli war on Gaza and says Israel must not reoccupy the besieged Palestinian enclave once the nearly year-old conflict is over.

Speaking in Philadelphia to the National Association of Black Journalists, she called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, a two-state solution and Middle East stability in a way that does not empower Iran.

“We’ve made ourselves very clear this deal needs to get done in the best interest of everyone in the region,” Harris, the US vice president, said in response to questions asked by reporters.

The communication devices that blew up in Lebanon and Syria had apparently been acquired by Hezbollah after the group’s leader ordered members in February to stop using mobile phones, warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence.

An unnamed Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand but declined to say how long they had been in use.

Experts said the pager explosions point to a sophisticated, long-planned operation possibly carried out by infiltrating the supply chain and rigging the pagers with explosives before they were imported to Lebanon.

The UN Human Rights Office has denounced the ongoing Israeli settler attacks and harassment of the community of al-Muarrajat, one of the last two remaining Palestinian Bedouin communities between Ramallah and Jericho.

The attacks, the OHCHR said, are being perpetrated with the complicity of Israeli forces. It cited an incident yesterday where Israeli settlers attacked the primary school in al-Muarrajat and nearby homes for hours.

“They assaulted teachers, pupils, and activists present in the village as protective presence with sticks and iron bars. Nine Palestinians were injured during the attack, including three Palestinian women who sustained hairline fractures, four women teachers and a foreign activist,” the OHCHR said.

It also said that when Israeli forces arrived, instead of stopping the attack, they arrested the school principal and another community member.

“These assaults are taking place within a concerted attack on the community, calculated to force them to leave their land and homes. The attack on the al-Muarrajat community follows the recent forcible displacement of other tens of long-standing Bedouin communities from the Jordan Valley.”

More than 1,600 Palestinians from herding and farming communities have been forced to leave their homes since October 7 following settler violence and systematic restrictions on access to water, grazing land and basic needs, with the collusion of Israeli authorities, it said.