Live: Israel ramps up strikes on Gaza after Iran attack

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has called off his scheduled address at the United Nations General Assembly, citing the worsening security situation in Lebanon following Israeli attacks on the country.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shortened his trip by one day and is expected to speak at the General Assembly on Friday.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has said that Hezbollah leader Ibrahim Aqil, reportedly killed in an Israeli air strike in Beirut, had "American blood on his hands" and was wanted by the US for his involvement in the 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Beirut and the kidnapping of American and German citizens in the 1980s.

Aqil was under US sanctions, and in 2023 the US State Department offered a reward of up to $7m for information leading to his "identification, location, arrest, and/or conviction".

“He is someone the United States vowed long ago to bring to justice," Sullivan said. “While 1983 might feel distant, many families still deal with its effects every day.”

An Israeli air strike on a warehouse in the Musabah area of Rafah, southern Gaza, has killed four Palestinians, Wafa news agency reported.

The attack wounded at least six others. 

Earlier, an Israeli air strike on a school in Gaza City killed 22 people, including 13 children and six women. 

Israel's war has killed at least 41,391 Palestinians in Gaza since 7 October, and wounded over 95,760 others.

The death toll from Israel's strike on a densely populated area in Beirut has risen t0 at least 37, Lebanon's health ministry said on Saturday. 

The figure included three children and seven women, the ministry said. 

Hezbollah said that 16 of its members were among those killed on Friday, including senior military commander Ibrahim Aqil. Ahmed Wahbi, another top commander, was also killed. 

There were heavy cross-border attacks on Saturday, with Israeli forces striking southern Lebanon and Hezbollah claiming rocket attacks on targets in Israel's north. 

They come after two days of Israeli detonations of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah, with the death toll from those attacks rising to 39, with over 3,000 others wounded. 

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that attacks on Lebanon this week showed that the Israeli government planned to spread war to the wider region, and called on western countries to take "deterrent steps" against Israeli actions.

Erdogan told a press conference in Istanbul on Saturday that Israel's war in Gaza would top the agenda of his speech at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

"In order for our region not to be dragged into a great disaster, the pressure on Israel must be increased even more," Erdogan said.

"It is time for all countries with the mission of protecting world peace to come up with solutions that will stop Israel," he added.

"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."

A pro-Palestine legal advocacy group has called on the BBC to dismiss board member Robbie Gibb over his links to the Jewish Chronicle, which has been embroiled in a scandal of fake Gaza stories.

The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) accused Gibb of “failure to uphold editorial standards” while being the Jewish Chronicle’s director. 

In an open letter on Friday, the London-based group said the recent scandal “casts significant doubt on his capabilities to uphold the BBC’s standards”.

“His continued tenure as a non-executive board member poses reputational damages for the BBC,” the ICJP said.

“Further, his partisan politics with regards to his well-documented pro-Israel sentiment makes him unsuitable to have input over editorial standards at the BBC at a time when coverage of the Israel-Hamas war is so contested.”

Earlier this month, the Jewish Chronicle was forced to retract a series of articles alleged to contain fabricated quotes from Israeli officials. 

Read more: Pro-Palestine legal centre urges BBC to drop Robbie Gibb over Jewish Chronicle scandal

The number of Palestinians killed by an Israeli air strike on a school sheltering displaced people in southern Gaza City has risen to 22, according to the Palestinian health ministry. 

Thirteen children, including a-three-month-old baby, and six women were amongst those killed, the government media office in Gaza said. 

Israel said the school was serving as a Hamas command centre, without providing any evidence. Israel has frequently made similar claims, without evidence, when targeting civilian facilities like schools and hospitals.

Elsewhere, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, the health ministry said four health workers were killed by an Israeli strike that hit ministry warehouses. Ambulance crews were not able to reach the dead or treat the wounded.

Hungarian intelligence services have conducted interviews with Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, the head of BAC Consulting, a Budapest-based company linked to Israel's operation detonating pagers in Lebanon.

On Wednesday, Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo said that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon were made by BAC Consulting, which had gained a licence to use Gold Apollo's branding.

Barsony-Arcidiacono, 49, the Italian-Hungarian CEO and owner of BAC Consulting, told NBC News earlier this week that she did not make the pagers and said she was "just the intermediate".

Hungarian intelligence agencies have been investigating the matter since Wednesday and have interviewed Barsony-Arcidiacono several times, a Hungarian government spokesperson said.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government earlier this week said that BAC Consulting was "a trading-intermediary company, which has no manufacturing or other site of operation in Hungary".

You can read more about the various companies linked to the deadly explosions here. 

Palestinian-American lawmaker Rashida Tlaib has condemned as racist a cartoon published in a conservative magazine, National Review, showing her with an exploding pager, following Israel's attack that detonated devices belonging to Hezbollah.

"Our community is already in so much pain right now. This racism will incite more hate + violence against our Arab & Muslim communities, and it makes everyone less safe. It's disgraceful that the media continues to normalise this racism," Tlaib wrote on X.

Tlaib is the only Palestinian-American lawmaker in the US Congress.

The cartoon, published on Thursday, depicted Tlaib sitting beside an exploding pager, saying: "ODD. MY PAGER JUST EXPLODED."

Thank you, Mayor @AHammoudMI, for speaking up. Our community is already in so much pain right now. This racism will incite more hate + violence against our Arab & Muslim communities, and it makes everyone less safe. It’s disgraceful that the media continues to normalize this… https://t.co/JTn2mur4Yj

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) September 20, 2024

An Israeli strike that hit a school sheltering displaced people in southern Gaza City has killed at least 13 Palestinians, Wafa news agency reported on Saturday.

A number of other people were wounded in a separate strike that hit a school in the same Al-Zeitoun neighbourhood, Wafa added.

Israel's war on Gaza has killed at least 41,391 Palestinians since 7 October, the Palestinian health ministry said on Saturday.

At least 95,760 others have been wounded in the enclave since then, the ministry added. 

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday that Israel was committing "shameless crimes" against children, not combatants. 

Khamenei called for "inner strength" among Muslims to remove a "malignant cancerous tumour" from Palestine. 

His comments came a day after an Israeli air strike on a densely populated area in the Lebanese capital Beirut had killed 31 people, including three children and seven women, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

Good morning, Middle East Eye readers. 

Here are some of the key developments overnight and this morning: 

• In a televised conference on Saturday, Lebanon's health ministry said that at least 31 people were killed by an Israeli strike on a densely populated suburb of Beirut a day earlier. Among those killed were three children and seven women.
   
• Hezbollah confirmed that Ahmed Wahbi, a senior commander who was in charge of the military operations of the Radwan special forces during the Gaza war until early 2024, was killed in Israel's strike on Beirut. Earlier, the group confirmed that Ibrahim Aqil, one of its most senior military commanders, had also been killed.
   
• Hamas mourned the death of senior Hezbollah leader Aqil, stating that it was a "crime" and a "folly" that Israel would pay for.
   
• An Israeli air strike on Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on Saturday morning killed four Palestinian civilians, Wafa news agency reported. 
   
•  Japan's Icom said it was highly unlikely that hand-held radio devices that exploded in Lebanon earlier this week were the company's products.
   
• A Palestinian man was seriously wounded after being shot by Israeli forces near the entrance to Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, according to medics.