Israel claims to have killed senior Hezbollah commander in targeted strike on Beirut
Israel has claimed to have killed Ibrahim Qubaisi, the head of Hezbollah’s missile systems, in what it described as a targeted attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut.
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Qubaisi was killed in an airstrike carried out by Israeli fighter jets in the the Dahiyeh suburb.
Other senior officers in Hezbollah’s rocket and missile division were at the apartment where the commander was killed, the IDF said.
From the Times of Israel’s Emanuel Fabian:
The IDF confirms that Ibrahim Qubaisi, the commander of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile division was killed in an airstrike in Beirut. https://t.co/PAlp5VgXZ7
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) September 24, 2024
Earlier Israel’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, had said “Hezbollah must not be given a break – we will speed up the offensive operations today.”
Lebanon’s health minister Firass Abiad earlier reported the death toll from the Israeli strikes on Lebanon since Monday had reached nearly 560, including dozens of children and women.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes, with the mayor of Sidon reporting that 10,000 internally displaced people had made their way to the city, of which 6,000 were in shelters.
The death toll in Lebanon comes on top of those killed and wounded in last week’s detonation of pagers and walkie-talkies, with an official from the World Health Organization saying that some hospitals were being overwhelmed with casualties.
The IDF has claimed to have dropped nearly 2,000 weapons on 1,500 Hezbollah targets inside Lebanon in the last day. Hezbollah, for its part, has continued to fire rockets into northern Israel, some of which have started fires. One person was reported to have been wounded by shrapnel, and there are unconfirmed reports of other Israeli injuries in the north of the country. Overnight Hezbollah said it had targeted Israeli military bases and an airfield.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said in an interview with US network CNN that Israel is “armed to the teeth and has access to weapons systems that are far superior to anything else” and that “we must not allow for Lebanon to become another Gaza. We must prevent the ongoing criminal acts being committed by Israel.”
Key events
Patrick Wintour
Addressing the UN general assembly in New York, Joe Biden said diplomacy was the only path to lasting security in the Middle East, adding he was working tirelessly to prevent a wider war in Lebanon that engulfs the entire region.
A deal was needed “that will allow residents from both Israel and Lebanon to return to their homes on either side of the border,” the US president said.
He blamed Hezbollah for launching an unprovoked attack on Israel after October 7 and said the group was still launching rockets in Israel almost a year later.
Full scale war is not in anyone’s interest. Even if the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible.
Israel says it is carrying out new wave of ‘widespread’ strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon
Israel’s military said it was currently conducting a new wave of “widespread strikes” on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
It marks the fourth wave of strikes in Lebanon today.
Two UN staff killed in Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon
Two staff members of the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) were among the 558 people killed in Lebanon on Monday, the UN high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi said.
Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon are now relentlessly claiming hundreds of civilian lives.
And I am very saddened to confirm that two UNHCR colleagues were also killed yesterday.
On behalf of all us at UNHCR, heartfelt condolences to their families, friends and colleagues.
— Filippo Grandi (@FilippoGrandi) September 24, 2024
Dina Darwiche, a Lebanese woman who had worked for UNHCR for 12 years, was killed along with her son in an Israeli airstrike on Lebanon’s Bekaa region on Monday, AP reported. Her husband and another son were seriously injured.
Ali Basma, who worked as a cleaner for the agency’s office in the city of Tyre for seven years, was killed in a separate strike in the south, it said.
UNHCR said it was “outraged and deeply saddened by the killing of two beloved members of the UNHCR family in Lebanon” and warned that the protection of civilians is a must under international humanitarian law.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has issued a statement addressing Lebanese citizens telling them at the war is “not with you, our war is with Hezbollah.”
In a video message posted to X and translated by the BBC, the Israeli leader said that the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, was “leading you to the brink of the abyss… Rid yourself from Nasrallah’s grip, for your own good”.
He also warned that “anyone who has a missile in their living room and a rocket in their garage will not have a home”.
Biden: ‘Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest’
Joe Biden has been speaking in the UN general assembly headquarters in New York in his final time as the US president.
Biden says the US is working to bring a “greater measure of peace and stability” in the Middle East, and urged UN member states not to “flinch from the horrors” of the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October.
He says it is times to finalise the terms of the ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, and calls for the hostages to be returned home, Hamas to lose its grip on Gaza, and an end to the war.
Biden says the US has been determined to prevent a wider war from engulfing the entire Middle East region, as he moves on to the escalation between Hezbollah and Israel. Biden says:
Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest … A diplomatic solution is still possible. In fact, it remains the only path to lasting security.
He addresses the “rise of violence against innocent Palestinians” on the occupied West Bank, and says it is time for a two-state solution “where Israel enjoys security and peace full recognition and normalise relations with Palestinians.”
My colleague Chris Stein is covering Biden’s speech in full on our US politics live blog.
Israel claims to have killed senior Hezbollah commander in targeted strike on Beirut
Israel has claimed to have killed Ibrahim Qubaisi, the head of Hezbollah’s missile systems, in what it described as a targeted attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut.
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Qubaisi was killed in an airstrike carried out by Israeli fighter jets in the the Dahiyeh suburb.
Other senior officers in Hezbollah’s rocket and missile division were at the apartment where the commander was killed, the IDF said.
