TEHRAN: Iran has dismissed as akin to child’s play Israel’s reported retaliation for an unprecedented Iranian strike, as both sides on Saturday appeared to step back from wider conflict stemming from the war in Gaza.
However, a deadly blast at an Iraqi military base emphasized the high tensions which persist in the region, as did more deadly Israeli strikes in Gaza and intensifying clashes in the West Bank.
Fears have soared this month that escalating tit-for-tat attacks between Israel and Iran could tip over into a broader war in the Middle East.
Israel had warned it would hit back after Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones a week ago in its first-ever direct attack on its arch enemy’s territory.
The Iran attack was itself in retaliation for an air strike — widely blamed on Israel — that levelled the Iranian consulate in Damascus and killed seven Revolutionary Guards on April 1.
The Israeli retaliation appeared to come on Friday, when Iranian media reported blasts in the central province of Isfahan.
Fars news agency reported “three explosions” close to Qahjavarestan, near Isfahan airport and the 8th Shekari army air base.
“What happened last night was no attack,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told NBC News.
“It was the flight of two or three quadcopters, which are at the level of toys that our children use in Iran,” he added.
“As long as there is no new adventure on behalf of the Israeli regime against Iran’s interests, we will have no response.”
Israeli officials have made no public comment on what — according to a senior US congressional source who spoke to AFP — were retaliatory Israeli strikes against Iran.
Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Britain’s Chatham House think tank, said the reported Israeli strike had been “calibrated to avoid damage and further Iranian aggression.”
Iranian political expert Hamid Gholamzadeh said the incident in Isfahan, while “insignificant,” needs to be seen in the context of the “fight for balance of power” between the two countries.
“The region is on fire and an all-out war can be ignited any moment,” he said.
While tensions rose after the attack on Iran’s consulate, violence involving Iran-backed groups had already been surging across the Middle East since the outbreak of the Gaza war.
Officials in Iraq said one person was killed and eight wounded in an explosion at a military base south of Baghdad housing a coalition of pro-Iranian armed groups.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Since the Gaza war began, violence has also flared in the other occupied Palestinian territory, the West Bank.
The Israeli army said Saturday that its forces killed 10 militants and arrested eight other people during a 40-hour raid on a refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
The Palestinian health ministry said 11 people were wounded in the Israeli raid, including a paramedic who was shot trying to get to the wounded.
Israel has faced growing global opposition over its military offensive in Gaza, which has reduced vast areas of the besieged Palestinian territory to rubble, while aids groups have warned the north is on the brink of famine.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under pressure over the rising civilian toll, needs “further escalation and another war to distract the world attention” away from suffering in Gaza, Iranian analyst Gholamzadeh said.
There have been particular fears about Israel’s intention to send troops into the southernmost city of Rafah, where most of the population is now sheltering having fled violence elsewhere.
Foreign ministers of the G7 group of developed economies, meeting in Italy on Friday, said they opposed a “full-scale military operation in Rafah” because it would have “catastrophic consequences” for civilians.
But even without a full operation, the city has been under regular bombardment.
On Saturday, Gaza’s Civil Defense agency said an overnight Israeli strike in Rafah killed nine members of a family including six children.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the Israeli army had also hit several other areas of Rafah overnight, adding: “It has been a very hard night.”
The war was triggered by an attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel has responded with a retaliatory offensive that has killed at least 34,049 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the latest toll from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Israel’s military said it struck dozens of militant targets over the past day, including the site in north Gaza from which a rocket was fired into the Israeli city of Sderot.
Witnesses in the central Nuseirat refugee camp said the Israeli army told them to evacuate one home, then several were destroyed.
“They instruct us to evacuate and return later, but where do we go back? To ruins?” asked resident Abu Ibrahim.
“How long will this farce continue?“
A UN report on Friday said “multiple obstacles” continue to impede delivery of urgently needed aid.
Despite some recent aid convoys being able to reach Gaza, the WFP cited “the real possibility of famine” in the north.
