Closing summary
Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed on Monday that they shot down another American-made MQ-9 Reaper drone, with video circulating online showing what appeared to be a surface-to-air missile strike and flaming wreckage strewn across the ground. The US military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Houthis’ claimed downing of a drone over the country’s southwestern Dhamar province, AP reported. The Houthis have exaggerated claims in the past in their ongoing campaign targeting shipping in the Red Sea over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
Al Jazeera is reporting that “according to medical sources” who have spoken to the network, the number of people killed by Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since dawn is now 21. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has banned Al Jazeera from operating inside Israel, and the government has moved to revoke the accreditation of all Al Jazeera journalists living there.
Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 41,226 Palestinians and wounded 95,413 since 7 October, the Palestinian health ministry said on Monday.
A senior Hamas official has told Agence France-Presse that new generations of fighters have been recruited since the 7 October attacks, less than a week after Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant told journalists that Hamas, “no longer exists” as a military formation in Gaza. Osama Hamdan claimed during an interview in Istanbul that the militant group “has a high ability to continue”. “There were martyrs and there were sacrifices … but in return there was an accumulation of experiences and the recruitment of new generations into the resistance.”
Tehran has not sent hypersonic missiles to Yemen’s Houthis, Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian claimed in a televised news conference on Monday, according to a report from Reuters. On Sunday the Houthis claimed that they had, for the first time, fired an advanced surface-to-surface hypersonic missile towards Israel, which hit an open area in the Ben Shemen forest, causing a fire near Kfar Daniel. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned them they would pay a “heavy price”.
Polio vaccination coverage in Gaza has reached 90%, the head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency said on Monday, adding that the next step was to ensure hundreds of thousands of children got a second dose at the end of the month. The campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza under 10 years of age against polio, which began on 1 September, presented major challenges to Unrwa and its partners due to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, Reuters reported.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant told US defence secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday that the window was closing for a diplomatic solution to the standoff with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement in southern Lebanon. Gallant’s remarks came as the White House Special envoy Amos Hochstein visited Israel to discuss the crisis on the northern border where Israeli troops have been exchanging missile fire with Hezbollah forces for months, Reuters reports.
Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian said on Monday that Tehran would never give up on its missile programme as it needs such deterrence for its security in a region where Iran’s arch-foe Israel is able to “drop missiles on Gaza every day”. The Islamic Republic has for years defied western calls to limit its missile programme.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed publicly on Tuesday that three Israeli hostages were mistakenly killed in a strike that also took the life of Hamas’ northern Gaza brigade chief, Ahmed Ghandour, in November. According to reports from Hebrew media, families of Sgt. Ron Sherman, Cpl. Nik Beizer, both 19, and civilian Elia Toledano, 28, who were abducted by Hamas on 7 October, were informed by IDF officials that their loved ones had tragically lost their lives as a result of IDF actions after a comprehensive inquiry.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to New York on 24 September, the first day of the high-level general debate by world leaders at the annual UN general assembly, his office said Sunday. It said Netanyahu is scheduled to stay until 28 September in the US, which he had visited in July for official talks and a congressional address.
The archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is understood to be considering a visit to Israel after being warned Bethlehem risks becoming a “new Gaza” cut off from the world if extremist Israeli settlers are given their way. The warning was given to the archbishop by Munther Isaac, a Luthern Pastor based in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
A sniper killed a UN worker on the roof of his home in the northern West Bank, the UN has said, as friends and family gathered in Turkey to bury a US-Turkish activist who had been killed by the Israeli military at a protest six days earlier and around 30km away. Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, a sanitation worker with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, was the first Unrwa employee killed in the West Bank in more than a decade. Shot in the early hours of Thursday morning in el Far’a camp, he left behind a wife and five children.
That’s all from the Israel-Gaza war live blog for today. Thanks for following along.
In Britain, the Labour leadership is facing a challenge at its party conference to extend its current limited arms embargo to Israel to cover all arms export licences and to go faster in recognition of Palestine as a state.
Campaigners say they intend to advance an emergency motion similar to one passed unanimously at the TUC last week, calling on the government not just to impose an embargo on 30 arms export licences, but all current licences. They are confident they will receive the votes at conference for the issue to be chosen for debate.
The UK government on 3 September, after two months intense internal discussion, suspended 30 of the 350 arms export licences to Israel but the decision has left both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian groups disssatisfied.
The Palestinian ambassador to the UK Husan Zumlot has been working the union conference circuit hard this spring and summer building support, and Labour is also aware that it remains under electoral challenge in some of its strongholds from the Green party and independents in local elections.
Both the Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner and the Middle East minister Hamish Falconer are due to speak at a Palestinian reception on Monday evening alongside Zumlot.
In a 20-minute address to the TUC, Zumlot said it would be unconscionable if the UK continued to sell arms to Israel.
