Hundreds of Hezbollah members injured in ‘biggest security breach’

The 10-year-old daughter of a Hezbollah member was killed in Lebanon’s east when his pager exploded on Tuesday, her family and a source close to the group said.

“A 10-year-old girl was martyred in the Bekaa Valley after her father’s pager exploded while he was next to her,” her relatives told AFP.

A source close to the group confirmed her death, the first to be reported after exploding paging devices injured hundreds of Hezbollah members across Lebanon.

Lebanon’s International Security Forces (ISF) have asked for the roads to be cleared for injured people to be taken to hospital.

“Wireless communication devices of certain types in a number of areas of Lebanon, particularly in Al-Dahiyeh Al-Janoubiyeh [southern suburb of Beirut] were subjected to explosions, leading to injuries,” ISF said on X.

It added that it was requesting citizens clear the roads to facilitate the wounded being cared for and taken to hospital.

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was injured on Tuesday by the explosion of a pager, Iran’s Mehr news agency reported.

(Reuters)

Qatar’s foreign ministry said Tuesday efforts to forge a Gaza truce were “ongoing”, after several rounds of talks aimed at ending the now 11-month war ended without a breakthrough.

“The efforts are still ongoing and channels of communication remain open… the goals and visits and meetings are ongoing,” ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari told reporters.

Months of behind-the-scenes negotiations mediated by Qatar, Egypt, and the United States have been unable to halt the fighting, apart from a one-week truce beginning in late November.

Recent mediation in Doha and Cairo has been based on a framework laid out in May by US President Joe Biden and a “bridging proposal” presented to the warring parties in August.

The US State Department said Monday Secretary of State Antony Blinken would visit Egypt this week to “discuss ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire”, his tenth trip to the region since the Gaza Strip war began last October.

After in-person talks last month in Egypt and Qatar broke up without a final agreement, Washington indicated that mediators were preparing to present another adapted framework for a ceasefire.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Monday Washington was working “expeditiously” on a new proposal.

Ansari declined to comment Tuesday on whether any further proposal had been relayed to Israel or Hamas.

“When it comes to the possibility of a deal taking place anytime soon, of course we remain hopeful at every juncture,” he said.

“I can’t comment on the prospects of a deal taking place right now but I can tell you that we remain hopeful and we continue with our efforts.”

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

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.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has been exchanging fire with Hezbollah since last October in parallel with its war on Gaza.

(Reuters)

Dozens of Hezbollah members were seriously wounded on Tuesday in Lebanon’s south and the southern suburbs of Beirut when the pagers they use to communicate exploded, security sources told Reuters.

A Reuters journalist saw 10 Hezbollah members bleeding from wounds in the southern suburb of Beirut known as Dahiyeh.

(Reuters)

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said its teams worked with the social development ministry to distribute relief materials to around 750 families in two provinces in northern Gaza.

The supplies given to the families in the Gaza and North Gaza governorates included hygiene kits, blankets, and tarps, the humanitarian group said on social media platform X.

Israel’s domestic intelligence agency said on Tuesday that it had foiled a plot by Lebanese group Hezbollah to assassinate a former senior defence official in the coming days.

The Shin Bet agency did not name the official.

It said in a statement that it had seized an explosive device attached to a remote detonation system, using a mobile phone and a camera, that Hezbollah had planned to operate from Lebanon.

Shin Bet said the attempted attack was similar to a Hezbollah plot foiled in Tel Aviv a year ago, without giving further details.

(Reuters)

Nothing justifies Israel’s collective punishment of the people of Gaza as they endure “unimaginable” suffering, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told AFP on Monday.

“It is unimaginable, the level of suffering in Gaza, the level of deaths and destruction have no parallel in everything I’ve witnessed since [becoming] secretary-general,” said Guterres, who has led the international organisation since 2017.

“We all condemn the terror attacks made by Hamas, as well as the taking of the hostages, that is an absolute violation of international humanitarian law,” he said.

“But the truth is that nothing justifies the collective punishment of the Palestinian people, and that is what we are witnessing in a dramatic way in Gaza,” he added, decrying the widespread carnage and hunger blighting Gaza.

António Guterres is the UN’s secretary general [FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty-archive]

German news media outlets on Tuesday called on Israel to grant them access to war-torn Gaza, charging that the “almost complete exclusion of international media… is unprecedented in recent history”.

“After almost a year of war, we call on the Israeli government: allow us to enter the Gaza Strip,” a group of newspapers, agencies, and broadcasters wrote in an open letter.

They also urged Egypt to permit them entry to the widely devastated Palestinian territory via the Rafah border crossing in the south of the Gaza Strip.

The media organisations wrote that “anyone who makes independent reporting on this war impossible is damaging their own credibility.

“Anyone who prohibits us from working in the Gaza Strip is creating the conditions for human rights to be violated.”

The open letter was addressed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and had been delivered on Monday, they said.

Signatories included editors and reporters from Der Spiegel, Die Welt, public broadcasters ARD and ZDF and the German Journalists Association.

They said they have decades of experience in conflict reporting and wrote: “We know the risk. We are prepared to take it. Grant us access to the Gaza Strip. Let us work, in the interest of everyone.”

The number of people killed in Israel’s war on Gaza has risen to 41,252, according to the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry.

The ministry said Israel had performed three “massacres against the families” in the strip, with 26 killed and 84 injured people arriving at hospitals in the last 24 hours.

It added that 95,497 people had been injured in Israel’s war on Gaza, which began in October last year.

Dozens of Palestinians were killed or injured in Israeli bombing of a number of homes in the east of Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza this morning.

Civil defence authorities in Gaza said it was estimated more than 50 people were in the homes targeted by Israel.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid called Monday for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seal a Gaza truce deal immediately, as he met top US officials in Washington.

“I believe that any political interests should be set aside for this. This is way more important,” Lapid told reporters outside the State Department after meeting Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“Israel as a nation will not heal unless we will bring them back home,” Lapid said of the hostages. “This is essential to our existence.”

“It’s doable,” he said. “We can do a hostage deal – and we need to do it.”

Lapid, a former prime minister, renewed his promise not to work to topple Netanyahu’s government – which relies on support from far-right members – if he goes ahead with the deal.

Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar said Monday the Palestinian group had the resources to sustain its fight against Israel, with support from Iran-backed regional allies, nearly a year into the Gaza war.

Sinwar, who last month replaced slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, said in a letter to the group’s Yemeni allies: “We have prepared ourselves to fight a long war of attrition.”

Sinwar, in his letter to Yemen’s Houthis, threatened that Iran-aligned groups in Gaza and elsewhere in the region would “break the enemy’s political will” after more than 11 months of war.

“Our combined efforts with you” and with groups in Lebanon and Iraq “will break this enemy and inflict defeat on it”, he said.