Efforts to seal a long sought-after truce have stalled, according to mediator Qatar.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a staunch critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, met with Qatar-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Saturday, calling for unity among Palestinians.
After Washington vetoed a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member state earlier this week, president Mahmud Abbas said his West Bank-based Palestinian Authority would “reconsider” its relationship with the US.
Iran, Israel appear to pull back from brink as Gaza bombed again
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Iran, Israel appear to pull back from brink as Gaza bombed again
- Israel had warned it would hit back after Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones a week ago
- The Iran attack was itself in retaliation for an air strike widely blamed on Israel
Women in Sudan's Darfur at 'near-constant risk' of sexual violence: MSF
"Women and girls do not feel safe anywhere," said San Filippo
PORT SUDAN: Sexual violence is a "near-constant risk" for women and girls in Sudan's western region of Darfur, Doctors without Borders (MSF) warned on Wednesday, calling for urgent action to protect civilians and provide support to survivors.
Since war began in April 2023 between Sudan's regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, the reported attacks in Darfur have been "heinous and cruel, often involving multiple perpetrators," according to MSF emergency coordinator Claire San Filippo.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands, displaced 13 million and left the country's already fragile infrastructure in ruins.
The RSF has been accused since the start of the war of systematic sexual violence across the country.
"Women and girls do not feel safe anywhere," said San Filippo, after MSF teams from Darfur and neighbouring Chad gathered harrowing accounts of victims.
"They are attacked in their own homes, when fleeing violence, getting food, collecting firewood, working in the fields. They tell us they feel trapped," she added.
Between January 2024 and March 2025, MSF said it had treated 659 survivors of violence in South Darfur, 94 percent of them women and girls.
More than half were assaulted by armed actors, and nearly a third were minors, with some victims as young as five.
In Tawila, a small town about 60 kilometres (40 miles) to the west from North Darfur's besieged capital of El-Fasher, 48 survivors of sexual violence were treated at the local hospital between January and early May.
Most arrived after fleeing an RSF attack on the Zamzam displacement camp that killed at least 200 civilians and displaced over 400,000.
In eastern Chad, which hosts over 800,000 Sudanese refugees, MSF treated 44 survivors since January 2025 -- almost half of them children.
A 17-year-old girl recounted being gang-raped by RSF fighters, saying: "I wanted to lose my memory after that."
According to Ruth Kauffman, MSF emergency medical manager, "access to services for survivors of sexual violence is lacking and, like most humanitarian and healthcare services in Sudan, must urgently be scaled up".
"People -- mostly women and girls -- who suffer sexual violence urgently need medical care, including psychological support and protection services," she added.
Sudan war shatters infrastructure, costly rebuild needed
- The Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been battling since April 2023
- Tens of thousands of people have been killed or injured and about 13 million were uprooted
KHARTOUM: Destroyed bridges, blackouts, empty water stations and looted hospitals across Sudan bear witness to the devastating impact on infrastructure from two years of war.
Authorities estimate hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of reconstruction would be needed. Yet there is little chance of that in the short-term given continued fighting and drone attacks on power stations, dams and fuel depots.
Not to mention a world becoming more averse to foreign aid where the biggest donor, the US, has slashed assistance.
The Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been battling since April 2023, with tens of thousands of people killed or injured and about 13 million uprooted in what aid groups call the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Residents of the capital Khartoum have to endure weeks-long power outages, unclean water and overcrowded hospitals. Their airport is burnt out with shells of planes on the runway.
Most of the main buildings in downtown Khartoum are charred and once-wealthy neighborhoods are ghost towns with destroyed cars and unexploded shells dotting the streets.
“Khartoum is not habitable. The war has destroyed our life and our country and we feel homeless even though the army is back in control,” said Tariq Ahmed, 56.
He returned briefly to his looted home in the capital before leaving it again, after the army recently pushed the RSF out of Khartoum.
One consequence of the infrastructure breakdown can be seen in a rapid cholera outbreak that has claimed 172 deaths out of 2,729 cases over the past week alone mainly in Khartoum.
