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The Lebanese health ministry announced six additional deaths from Wednesday’s explosions targeting walkie-talkies across the country.
The latest death toll is now 20 with more than 450 people injured, the ministry said.
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Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
At least 20 people were killed and more than 450 injured as a result of the explosions on Wednesday, according to officials. A source in Hezbollah confirmed that walkie-talkies used by the group were targeted in the attack. Several solar power systems exploded in people’s homes across Lebanon, according to the National News Agency.
Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attacks in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed in a brief statement on Wednesday to return tens of thousands of residents evacuated from northern border areas to their homes.
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, declared the start of a “new phase” of the war with a focus on the northern front. Gallant, speaking to Israeli troops on Wednesday, did not mention the explosions of devices in Lebanon but he praised the work of Israel’s army and security agencies, noting that the “results are very impressive”. The head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, said Israel has drawn up plans for additional action against Hezbollah and is ready to strike.
Wednesday’s explosions took place a day after more than 2,800 were injured and 12 killed by exploding pagers, including a 10-year-old girl. Here’s what we know about the attack on Tuesday.
Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for Tuesday’s attack. Hezbollah on Tuesday promised a “fair punishment” for the explosion. Lebanon’s Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is expected to give a speech on Thursday. Reports suggest Israel managed to place explosives in thousands of pagers bought by Hezbollah.
The US was not involved “in any way” in the wave of explosions that took place in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday, the White House said. National security adviser John Kirby told reporters on that it was “too soon to know” if the explosions aimed at Hezbollah across recent days would have an impact on a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. US military officials are reportedly re-examining how its forces are positioned in the region in case of retaliation. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said 15 out of 18 paragraphs of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas have been agreed, and insisted that progress on negotiations had been made during the last few weeks, despite there being no respite in Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
Hezbollah said it had attacked Israeli artillery positions with rockets on Wednesday in the first cross-border attack since the Tuesday pager blasts. An Israeli journalist said a barrage of 10 rockets was fired from Lebanon at western Galilee, causing no injuries.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, was “deeply alarmed” by reports that a large number of communication devices exploded across Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday and Wednesday. The UN security council will meet on Friday to discuss the wave of device explosions across Lebanon targeting Hezbollah. The UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, said those responsible for the explosions “must be held to account”.
The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, described the pager detonations in Lebanon as “extremely worrying”, and said they had caused “heavy, indiscriminate collateral damages among civilians.”
An Israeli airstrike on a school turned shelter in Gaza killed five people, Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Wednesday. It is the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced Palestinians. The Israeli military said it targeted Hamas militants.
Saudi Arabia will not recognise Israel without a Palestinian state, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, said on Wednesday as he condemned the “crimes of the Israeli occupation” against the Palestinian people.
Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, ruled out his country accepting any changes to the agreed border security arrangements with Gaza, including the operation of the Rafah crossing.
The UN general assembly voted overwhelmingly to direct Israel to leave the occupied Palestinian territories within a year, a symbolic step exposing Israel’s continued international isolation. The non-binding vote follows a historic advisory ruling in July by the international court of justice (ICJ) urging Israel to cease “its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as soon as possible and stop all settlement activity there immediately”.
Germany denied any arms boycott to Israel after earlier reports it had halted new exports of weapons of war to Israel. Reuters reported that Berlin had stopped work on approving export licences for arms to Israel while it deals with legal challenges, citing a source close to the German economy ministry.
The US issued a new round of Iran sanctions on Wednesday targeting 12 individuals who it said were tied to Tehran’s “ongoing, violent repression of the Iranian people,” including its “brutal crackdown on peaceful protests.”
US senator Bernie Sanders said he would file resolutions seeking to block the sale of more than $20bn (£15.1bn) in US arms sales to Israel, citing the toll on civilians of Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
The US “cannot be “complicit in this humanitarian disaster,” Sanders wrote in a letter to Senate colleagues on Wednesday, AP reported.
Providing more offensive weapons to continue this disastrous war would violate US and international law.
The action would force an eventual vote to block the arms sales to Israel, though majority passage is highly unlikely.
As we reported earlier, at least 20 people were killed and more than 450 others wounded in Wednesday’s explosions targeting walkie-talkies in cities across Lebanon, according to the latest figure by the country’s health ministry.
In addition, at least 12 people were killed and more than 2,800 others were injured by exploding pagers on Tuesday in Lebanon and Syria.
This means that so far 32 people have been confirmed killed and 3,250 wounded in the wave of explosions.
Israel has not claimed responsibility for either of the attacks, although its defence minister Yoav Gallant declared on Wednesday the start of a “new phase” of the war with a focus towards the northern front with Hezbollah.
Here is a screen grab showing a walkie-talkie that exploded inside a house in Baalbek, east Lebanon, earlier today.
Footage shot in the aftermath of the explosions showed destroyed devices bearing the brand Icom, a Japanese company.
The exploded radio devices appear to be a knockoff product and not made by Icom, a sales executive at the US subsidiary of the company said.
“I can guarantee you they were not our products,” they told Associated Press, adding that Icom introduced the V82 two-way radio model more than two decades ago and it has long since been discontinued.
Iran’s ambassador to the UN said his country will follow up on the “attack” against its ambassador in Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, who was among those wounded in Tuesday’s pager attack.
In a letter reported by the Iranian state news agency, Amir Saeid Iravani accused the Israeli government of “criminal and terrorist attacks” that resulted in the deaths of at least 11 civilians and injured thousands more, including Amani, who he said “sustained injuries”.
“Undoubtedly, the Israeli regime bears full responsibility for such perpetration of such horrific crimes,” he wrote.
