Live/ Eight dead in Israeli attack on Nuseirat refugee camp

The Palestinian Foreign Minister has reacted to the video of Israeli officers carrying and dragging the bodies of Palestinian gunmen, saying it is a “crime” that exposes the “brutality” of the Israeli military, according to Al Jazeera.

The Palestinian ambassador to the UK also reacted on social media, mocking “Israeli self-defence”.

Israeli occupation soldiers throw wounded men from a rooftop in Qabatiya, outside Jenin in the occupied West Bank, today. This is Israel’s “self-defense” pic.twitter.com/uYQxDYfJP2

-Husam Zomlot (@hzomlot) September 19, 2024

A US intelligence official said the planning for the Israeli operation to blow up pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members lasted about 15 years, he said in an interview with ABC News, as cited by the Times of Israel.

“Such an operation would require a lengthy process of creating shell companies, with multiple layers of subterfuge for agents to insert themselves into the supply chain,” he said.

“Some of the people involved may not even know they would be serving Israeli forces,” he added.

The intelligence official also said the CIA had in the past prevented Israeli forces from carrying out a similar attack “because of the risk to civilian lives.”

Two employees of Taiwanese companies have been questioned as part of an investigation into pagers that exploded while being used by Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, investigators say, while senior officials insist the devices did not originate on the island, the Times of Israel reported.

Questions have been raised in recent days about the origin of the devices and how they were supplied to the group after hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies exploded in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least 37 people and injuring around 3,000.

The New York Times reported this week that Israel had snuck explosive material into a shipment of Taiwanese Gold Apollo pagers, citing U.S. officials, but Gold Apollo director Hsu Ching-kuang denied producing the devices, pointing the finger at its Hungarian partner BAC Consulting KFT, which Gold Apollo had licensed to use its brand.

According to local media, cited by the Times of Israel, the second person questioned was Wu Yu-jen, an official linked to BAC Consulting KFT, which set up a company in Taipei called “Apollo Systems.” “Our country takes this case very seriously,” the Shilin District Prosecutor’s Office in Taipei said in a statement.

The two witnesses were allowed to leave after questioning. “We will clarify the facts as soon as possible, namely whether Taiwanese companies are involved or not,” the office said.

According to the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), 222 trucks of humanitarian aid managed to reach Gaza.

Of these, according to Al Jazeera, 176 trucks arrived via the Karem Abu Salem crossing in southern Gaza and 46 via the Beit Hanoon crossing in the north.

Eight Palestinians were killed and several wounded this afternoon in an Israeli bombardment of a house west of the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera reports.