Iranian leader vows response to Israel and USA after attacks

Iran’s supreme leader vowed on Saturday to retaliate for attacks by Israel and its US ally after the pro-Iran coalition in Iraq claimed a drone strike on the Israeli resort of Eilat.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq is among the pro-Iran groups dragged into more than a year of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Days before presidential elections in the United States, Israel’s main military supplier, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that Iran’s response would include attacks on both the Islamic Republic and its allies.

The Israeli military said it had intercepted three drones over the Red Sea late Friday after reporting seven drone launches from “several fronts.” The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed responsibility for four drone attacks on Eilat.

Since late September, Israel has been engaged in a large-scale war against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, while clashes continue against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7 last year and triggered the Gaza war.

On Saturday, Israel launched renewed deadly air strikes on northern Gaza, where the UN described conditions as “apocalyptic”, and Hezbollah intensified rocket fire near Israel’s commercial hub Tel Aviv.

Referring to pro-Iran groups, including those in Yemen and Syria, Khamenei said, “Both the United States and the enemies of the Zionist regime should know that they will definitely receive a teeth-breaking response.”

Israel bombed military facilities in Iran on October 26, killing four soldiers, in response to an October 1 barrage of nearly 200 missiles by Tehran in what it called retaliation.

Israel warned Iran not to respond to the October 26 attack.

– B-52 bombers –

Analysts say Israel has inflicted significant damage on Iran’s air defenses and missile capabilities and could still launch broader action against the Islamic Republic.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have repeatedly attacked commercial ships in the Red Sea, are transforming themselves into a “powerful military organization” thanks to “unprecedented” military support from external sources, especially Iran and Hezbollah, according to a newly published UN report. .

Ahead of Tuesday’s US elections, officials in the US are pressing for a solution to the Lebanon war.

On Friday, the Pentagon announced the deployment of ballistic missile defense destroyers, long-range B-52 bombers and other resources to the Middle East, serving as a warning to Iran.

A Pentagon spokesman said the capabilities would begin arriving “in the coming months.”

U.S. marines and heavy B-2 bombers have struck Houthi rebel targets in Yemen in response to attacks by rebels who say they are acting in support of the Palestinians.

Since October 6, Israeli forces have launched a major air and ground offensive into northern Gaza, centered in the Jabalia district, vowing to stop attempts by Hamas militants to regroup.

“The situation emerging in northern Gaza resembles the apocalypse,” the UN agency heads said in a joint statement.

“The area has been under siege for almost a month, deprived of essential aid and life-saving supplies as shelling and other attacks continue,” they said.

“The entire Palestinian population in northern Gaza is in danger of dying from disease, famine and violence.”

In the Gaza City area, medics administered polio vaccination to children. The World Health Organization had said the necessary second round would begin in the north of the region on Saturday after Israeli bombardment halted progress.

Eyewitnesses said Israeli warplanes hit Beit Lahia, adjacent to Jabaliya, twice in the night.

– Deaths in Gaza –

Dozens of militants were killed in “air and ground activities” around Jabalia, the Israeli military said on Saturday.

It was also stated that soldiers were active in the center of Gaza and Rafah, the southernmost city of the region.

Three people were killed in an attack on Nuseyrat in central Gaza, medics and Gaza’s civil defense rescue teams said on Saturday, a day after scores were killed in an Israeli offensive.

After almost a year of tit-for-tat talks on Israel’s northern border, where Hezbollah says it supports Hamas, Israel stepped up its bombing campaign against targets in Lebanon on September 23 and later sent in ground troops.

Hezbollah has fired deeper into Israel since then.

Nineteen people were injured, four of them moderately, in an attack on Israel’s Sharon district north of Tel Aviv, police said on Saturday, after the military reported three bullets had been fired from Lebanon into central Israel.

The Israeli military says 37 soldiers have been killed in Lebanon since ground operations began, and Israeli figures show at least 63 people were killed on the Israeli side of the border last year.

Hezbollah claimed that Israel had fired rockets again at the Glilot intelligence base near Tel Aviv, and that rockets had also been fired at “military industries” in the Haifa area.

AFP footage from Tira, a town northeast of Tel Aviv, showed the upper wall of what appeared to be a residential building blown away.

Several cars below were crushed.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 1,911 people in Lebanon since the war escalated, according to AFP health ministry figures.

Hamas’ offensive on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to AFP’s calculation based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military action killed 43,314 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures the Hamas-ruled region’s health ministry has deemed reliable by the UN.

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