TEHRAN: Iran and its regional allies vowed retaliation on Thursday for the deaths of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, raising regional tensions as mourners filled Tehran’s city center calling for revenge.
A public funeral was held for Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital where he was killed early Wednesday in an attack which Israel has not commented on.
Haniyeh’s body was then flown to Qatar, where he had resided and where he is to be laid to rest on Friday, when his group called for a “day of furious rage” in the Palestinian territories and across the region.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, addressing the funeral of the Lebanese group’s top military commander, said Israel and “those who are behind it must await our inevitable response” to Fuad Shukr’s and Haniyeh’s killings within hours of each other.
“You do not know what red lines you crossed,” Nasrallah said, addressing Israel, a day after Shukr was killed in a strike in south Beirut.
Israel, which said Shukr’s assassination was a response to deadly rocket fire last week on the annexed Golan Heights, warned its adversaries on Thursday they would “pay a very high price” for any “aggression.”
“Israel is at a very high level of preparation for any scenario, both defensive and offensive,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.
“Those who attack us, we will attack in return.”
A source close to Hezbollah told AFP that Iranian officials met in Tehran on Wednesday with representatives of the so-called “axis of resistance,” a loose alliance of Tehran-backed groups hostile to Israel, to discuss their next steps.
“Two scenarios were discussed: a simultaneous response from Iran and its allies or a staggered response from each party,” said the source who had been briefed on the meeting, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
The leader of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels vowed a “military response” to Israel’s “major escalation.”
Analysts told AFP that the retaliation would be measured to avoid a wider conflagration.
Iran and the groups it backs “will more than likely try to avert a war, while also strongly deterring Israel from continuing with this new policy, this targeted shock and awe,” said Amal Saad, a Hezbollah researcher and lecturer at Britain’s Cardiff University.
In Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led prayers for Haniyeh having earlier threatened “harsh punishment” for his killing.
Crowds, including women shrouded in black, carried posters of Haniyeh and Palestinian flags in a procession and ceremony that began at Tehran University, an AFP correspondent reported.
Senior Iranian officials, including President Masoud Pezeshkian and Revolutionary Guards chief General Hossein Salami, attended the ceremony, state television images showed.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards announced the day before that Haniyeh and a bodyguard were killed in a pre-dawn strike Wednesday on their accommodation in Tehran.
The New York Times however reported, citing anonymous sources including two Iranian officials, that the blast was caused by an explosive device planted several months ago.
When asked about the report, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters “there was no other Israeli aerial attack... in all the Middle East” on the night of Shukr’s killing.
Qatar-based Haniyeh had been visiting Tehran for Pezeshkian’s swearing-in on Tuesday.
Pezeshkian said Iran “will continue to support with firmer determination the axis of resistance,” the official IRNA news agency said.
Qatar-based network Al Jazeera reported that the plane carrying Haniyeh’s body had landed in Doha, where the Palestinian leader is to be buried following prayers at the Qatari capital’s largest mosque.
Hamas called in a statement for a day of protests on Friday.
“Let roaring anger marches start from every mosque,” it said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Haniyeh a “martyr” and announced a national day of mourning on Friday “in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.” Pakistan too announced a national day of mourning.
The international community has called for calm and a focus on securing a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip — which Haniyeh had accused Israel of obstructing.
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said the strikes in Tehran and Beirut represented a “dangerous escalation.”
In a phone call, the foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt blamed Israel for rising tensions and called for “de-escalation,” Jordan’s official Petra news agency reported.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated appeals for an end to fighting and said achieving peace “starts with a ceasefire.”
But the prime minister of key ceasefire broker Qatar said Haniyeh’s killing had thrown the whole Gaza war mediation process into doubt.
“How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said on social media site X.
US President Joe Biden will speak to Netanyahu later on Thursday, the White House said.
The killings are the latest of several major incidents that have inflamed regional tensions during the Gaza war which has drawn in Iran-backed militant groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
Beyond Gaza, clashes continued on Thursday with Lebanese authorities reporting four Syrians killed in an Israeli strike, followed by Hezbollah announcing a barrage of “dozens” of rockets at Israel.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for its October 7 attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
Concern over the fate of those still held has grown among Israelis, who demonstrated demanding a deal to free them in Tel Aviv on Thursday, marking the war’s 300th day.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed at least 39,480 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.