Other parts of central and western Sudan, including the Darfur region, are similarly ravaged by fighting, while the extensive damage in Khartoum, once the center of service provision, reverberates across the country.
Sudanese authorities estimate reconstruction needs at $300 billion for Khartoum and $700 billion for the rest of Sudan.
The UN is doing its own estimates.
Sudan’s oil production has more than halved to 24,000 barrels-per-day and its refining capabilities ceased as the main Al-Jaili oil refinery sustained $3 billion in damages during battles, Oil and Energy Minister Mohieddine Naeem said.
Without refining capacity, Sudan now exports all its crude and relies on imports, he said. It also struggles to maintain pipelines needed by South Sudan for its own exports.
Earlier this month, drones targeted fuel depots and the airport at the country’s main port city in an attack Sudan blamed on the UAE. The Gulf country denied the accusations.
All of Khartoum’s power stations have been destroyed, Naeem said. The national electrical company recently announced a plan to increase supply from Egypt to northern Sudan and said earlier in the year that repeated drone attacks to stations outside Khartoum were stretching its ability to keep the grid going.
Looted copper
Government forces re-took Khartoum earlier this year and as people return to houses turned upside down by looters, one distinctive feature has been deep holes drilled into walls and roads to uncover valuable copper wire.
On Sudan’s Nile Street, once its busiest throughway, there is a ditch about one meter (three feet) deep and 4 km (2.5 miles) long, stripped of wiring and with traces of burning.
Khartoum’s two main water stations went out of commission early in the war as RSF soldiers looted machinery and used fuel oil to power vehicles, according to Khartoum state spokesperson Altayeb Saadeddine.
Those who have remained in Khartoum resort to drinking water from the Nile or long-forgotten wells, exposing them to waterborne illnesses. But there are few hospitals equipped to treat them.
“There has been systematic sabotage by militias against hospitals, and most medical equipment has been looted and what remains has been deliberately destroyed,” said Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim, putting losses to the health system at $11 billion.
With two or three million people looking at returning to Khartoum, interventions were needed to avoid further humanitarian emergencies like the cholera outbreak, said United Nations Development Programme resident representative Luca Renda.
But continued war and limited budget means a full-scale reconstruction plan is not in the works.
“What we can do ... with the capacity we have on the ground, is to look at smaller-scale infrastructure rehabilitation,” he said, like solar-power water pumps, hospitals, and schools.
In that way, he said, the war may provide an opportunity for decentralizing services away from Khartoum, and pursuing greener energy sources.
UN blasts new US-backed aid distribution system in Gaza
- The issue of aid has come sharply into focus amid a hunger crisis in the territory
- Intense criticism of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which bypassed the longstanding UN-led system in Gaza
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: The UN on Wednesday condemned a US-backed aid system in Gaza after 47 people were injured during a chaotic food distribution, where the Israeli military said it did not open fire at crowds.
The issue of aid has come sharply into focus amid a hunger crisis coupled with intense criticism of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a shadowy group that has bypassed the longstanding UN-led system in the territory.
According to the UN, 47 people were injured in the mayhem that erupted on Tuesday when thousands of Palestinians desperate for food rushed into a GHF aid distribution site, while a Palestinian medical source said at least one had died.
Ajith Sunghay, the head of the UN Human Rights Office in the Palestinian territories, said most of the wounded had been hurt by gunfire, and based on the information he had, “it was shooting from the IDF” — the Israeli military.
The Israeli military rejected the accusation, with Col. Olivier Rafowicz telling AFP that Israeli soldiers “fired warning shots into the air, in the area outside” the center managed by the GHF, and “in no case toward the people.”
With the war sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel entering its 600th day on Wednesday, Palestinians in Gaza felt there was no reason to hope for a better future.
In Israel, the relatives of people held hostage in Gaza since the October 7 attack longed for the return of their loved ones, with hundreds gathering in their name in Tel Aviv.
“Six hundred days have passed and nothing has changed. Death continues, and Israeli bombing does not stop,” said Bassam Daloul, 40, adding that “even hoping for a ceasefire feels like a dream and a nightmare.”
