United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has expressed concern that Lebanon will become "another Gaza" due to the strengthening of the armed conflict between Israel and the pro-Iranian Lebanese Shiite organization Hezbollah.
"What worries me is the possibility of Lebanon turning into another Gaza," Guterres told CNN on September 22, as the annual session of the UN General Assembly opens in New York.
In a short interview, Guterres, who tirelessly advocates for calm in the Middle East, also expressed regret that after almost a year of war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas, neither side wants a "real" truce.
"It's clear to me that the two sides are not interested in a truce. And that's a tragedy because it's a war that needs to stop," he told CNN.
He said that it cannot be repeated enough times that there is no military solution to ensure that one side or the other is safe.
Israel and the Lebanese extremist Hezbollah exchanged heavy fire on Sunday, September 22.
Israeli warplanes carried out the most intensive bombing of the war across southern Lebanon in a year, while Hezbollah claimed responsibility for rocket attacks on military targets in northern Israel, Reuters reports.
Hezbollah opened a Lebanese front in October last year in support of its Palestinian ally, the Palestinian movement Hamas, which the US and the European Union consider terrorist.
Tensions have risen sharply in recent days and dozens of people have been killed and thousands wounded in Lebanon in a series of explosions attributed to Israel that targeted the pagers and walkie-talkies of Hezbollah members.
After Hamas invaded Israel on October 7 last year, the Israeli army conducted a military operation in the Gaza Strip in which 41.431 people were killed in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas.
(Radio Free Europe)
Egypt fears an all-out regional war in the Middle East due to escalating violence between Lebanon's Hezbollah and Israel, a conflict that is undermining diplomatic efforts to establish a truce in the Gaza Strip.
"There is a lot of concern... about the possibility of an escalation in the region that could lead to an all-out war," Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelati told AFP at UN headquarters in New York.
He warned of the "negative effects" of the conflict on the Israeli-Lebanese border on the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian movement Hamas in Gaza.
Egypt is the mediator in the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas, which has been devastating Gaza for almost a year, where more than 40.000 people have died.
The head of Egyptian diplomacy is in New York ahead of the general debate at the annual session of the UN General Assembly, where leaders from all over the world gather.
"Egypt along with Qatar and the US (the other two mediator countries over Gaza) are fully resolved to continue "efforts in the hope of achieving a truce between Israel and Hamas," he said.
He said that all the elements of the agreement are there, but that there remains a lack of political will on the part of Israel.
The minister, whose country signed a peace treaty with Israel, condemned the provocative measures taken by Benjamin Netanyahu's government against pro-Iranian Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas.
"We are talking with regional and international partners, including the US, about the importance of working to end the escalation and unilateral and provocative measures taken by Israel," he said.
Echoing what the US, the EU, and the UN are saying, the head of Egyptian diplomacy said that a possible regional expansion of the conflict would not be in the interest of any side.
(BETA)
The US administration is pushing for a diplomatic solution to end the attacks between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah, which have killed dozens of people in Beirut and driven hundreds of thousands into underground shelters in northern Israel.
Speaking on ABC's "This Week" on Sept. 22, national security spokesman John Kirby said the US is "engaged in extensive and fairly determined diplomacy" in the region.
"We still believe that there can be time and space for a diplomatic solution here," Kirby said.
According to a Pentagon statement, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke on September 21 with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant about Hezbollah's rocket attacks and stressed the need for a diplomatic solution.
As for ending the conflict in Gaza, Kirbi says they haven't made any progress there in the past week, but not for lack of trying.
He says Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar does not appear to be "negotiating in good faith," citing the recent killing of six Israeli hostages in tunnels under Gaza. "But that doesn't mean we're not trying," he added.
(Radio Free Europe)
The Israeli military has repeatedly accused Al Jazeera journalists of having ties to Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, or its ally Islamic Jihad.
Al Jazeera has strongly denied the allegations and claims that Israel is systematically targeting its employees in the Gaza Strip.
Four Al Jazeera journalists have been killed since the start of the Gaza war last October, and the network's office in Gaza has been bombed.
