The BBC reports on the large explosion in southern Lebanon that destroyed what security sources said was a Hezbollah arms depot. The blast sent a huge plume of black smoke into the air above the village of Ain Qana, which is a stronghold of the militant Shia Islamist movement. One security source said the blast was caused by a “technical error”, although the state news agency noted that it had coincided with Israeli overflights. The report notes that Israeli military did not comment on the incident.

An investigation by BBC News Arabic has found that Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich, controls companies that have donated $100m to an Israeli organisation that operates in East Jerusalem. The Telegraph also picked up the BBC’s report. Elad also runs the City of David and other archaeological sites, visited by a million tourists each year in Jerusalem. The BBC video says Israel is breaking international law by allowing exploratory archaeological digs to be carried out in occupied land. Israel disputes this view.

The BBC reports that Standard Chartered bank may have indirectly provided financial support to Hamas from 2014 to 2016, when the bank raised concerns in a report about “possible terrorist financing.” In response, a Standard Chartered bank spokesman said: “We take our responsibility to fight financial crime extremely seriously and have invested substantially in our compliance programmes.”

The Times reports that Saudi Arabia is undertaking an ambitious project to plant more than half a million trees in the Islamic holy city of Medina to try to tackle climate change.

The Guardian focuses on the Palestinian reaction to the normalisation agreements between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain. The report quotes several Palestinians, including senior politician Saeb Erekat, who said, “We definitely feel betrayed,” and condemned the deals as a “tremendous encouragement for the Israeli government to continue their occupation”.

The UK has sent the US evidence on two British alleged Islamic State (IS) militants, clearing way for a trial, according to reports in The Guardian, Independent and the BBC. Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh are accused of belonging to an IS cell dubbed “The Beatles”, who were behind the killings of Western hostages. The collaboration between UK and US authorities comes after Britain’s High Court rejected the request by the mother of one of the suspects to block the transfer of information. The men, in US military custody in Iraq, deny the charges.

The Guardian and the Independent note that aid agencies warn of COVID-19 crisis in refugee camps as winter approaches. Numbers of infections in camps across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories have risen sharply throughout September. The spike in cases is beginning to outstrip the surges in those countries far better placed to deal with the aftermath

Kan Radio News reports that the coronavirus cabinet will meet again this morning to discuss imposing further social distancing restrictions on the public. The cabinet met for nine hours yesterday but failed to come to any agreement due to further restrictions on prayer services over Yom Kippur next week and further restrictions on political demonstrations — and on the correlation between the two. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Likud ministers in the coronavirus cabinet want restrictions placed on the demonstrations, whilst Interior Minister Aryeh Deri (Shas) threatened to resign if public prayers were restricted but demonstrations were not. Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn said that it could not be that politicians would be the ones to restrict the demonstrations against themselves.

Yediot Ahronot reports this morning the coronavirus cabinet ultimately voted in favour of Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi’s motion to form an inter-ministerial committee that would be comprised of representatives of the Health Ministry, the Justice Ministry and the police, and which would be tasked with drafting an orderly proposal outlining guidelines and restrictions for demonstrations. The report says that Blue and White ministers ultimately conceded their position that demonstrations must be held during the coronavirus crisis, based on the argument that the right to demonstrate is a basic right in any democratic country. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has not ruled out the possibility of restricting the number of demonstrators and requiring them to spread out, provided it is the professional echelon and not the political echelon that presents data that proves that taking those measures is necessary.

Ma’ariv reports on the new economic plan approved yesterday by the cabinet. The plan will give grants to businesses and salaried employees who are expected to be harmed during the current lockdown. President Reuven Rivlin and Justice Minister Nissenkorn also announced yesterday a unique debt-forgiveness plan for debtors who have fallen into financial distress because of the crisis and are having trouble paying fines from the past.

Yediot Ahronot publishes an op-ed this morning by Hadassah Medical Center Director-General Prof. Zeev Rotstein, who criticises the government, as well as the Health Ministry and the Finance Ministry, for hampering the hospitals’ efforts to fight the pandemic effectively and for shifting blame to others. Rotstein writes: “Don’t take us to task for the thousands of newly-infected people every day if even today — seven months after the pandemic first erupted — we still aren’t able to administer coronavirus tests to infectors and we are still failing to quarantine them quickly enough. Don’t take the public to task for its failure to comply and its loss of confidence in its [political] leaders and in the medical leadership, since they definitely have failed to set a personal example and cannot be trusted when all their measures focus only on restrictions and a ‘lockdown’ that do not always conform to medical logic. Furthermore, the [two leaderships’] zigzagging, the fudging and the sense of panic are all widely on display at present.”

Kan Radio News also reports on the mysterious explosion in the village of Ain Qana in southern Lebanon yesterday. The cause of explosion has not yet been determined but it is believed to have taken place in a weapons storehouse in the village. The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported that high-ranking Hezbollah figures arrived on the scene, spoke with the residents and implied that the explosion was coincidental and not the result of an Israeli air strike. One person was reportedly injured in the explosion.