The UN has repeatedly hit out against the GHF, which faces accusations of failing to fulfil the principles of humanitarian work, and Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, on Wednesday reiterated the criticism.
“I believe it is a waste of resources and a distraction from atrocities. We already have an aid distribution system that is fit for purpose,” he said during a visit in Japan.
In Gaza, the civil defense agency said Israeli air strikes killed 16 people since dawn Wednesday.
Heba Jabr, 29, who sleeps in a tent in southern Gaza with her husband and their two children, was struggling to find food.
“Dying by bombing is much better than dying from the humiliation of hunger and being unable to provide bread and water for your children,” she said.
Israel imposed a full blockade on Gaza for over two months, before allowing supplies in at a trickle last week.
A medical source in southern Gaza said that after Tuesday’s stampede at the GHF site “more than 40 injured people arrived at Nasser Hospital, the majority of them wounded by Israeli gunfire,” adding that at least one had died since.
The source added that “a number of other civilians also arrived at the hospital with various bruises.”
On Tuesday, the GHF said around “8,000 food boxes have been distributed so far... totaling 462,000 meals.”
UN agencies and aid groups have argued that the GHF’s designation of so-called secure distribution sites contravenes the principle of humanity because it would force already displaced people to move again in order to stay alive.
Israel stepped up its military offensive in Gaza earlier this month, while mediators push for a ceasefire that remains elusive.
In Israel, hundreds of people gathered to call for a ceasefire that would allow for the release of hostages held by militants in Gaza since their 2023 attack.
Protesters gathered along the country’s roads and on the main highway running through the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv at 6:29 am, the exact time the unprecedented October 7 attack began.
Most Israeli media headlines read “600 days,” and focused on the hostage families’ struggle to get their relatives home.
Other events were planned across Israel to make the 600th day of captivity for the 57 remaining hostages still in Gaza.
Some 1,218 people were killed in Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Wednesday that at least 3,924 people had been killed in the territory since Israel ended a ceasefire on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 54,084, mostly civilians.
Pope Leo appeals for Gaza ceasefire, laments deaths of children
- ‘The intense cries are reaching Heaven more and more from mothers and fathers,’ he said
VATICAN CITY: Pope Leo appealed on Wednesday for a ceasefire in Gaza, and called on Israel and Hamas militants to “completely respect” international humanitarian law.
“In the Gaza Strip, the intense cries are reaching Heaven more and more from mothers and fathers who hold tightly to the bodies of their dead children,” the pontiff said during his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square.
“To those responsible, I renew my appeal: stop the fighting,” said the pope. “Liberate all the hostages. Completely respect humanitarian law.”
Leo, elected on May 8 to replace the late Pope Francis, also appealed for an end to the war in Ukraine.
Italy demands Israel stops strikes, blasts expulsions of Gazans
- Antonion Tajani: ‘The bombings must stop, humanitarian assistance must resume as soon as possible, respect for international humanitarian law must be restored’
ROME: Italy’s foreign minister on Wednesday again urged Israel to stop its strikes on Gaza, while warning that expelling Palestinians from the territory “is not and never will be an acceptable option.”
“The legitimate reaction of the Israeli government to a terrible and senseless terrorist act has unfortunately taken on absolutely tragic and unacceptable forms, that we ask Israel to stop immediately,” Antonion Tajani told parliament, referring also to Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
“The bombings must stop, humanitarian assistance must resume as soon as possible, respect for international humanitarian law must be restored,” he said.
“Hamas must immediately free all the hostages which are still today in its in hands, and who have the right to return to their homes.”
Tajani also condemned US President Donald Trump’s plan for US control of Gaza and the forced displacement of the Palestinians living there.
“I want to reiterate today in this chamber with the utmost clarity – the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza is not and will never be an acceptable option,” Tajani said.
“This is why we wholeheartedly support the Arab plan led by Egypt for the recovery and reconstruction of the (Gaza) Strip, which is incompatible with any hypothesis of forced displacement.”