The network said the soldiers did not give a reason for the order to close the office on Sunday, the Guardian reports.
"There is a court decision to close Al Jazeera for 45 days," an Israeli soldier told Al Jazeera's West Bank bureau chief, Walid Al Omari, in a conversation broadcast live online.
"Please take all the cameras and leave the office immediately," the soldier said, according to the video.
Omari said the order stated that the network encourages and supports terrorism, according to Al Jazeera.
"Targeting journalists in this way is always aimed at erasing the truth and preventing people from hearing the truth," Omari said.
The Israeli military said it had closed Al Jazeera's office in Ramallah for encouraging terrorism.
The closure order was signed after a legal opinion and intelligence assessment concluded that the offices were being used to incite terrorism, support terrorist activities and that the channel's broadcasts threatened security and public order both in the region and in the State of Israel as a whole, the army said.
Lebanese MP Hassan Fadlalah, a member of Hezbollah, said today that the war with Israel has entered a new phase, and that the organization is ready for any scenario, war or confrontation.
At the funeral of a member of the extremist Hezbollah killed along with dozens of others, a total of 45 people, in an Israeli airstrike in a Beirut neighborhood, Fadlallah said that the southern front played a key role in pressuring Israel to stop the war in Gaza.
He also assessed that Israel will not be able to achieve its main goal of returning settlers to the north and praised Hezbollah's capabilities.
"We have a strong and capable resistance that has the capabilities, competencies, numerous fighters and equipment to be able to absorb any loss or blow, to adapt to any new situation," said the deputy.
(BETA)
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant stated that Israeli attacks on Lebanon will continue until conditions are created for the safe return of evacuated people from the north of Israel.
"Hezbollah has begun to feel some of the capabilities of the Israel Defense Forces ... and we are seeing results," Galant said during a tour of the Israeli Air Force's command and control center.
"These moves will continue until we reach a situation where we can safely return the residents of the north to their homes. That is the goal, that is the mission, and we will do whatever it takes to fulfill it," he added, according to the Times of Israel. .
Hezbollah has vowed to continue fighting until a ceasefire is reached in the Gaza war, hinting at a protracted conflict.
Lebanon's health ministry said today that three people were killed in separate Israeli strikes in the country's south, which Israel said targeted Hezbollah targets.
In three separate statements, the ministry said three victims were killed in three villages in southern Lebanon, attributing each to a "strike by the Israeli enemy," France Press reported.
The Islamist organization Hezbollah announced that two of its fighters were killed, but did not say where.
(BETA)
At least 41.431 Palestinians have been killed and 95.818 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The statement said that probably thousands of dead are still trapped in the rubble in the enclave. At least 40 people were killed in the past 24 hours, it added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement in which he said Israel had dealt Hezbollah "a series of blows they could not have imagined" in recent days.
"If Hezbollah didn't get the message, I promise you, they will," Netanyahu said, promising the return of northern residents who were evacuated due to Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon.
"No country can tolerate attacks on its citizens, on its cities, and we - the state of Israel - will not tolerate that. We will do everything necessary to restore security," Netanyahu was quoted as saying, according to the Guardian.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi addressed the media in New York ahead of the UN General Assembly. According to a report by Haaretz journalist Alison Kaplan Somer, Aragchi said that Israel had created "real hell" in Gaza and that "the crimes of the Zionist regime in Lebanon, although committed out of frustration, will not go unanswered."
"The main obstacle to achieving a truce and stopping this war is really the support provided by the US and Western countries," Aragchi said, accusing the West of enabling Israel to continue its destructive military actions.
Al Jazeera quoted the Gaza Civil Defense as saying that seven people were killed in an Israeli bombardment of the Kafr Qasim school in the Al Shati refugee camp in western Gaza City, which was sheltering hundreds of displaced people. The Israeli army claims it targeted Hamas fighters. Among the dead, according to the Guardian, is Majed Saleh, director of the Ministry of Public Works and Housing in Gaza.
