World Briefing: September 21, 2024

Hezbollah has confirmed its senior commanders Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wahbi were both killed in a strike on the Lebanese capital Beirut on Friday, which killed at least 31 people, including three children. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the strike targeted the Iran-backed group's elite Radwan unit. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk told a security council meeting that the pager and walkie-talkie explosions this week in Lebanon, which killed 37 people, violated international humanitarian law. On Thursday night, the Israeli Air Force attacked "hundreds" of Hezbollah rocket launch pads in southern Lebanon and on Friday, attacked military buildings in six areas, including Kfar Kila. On Friday, Hezbollah attacked northern Israel with around 200 rockets launched from Lebanon, according to the Israeli military - BBC

Gaza's civil defence agency reported Saturday that an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in the Palestinian territory’s largest city killed 22 people. Meanwhile, Hezbollah confirmed that its top commander Ahmed Mahmud Wahbi, who oversaw the military operations of its elite Rardwan Force, was killed in an Israeli air strike in Beirut that resulted in 37 deaths and dozens more wounded, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

A court in Moscow has sent 30 people to pretrial detention over a shoot-out earlier this week in central Moscow at the offices of Wildberries, the country's largest online retailer, that left two people dead. The group includes a Chechen mixed martial arts fighter, according to TASS and RIA Novosti, but the husband of Wildberries CEO Tatyana Bakalchuk said he was not among those detained. Vladislav Bakalchuk said on Telegram on September 20 that he was the victim of a “cynical provocation and attack by unknown armed men” when he and others went to the office of Wildberries on the day of the shooting “with peaceful intentions to resolve issues related to payments to employees and contractors” and other business matters. Tatyana Bakalchuk -- Russia's richest woman -- described the events as an armed takeover attempt by her estranged husband and two disgruntled former executives. - RFE/RL

President Joe Biden is looking to showcase the Indo-Pacific partnership he has nurtured since taking office as he hosts the leaders of Australia, Japan and India in his hometown Saturday with an eye on his legacy as well. When Biden entered the White House he looked to elevate the so-called Quad, which until then had only met at the foreign minister level, to a leader-level partnership as he tried to pivot U.S. foreign policy away from conflicts in the Middle East and toward threats and opportunities in the Indo-Pacific. This weekend’s summit is the fourth in-person and sixth overall gathering of the leaders since 2021. Biden put a personal touch on the engagement — potentially the last of the group before he leaves office on Jan. 20 — by opening his home in Wilmington, Delaware, to each of the leaders and hosting a joint meeting and formal dinner at the high school he attended more than 60 years ago. As part of the summit, the leaders were set to announce new initiatives to bolster maritime security in the region — with enhanced coast guard collaboration through the Pacific and Indian oceans — and improve cooperation on humanitarian response missions. The measures are meant to serve as a counterweight to an increasingly assertive China. Sullivan said he expected Biden and Modi would discuss Modi’s recent visits to Russia and Ukraine as well as economic and security concerns about China. Modi is the most prominent leader from a nation that maintains a neutral position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Sullivan said Biden would underscore “that countries like India should step up and support the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity” and that “every country, everywhere, should refrain from supplying inputs to Russia’s war machine.”

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