From the Times of Israel’s Emanuel Fabian:
The IDF confirms that Ibrahim Qubaisi, the commander of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile division was killed in an airstrike in Beirut. https://t.co/PAlp5VgXZ7
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) September 24, 2024
Earlier Israel’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, had said “Hezbollah must not be given a break – we will speed up the offensive operations today.”
Lebanon’s health minister Firass Abiad earlier reported the death toll from the Israeli strikes on Lebanon since Monday had reached nearly 560, including dozens of children and women.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes, with the mayor of Sidon reporting that 10,000 internally displaced people had made their way to the city, of which 6,000 were in shelters.
The death toll in Lebanon comes on top of those killed and wounded in last week’s detonation of pagers and walkie-talkies, with an official from the World Health Organization saying that some hospitals were being overwhelmed with casualties.
The IDF has claimed to have dropped nearly 2,000 weapons on 1,500 Hezbollah targets inside Lebanon in the last day. Hezbollah, for its part, has continued to fire rockets into northern Israel, some of which have started fires. One person was reported to have been wounded by shrapnel, and there are unconfirmed reports of other Israeli injuries in the north of the country. Overnight Hezbollah said it had targeted Israeli military bases and an airfield.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said in an interview with US network CNN that Israel is “armed to the teeth and has access to weapons systems that are far superior to anything else” and that “we must not allow for Lebanon to become another Gaza. We must prevent the ongoing criminal acts being committed by Israel.”
Israel struck Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the Iran-backed Islamist militant organisation fired rockets into northern Israel on Tuesday, a day after a wave of Israeli airstrikes killed nearly 500 people in Lebanon and sent tens of thousands fleeing for safety.
Here’s our latest video report:
Unicef deputy representative to Lebanon Ettie Higgins has spoken at a press briefing in Geneva, saying any further escalation in the situation for the country’s children is would be “catastrophic”.
She said:
Children are in danger as I speak, exposed to ongoing attacks, displaced from their homes and unable to rely on an overstretched and under-sourced health system.
Any further escalation in this conflict would be catastrophic for all children in Lebanon, but especially families from villages and towns in the south and the Bekaa, in Eastern Lebanon, who have been forced to leave their homes. These newly displaced add to the 112,000 people who have been displaced since October.
Schools are closed today across the country, leaving children at home in fear. Their caregivers are themselves afraid of the uncertainty of the situation. This fear cannot be overstated, as the barrage of shelling and air raids continue, and increase, daily.
We are ramping-up our response. We are preparing to deliver food, water, and essential supplies such as mattresses and hygiene kits to displaced families, especially those in collective shelters.
Unicef urgently calls for an immediate de-escalation and for all parties to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure the protection of civilian infrastructure and civilians, including children, humanitarian workers and medical personnel.
Yesterday was Lebanon’s worst day in 18 years. This violence has to stop immediately or the consequences will be unconscionable.
UN secretary-general Guterres: world cannot afford ‘Lebanon to become another Gaza’
UN secretary-general António Guterres has said the world “cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza” at the UN general assembly. Citing wars in Ukraine, the Gaza Strip and Sudan he denounced what he said was a growing number of governments and other groups who feel they are “entitled to a get out of jail free card.”
Without specifying who, he said:
They can trample international law. They can violate the United Nations Charter. They can invade another country, lay waste to whole societies, or utterly disregard the welfare of their own people. And nothing will happen. The level of impunity in the world is politically indefensible and morally intolerable.
On Lebanon specifically he said:
Lebanon is at the brink. The people of Lebanon – the people of Israel – and the people of the world – cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.
UK prime minister calls for ‘restraint and de-escalation’ in Lebanon
Speaking at his party’s conference in Liverpool, the UK’s prime minister Keir Starmer has called for “restraint and de-escalation” in Lebanon and “an immediate ceasefire in Gaza”.
To applause from delegates, PA Media quotes him saying:
This is a time when great forces demand a decisive government prepared to face the future. We can see that again in the Middle East today. So I call again for restraint and de-escalation at the border between Lebanon and Israel. Again, all parties to pull back from the brink.
I call again for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the return of the hostages, and a recommitment to the two-state solution, a recognised Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure Israel.
And that’s the message I will take to the UN general assembly when I travel there later today, alongside our steadfast support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.”
Hezbollah used a new rocket, Fadi 3, in an attack on an Israeli army base, the group announced in a message posted on Telegram on Tuesday, Reuters reports.
The claim has not been independently verified.
Reuters reports Lebanese sources have informed it that a leading member of Hezbollah, Ibrahim Qubaisi, head of Hezbollah’s rocket unit, was killed in the Israeli airstrike on Beirut.
More details soon …
Six killed and 15 injured in Israeli strike on Beirut
William Christou
William Christou reports from Beirut for the Guardian
Six people were killed and 15 injured by Israel’s strike on Dahiyeh in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said on Tuesday afternoon, as search and rescue operations continued.
Israeli media has reported the strike was targeting a senior Hezbollah commander.
More details soon …
Here are some pictures of the scene in Beirut, where Israel has carried out what it described as a “targeted strike” believed to be aimed at a senior Hezbollah commander. Local news sources report that rescue teams are attempting to reach civilians inside the building.
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