Al Falah School in the Al Zeytun neighborhood of Gaza City was bombed yesterday, killing 21 people, including 13 children, according to Wafa, the Palestinian news agency.
The President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, gave an interview to Trevor Phillips on his political show in the UK, in which he stated that Israel does not want war with Lebanon, claiming that the conflict was caused by Iranian proxies in the region, including Hezbollah and Yemen's Houthis, as and Hamas in Gaza.
"Israel is fighting for its well-being, its existence, its citizens. That's what we're doing. And we're doing whatever it takes," he said, adding that Hezbollah, which he described as a terrorist organization, had seized Lebanon.
"Hezbollah has been armed to the teeth by the Iranian evil empire," he said, stressing that Israel wants to return the Israeli hostages from Gaza and return Israeli citizens back to their homes on the border with Lebanon.
Hezbollah said it hit industrial complexes belonging to the Israeli defense company Rafael, near Haifa, in northern Israel, early Sunday morning.
The group said in a statement that the attack was part of an "initial response" to the explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies, which left more than 3.000 wounded and 42 people dead across Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday. Israel is believed to be responsible for the attacks, although it has not publicly acknowledged it.
Fighting in southern Lebanon and northern Israel peaked overnight, with Israel launching widespread airstrikes that it said targeted Hezbollah rocket launchers across southern Lebanon, the Guardian reports.
Footage of the explosions is circulating on Lebanese social networks. Lebanon's health ministry said at least one person was killed and another wounded in the attacks.
In return, Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets into northern Israel overnight, targeting the Ramat David military base southeast of Haifa in the early hours of Sunday morning — the furthest the group has targeted since the conflict began in October.
The renewed fighting came days after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said Israel was approaching a new phase in its war with Hezbollah. Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech on Thursday that increased Israeli attacks will not stop the group from continuing attacks on Israel until a ceasefire is reached in Gaza.
The Israeli army continued its attacks across southern and central Gaza today, killing at least seven Palestinians, according to a report by the Palestinian Wafa news agency.
Israeli artillery reportedly targeted the town of Huza, east of the southern town of Kan Yunis, killing two people.
Palestinian Red Crescent emergency teams later recovered the bodies of four people from the Al Atatira area, east of Rafah, following Israeli airstrikes.
In another attack, Wafa reports that one person was killed after an Israeli military quadcopter – a drone with four propellers – opened fire on civilians west of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
Qatar's Al Jazeera television broadcast today a video of Israeli soldiers breaking into its newsroom in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.
The video shows bureau chief Walid Omari and employees at the moment when the soldiers entered and ordered the premises to be closed for the next 45 days.
A soldier informed Omari of the military order to close and then told the employees to leave immediately.
Omari then read the order given to him and said that the employees must take their belongings and cameras and leave the newsroom.
Al Jazeera's office in Ramallah was crucial since Israel closed the Jerusalem office in May and confiscated some of the station's equipment.
This caused condemnation from the UN and human rights organizations, which called the move by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a restriction of press freedom, the agencies remind.
After the employees left the office in Ramallah, a video of bureau chief Omari and others on the street was shown, and reporters said that Israeli soldiers were confiscating material.
Soon after, the soldiers approached the head of the bureau and the broadcast was interrupted, but he is heard to have said that his camera and broadcasting equipment were also taken from him.
Based on the interim peace agreement "Oslo", so called because it was negotiated in the Norwegian capital, the Palestinian Authority is responsible for the so-called Area A in the occupied West Bank, which includes Ramallah.
(BETA)
Israel's air defense shot down a drone over the Golan Heights today, which is claimed to have flown into Israeli airspace from the east, and was probably sent from Iraq.
Sirens sounded in several Israeli cities due to fears of falling shrapnel, but there were no injuries or damage in the incident, Israeli media reported.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an organization backed by Iran, claimed responsibility for several attacks on Israel today.
Before dawn, two cruise missiles fired from Iraq were shot down by the army as they flew towards the Golan.
The rockets were intercepted outside Israeli airspace, the military said.