The Islamic Republic of Iran will duly follow up on the attack against its ambassador in Lebanon … and reserves its rights under international law to take required measures deemed necessary to respond to such a heinous crime and violation.
The Lebanese health ministry announced six additional deaths from Wednesday’s explosions targeting walkie-talkies across the country.
The latest death toll is now 20 with more than 450 people injured, the ministry said.
US military officials are re-examining how its forces are positioned in the Middle East region following the series of explosions aimed at Hezbollah in Lebanon in recent days.
The head of US air power in the region, Lt Gen Derek France, had been scheduled to hold a news conference in Maryland on Wednesday but cancelled to more closely monitor the situation after the pager attack on Tuesday, a US military official told Associated Press.
The official said the attack has prompted the US air force to reexamine how US forces are positioned in the region in case of retaliation.
Joe Biden will welcome the president of the United Arab Emirates, sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to the White House on Monday for talks on Gaza and Sudan.
The visit will be the first-ever by a UAE president to Washington, the White House’s spokesperson John Kirby told reporters today.
The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, will meet separately with the UAE leader.
Biden and Harris “will discuss with President Mohamed, obviously, the crisis in Gaza, the UAE’s essential role in addressing the humanitarian crisis there, and the crisis in Sudan”, Kirby said.
Germany has denied any arms boycott to Israel after earlier reports it had halted new exports of weapons of war to Israel.
Reuters reported that Berlin had stopped work on approving export licences for arms to Israel while it deals with legal challenges, citing a source close to the German economy ministry.
Last year, Germany approved arms exports to Israel worth €326.5m (£275.1m), including military equipment and war weapons – marking a 10-fold increase from the previous year, the agency reported. However approvals have dropped this year, it said, with only €14.5m (£12.2m) granted from January to August.
“There is no German arms export boycott against Israel,” government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit said after the Reuters story was published.
The detonation of walkie-talkies around Lebanon a day after scores of pagers used by Hezbollah officials blew up is a one-two punch that drives home the extent of Israel’s penetration of its Shia foe’s defences across its northern border.
It represents utter humiliation for Hezbollah that its security can be so effortlessly breached twice, and be shown incapable of protecting its own people.
Israel has not admitted responsibility for the blasts but there is little doubt around the region that this was an operation bearing the Mossad’s hallmarks.
The more difficult questions concern its purpose: do these attacks represent tactical surprise for its own sake, or are they part of a broader strategy, and where does that strategy lead? Is this a prelude to an all-out war in Lebanon, or a substitute for one?
Read the full analysis here:
The White House’s national security adviser, John Kirby, said it is “too soon to know” if the explosions aimed at Hezbollah across recent days will have an impact on a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
Kirby told reporters:
Sadly, we aren’t any closer to that now than we were even a week ago, so it’s difficult to see any impact of these incidents, but I think it’s just too soon to know.
The White House’s national security communications adviser, John Kirby, said the US was not involved in the wave of explosions that took place in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“We were not involved in yesterday’s incidents or today’s in any way,” Kirby told reporters in a briefing this afternoon.
Asked if he was concerned that the blasts could lead to an escalation, Kirby said:
We want to see the war end, and everything we’ve been doing since the beginning has been designed to prevent the conflict from escalating.
The US still believes that “there is a diplomatic path forward,” he said.
UN secretary general António Guterres has issued a statement in response to the blasts across the Middle East, saying:
I’m deeply alarmed by reports that a large number of communication devices exploded across Lebanon & Syria, killing at least 11 people, including children, and injuring thousands.
All actors must exercise maximum restraint to avert any further escalation.
I’m deeply alarmed by reports that a large number of communication devices exploded across Lebanon & Syria, killing at least 11 people, including children, and injuring thousands.
— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) September 18, 2024
All actors must exercise maximum restraint to avert any further escalation.
Speaking to RT, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called the Lebanon blasts a “heinous act of terrorism”.
Zakharova went on to add:
All the signs are there of an international terrorist attack because it is obvious that in order to gather such a large amount of equipment, it had to be brought in, crossing several borders. Obviously, there is an international trail in this, and it should be investigated accordingly.
Now the reaction of the west should be indicative. If the west remains silent, and as always, does not insist on an investigation, does not talk about human rights, does not repeat its rhetoric of many years, which they have used in similar cases when terrorist acts were committed on their territory, then this will be proof of their direct engagement.”
Such terror attacks carried out to put all Middle East in flames - Maria Zakharova on Lebanon blasts
— RT (@RT_com) September 18, 2024
Follow us on Odysee: https://t.co/gMbz1a2E5x pic.twitter.com/mDECbPR52z
US senator Bernie Sanders has introduced joint resolutions of disapproval that would block the sale of US weapons to Israel.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Sanders, who has been a vocal critic of Israel’s war on Gaza which has killed over 41,000 Palestinians in the last 11 months, said:
Sadly, and illegally, much of the carnage in Gaza has been carried out with US-provided military equipment. Providing more offensive weapons to continue this disastrous war would violate US and international law.
The sales would reward [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s extremist government, even as it continues to cause massive destruction in Gaza, undermine the prospects of a ceasefire deal that would secure the release of the hostages, and advance its effort to illegally annex the West Bank.
Netanyahu’s right-wing, extremist government is violating international & US law and has created a humanitarian disaster in Gaza.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) September 18, 2024
Today, I announced that I will file Joint Resolutions of Disapproval to stop the sale of U.S. arms to Israel and end our complicity in this disaster. pic.twitter.com/mPZEVBlO44
Here are some images coming through the newswires from Lebanon where the latest walkie-talkie blasts – which Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed on Israel – have killed 14 people and injured at least 450 others:
