Gaza live: Several dead including Hezbollah commander after Israeli strike on southern Beirut

The New York Times, citing two sources within the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, reports that Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amini, lost one eye and sustained severe injuries to the other when a pager he was using exploded on Tuesday in an attack attributed to Israel.

On Wednesday, the UN General Assembly will vote on a Palestinian resolution calling for Israel to end its "unlawful presence" in Gaza and the occupied West Bank within a year, withdraw its military forces, and evacuate all settlers.

The vote takes place in the 193-member assembly as Israel's conflict with Hamas in Gaza nears its one-year mark, and violence in the West Bank continues to escalate.

Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour opened the assembly on Tuesday, stating that Palestinians face an "existential threat" and accusing Israel of keeping them "in shackles." 

Mansour also insisted that any nation believing the Palestinian people "will accept a life of servitude" or claiming peace can be achieved without a just solution is "not being realistic."

Israel’s UN Ambassador, Danny Danon, urged nations to reject the resolution, calling it "an attempt to destroy Israel through diplomatic terrorism" that overlooks Hamas’ actions and "distorts the truth, replacing reality with fiction."

US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield criticised the resolution for having "a significant number of flaws," arguing it goes beyond the court’s ruling and fails to acknowledge Hamas as a terrorist group in control of Gaza, while not recognising Israel's right to self-defence.

Good morning Middle East Eye readers, 

Here are the latest updates from the Israeli war on Gaza, now in its 347th day: 

• Hezbollah has vowed to continue "its blessed efforts to support Gaza, its people, and its resistance," even after recent explosions in Lebanon that claimed at least nine lives and left thousands injured.

• Jordan has offered to provide medical aid for "the thousands of Lebanese citizens injured in the mass bombing," according to a statement on X by the Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

• The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that Israeli soldiers attacked one of its ambulance crews as they attempted to evacuate a sick child in Nablus, a city in the occupied West Bank, according to Wafa news agency

• The Israeli military confirmed that four soldiers died in Rafah, located in southern Gaza, due to an improvised explosive device (IED) explosion

• The US military reported that a Yemen-based group shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone on September 10, with a second one being destroyed on Monday.

Our live coverage from Gaza will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.

Here are some of the day's key developments:

• Eight people have been killed and at least 2,750 people have been wounded in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut by an explosion of pagers used by Hezbollah for communication purposes

• Lebanon’s Hezbollah blamed Israel for a spree of pager explosions across Lebanon 

• Hamas condemned on Tuesday the series of pager explosions across Lebanon as part of Israel's "aggression" in the region, saying they were an escalation that would only lead Israel to "failure and defeat", according to a statement released by the group

• Gaza's health ministry said that 26 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on the enclave, bringing the total to 41,252 since 7 October

• The Israeli army struck several homes in central Gaza's Bureij refugee camp, killing at least seven people, Gaza's civil defence said

• Britain’s Liberal Democrat party passed a motion in favour of suspending arms exports to Israel and backing an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip on Monday at its annual conference in Brighton

• The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for more pressure on Israel and Hamas for a Gaza ceasefire on Tuesday

In what seemed like a coordinated attack straight out of a Hollywood production, simultaneously exploding pagers on Tuesday afternoon seriously wounded members of the Lebanese group Hezbollah - along with some medics - from southern Lebanon to its east, and in the capital Beirut. 

Hezbollah said this is the biggest security breach it has experienced to date, and it is vowing to punish Israel. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the pager attack, and historically, it does not claim attacks on foreign soil.

The attack comes one day after the Biden administration’s envoy to the region, Amos Hochstein, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to caution him against opening up a wider front with Hezbollah along Israel’s northern border.

The exchange of fire between the two parties has thus far been limited to the border region, save for Israel’s assassination of a senior Hamas leader further inland early this year.

Analysts told Middle East Eye that they place the blame squarely on the Biden administration for not reigning in Israel throughout the last 11 months of its war on Gaza.

READ MORE: Lebanon: Israel, US inaction blamed for mass pager explosions after warning against escalation

Lebanese medics treated a stream of wounded people at a hospital car park as others rushed to give blood after pagers across Lebanon simultaneously exploded.

The health ministry reported that nine were killed and some 2,750 others wounded.

"In all my life I’ve never seen someone walking on the street... and then explode,” said Musa, a resident of Beirut’s southern suburbs, requesting to be identified only by his first name, AFP reported.

At one hospital in Beirut’s southern suburbs, an AFP correspondent saw people being treated in a car park on thin mattresses, with medical gloves on the ground and ambulance stretchers covered in blood.

At another hospital in the area, the correspondent saw one person wounded in the face, eye and hand, and another on the side of his waist, with a third person being treated in a car.

The United States said on Tuesday it is gathering information after at least nine people were killed and more than 2,750 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon.

Speaking during a press briefing, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the US was not involved in the incidents and did not know who was responsible.

Hezbollah blamed Israel for the incident and threatened to punish Israel in response."We are gathering information on this incident," Miller said. "I can tell you that the US was not involved in it. The US was not aware of this incident in advance."

Hamas condemned on Tuesday the series of pager explosions across Lebanon as part of Israel's "aggression" in the region, saying they were an escalation that would only lead Israel to "failure and defeat", according to a statement released by the group.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for more pressure on Israel and Hamas for a Gaza ceasefire on Tuesday.

Despite several rounds of talks spanning over months, a deal remains out of reach.

“The only thing I can say is that all actors involved have to continue putting pressure on both parties to reach this agreement,” he said in Dubai during a visit to the United Arab Emirates.

“But it’s coming late. Every day that the agreement is not being reached, it means more hostages will be retained and more people will be killed. So it’s not a matter of waiting for tomorrow. Tomorrow is already too late.”

Lebanon’s Hezbollah blamed Israel for a spree of pager explosions across Lebanon on Tuesday which so far has killed nine people and injured 2,800.

Israel will get ‘its fair punishment’, Hezbollah said in a statement released on Tuesday.“

At approximately 3:30 pm on Tuesday 09-17-2024, a number of messaging devices known as ‘pagers’ exploded, which are owned by a number of employees in various Hezbollah units and institutions,” an earlier statement from Hezbollah said.

Hezbollah said it was conducting a “wide-ranging security and scientific investigation” to uncover what caused the explosions.

Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad says that eight people have been killed and at least 2,750 people have been wounded in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut by an explosion of pagers used by Hezbollah for communication purposes.

Abiad said that at least 200 of the wounded were in critical condition and the number of casualties could rise.

Hezbollah said in a statement that a girl had also been killed in the explosions.

A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the detonation of the pagers was the "biggest security breach" the group had been subjected to in nearly a year of war with Israel, according to Reuters.

The wave of explosions lasted around an hour after the initial detonations, which took place about 3:45 pm local time. It was not immediately clear how the devices were detonated.

The pagers that detonated were the latest model brought in by Hezbollah in recent months, three security sources said.

Iran's ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was wounded by the explosion of a pager, Iran's Mehr news agency reported.

Ambulances can be heard across the Lebanese capital Beirut as rescuers rushed to take wounded Hezbollah members to hospital after their pagers exploded, Middle East Eye's correspondent Nader Durgham reported.

Lebanon's Internal Security Forces meanwhile released a communique asking citizens across the country to get off the roads to allow the passage of ambulances.

Hundreds of members of Hezbollah, including fighters and medics, were seriously wounded when the pagers they use to communicate exploded, a security source told Reuters.