Later, another drone was intercepted while flying towards southern Israel and activated its sirens in Ber Ora, near the Israeli port of Eilat on the Red Sea. And that drone was intercepted before entering Israeli airspace.
Meanwhile, Lebanon's Hezbollah fired more than 100 rockets at Israel, and the Israeli military said Israeli warplanes continued to attack dozens of "Hezbollah terrorist targets, including rocket launchers and military targets in the southern Lebanon area."
(BETA)
The number of victims of the Israeli air attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut, whose target on Friday was an elite unit of the Lebanese Hezbollah, rose to 45, the Lebanese Ministry of Health announced today.
Earlier it was reported that the death toll was 37. Today's report added that "the removal of rubble continues for the third day in a row" and that DNA samples are being taken to determine the identity of some of the victims, France Press reported.
Israeli media reports that pro-Iranian extremist Hezbollah confirmed that at least 16 of its members, including top leaders, were killed in the attack during a meeting held in the basement of a Beirut apartment building.
According to the Associated Press, it was the deadliest Israeli attack on Beirut since the one-month war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006.
Ibrahim Akil, who commanded the special unit of Hezbollah Radvan, was killed in the attack. Among those killed were seven women and three children.
UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jenin Henis Plashert warned of an "inevitable catastrophe" in the Middle East, at a time of increasing violence between Israel and Lebanon, assessing that a military solution is not a solution.
(BETA)
More than 100 rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon early this morning and some landed near the northern city of Haifa as Israel and Hamas extremists appear to be edging closer to all-out war.
Rockets flew deeper and wider into northern Israel this morning than earlier and set off warning sirens in the area.
Israeli media reported that rockets fired early this morning from Lebanon were intercepted in the Haifa and Nazareth area, further south than most of the rockets so far. Israel canceled classes in schools in the north, deepening the impression of the crisis.
Hezbollah said it fired dozens of Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 rockets, a new type of weapon it had not used before, at the Ramat David air base, south of Haifa.
It was, as stated, "a response to repeated Israeli attacks that targeted various Lebanese areas and led to many civilian martyrs."
Hezbollah threatened revenge for the wave of explosions on pagers and walkie-talkies by Hezbollah members on Tuesday and Wednesday that killed 37 people, including two children, and wounded around 3.000. Israel has been accused of the attacks, which has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.
On Friday, an Israeli attack demolished an eight-story building in a densely populated neighborhood of Beirut's southern suburbs, where members of Hezbollah were meeting in the basement.
Among others, a high-ranking official of the organization, commander of the special unit Radvan Irahim Akil, was killed. At least seven women and three children were killed, and another 68 people were wounded.
It was the deadliest attack on Beirut since the month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said the attack had broken the organization's chain of command.
Israel's military said today that rockets from Lebanon had been fired at civilian areas, indicating a possible escalation since earlier barrage fire had mostly been aimed at military targets. Hundreds of thousands of civilians came under fire in northern Israel and spent the night in shelters.
Israel's military confirmed it had carried out a wave of strikes across southern Lebanon in the past 24 hours, hitting around 400 extremist sites including rocket launchers and preventing a further attack.
In a separate incident, Israeli forces raided the West Bank bureau of Al Jazeera, which was banned earlier this year over allegations that it worked for extremist organizations, which the outlet has denied.
Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging fire since the start of the Gaza war nearly a year ago, when the pro-Iranian Shiite organization began firing rockets in solidarity with the Palestinians and its Iranian-backed ally Hamas.
In the conflict, tens of people were killed in Israel, hundreds in Lebanon and tens of thousands of inhabitants were displaced on both sides of the border.
Neither side is believed to be seeking an all-out war, but in recent weeks Israel has shifted its focus from Gaza to Lebanon and vowed to restore calm on the border to allow citizens to return to their homes.
Hezbollah has said it will stop attacks only if a ceasefire is established in Gaza, which appears increasingly uncertain as talks brokered by the US, Egypt and Qatar have stalled multiple times.
(Beta)
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