Jerusalem: The early Saturday attacks may be only a precursor to a more severe strike against Israel.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, Saturday threatened Israel and the US with a punishing response over attacks on Iran and its allies following Israel’s Oct. 26 airstrikes that targeted Iran’s military bases and other locations.
“The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and to the resistance front,” Khamenei said in video released by Iranian state media.
A further attack by Iran, which has already launched two direct attacks against Israel this year, could push the wider Middle East closer to a broader conflict. Israel is already battling the Iran-backed militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The fight against Hezbollah has weakened the group but has also taken a heavy toll on southern Lebanon and other parts of the country.
On Friday, Israel launched dozens of intense airstrikes across Lebanon’s northeastern farming villages, killing at least 52 people and wounding scores more, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported.
Since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted in 2023, more than 2,897 people have been killed and 13,150 wounded in Lebanon, according to a Health Ministry update early Friday. United Nations agencies estimate that Israel’s ground invasion and bombardment of Lebanon has displaced 1.4 million people.
Residents of Israel’s northern communities near Lebanon, roughly 60,000 people, have also been displaced for more than a year.
Israeli strikes in Gaza kill at least 42 people in the last 24 hours
Israel has also stepped up its offensive against Hamas’ remaining fighters in Gaza, raising concerns about humanitarian conditions for civilians still there.
A series of Israeli strikes on Nuseirat, a refugee camp in central Gaza, killed at least 42 people, more than a half of them women and children, in the last 24 hours, Dr. Marwan Abu Naser, director of Al-Awda Hospital that received the casualties, told The Associated Press. Another 150 were wounded, he said.
The World Health Organization began a scaled-down polio vaccination campaign on Saturday, limiting efforts to offer at-risk children in Gaza City second doses after providing first doses in multiple parts of northern Gaza, which has seen intense Israeli bombardment.
The second round was initially set to start October 23 but was postponed due to lack of access amid intense Israeli bombing, mass evacuation orders and a lack of assurance about humanitarian pauses.
Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians since October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel and took some 250 hostages back to Gaza. Health officials inside Hamas-run Gaza do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of the dead in the enclave are women and children.
AP