Iran, allies ready Israel response as funerals held for militant leaders
https://arab.news/ydsn4
Iran, allies ready Israel response as funerals held for militant leaders
- Israel has not claimed responsibility for the assassination
- Iranian officials to meet regional allies to discuss retaliation
Israel military says three projectiles fired from north Gaza
“One projectile was intercepted by the IAF (air force), one fell in Sderot and another projectile fell in an open area. No injuries were reported,” the military said in a statement.
Sudan army air strike kills 10 in southern Khartoum: rescuers
- Strike targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt ‘for the third time in less than a month’
- War between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary forces has killed tens of thousands of people
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: Ten Sudanese civilians were killed and over 30 wounded in an army air strike on southern Khartoum, volunteer rescue workers said.
The strike on Sunday targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt “for the third time in less than a month,” said the local Emergency Response Room (ERR), part of a network of volunteers across the country coordinating frontline aid.
The group said those killed burned to death. The wounded, suffering from burns, were taken to the local Bashair Hospital, with five of them in a critical condition.
Since April 2023, the war between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands of people.
In the capital alone, the violence killed 26,000 people between April 2023 and June 2024, according to a report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Khartoum has experienced some of the war’s worst violence, with entire neighborhoods emptied out and taken over by fighters.
The military, which maintains a monopoly on the skies with its jets, has not managed to wrest back control of the capital from the paramilitary.
Of the 11.5 million people currently displaced within Sudan, nearly a third have fled from the capital, according to United Nations figures.
Both the RSF and the army have been repeatedly accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.
Israel says Hamas has not given ‘status of hostages’ it says ready to free
- A Hamas official gave a list of 34 hostages the group was ready to free
JERUSALEM: Israel said on Monday that Hamas had so far not provided the status of the 34 hostages the group declared it was ready to release in the first phase of a potential exchange deal.
“As yet, Israel has not received any confirmation or comment by Hamas regarding the status of the hostages appearing on the list,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement after a Hamas official gave a list of 34 hostages the group was ready to free in the first phase.
Shooting attack on a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank kills 3
- The attack occurred in the Palestinian village of Al-Funduq, on one of the main east-west roads crossing the territory
JERUSALEM: A shooting attack on a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank killed at least three people and wounded seven others on Monday, Israeli medics said.
Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said those killed included two women in their 60s and a man in his 40s.
Violence has surged in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of Gaza ignited the ongoing war there.
The attack occurred in the Palestinian village of Al-Funduq, on one of the main east-west roads crossing the territory. The identities of the attackers and those killed were not immediately known. The military said it was looking for the attackers, who fled.
Palestinians have carried out scores of shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Israelis in recent years. Israel has launched near-nightly military raids across the territory that frequently trigger gunbattle with militants.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says at least 835 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.
Some 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority administering population centers. Over 500,000 Israeli settlers live in scores of settlements, which most of the international community considers illegal.
Meanwhile, the war in Gaza is raging with no end in sight, though there has reportedly been recent progress in long-running talks aimed at a ceasefire and hostage release.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed across the border in a massive surprise attack nearly 15 months ago, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s air and ground offensive has killed over 45,800 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local health authorities, who say women and children make up more than half of those killed. They do not say how many of the dead were militants. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The war has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and displaced 90 percent of the territory’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are enduring a cold, rainy winter in tent camps along the windy coast. At least seven infants have died of hypothermia because of the harsh conditions, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Aid groups say Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and the breakdown of law and order in many areas make it difficult to provide desperately needed food and other assistance.
New Syria foreign minister begins first visit to UAE: state media
Damascus: Syria’s new foreign minister Asaad Al-Shaibani landed in the United Arab Emirates Monday on his first visit to the country since rebels toppled president Bashar Assad last month, official news agency SANA said.
“Shaibani, accompanied by defense minister Murhaf Abu Qasra and intelligence chief Anas Khattab, has arrived in the United Arab Emirates,” SANA reported.
Shaibani also posted a picture of himself on X stepping off a plane, and said he looked forward “to building constructive bilateral relations.”
The officials took office after Islamist-led rebels swept into Damascus in early December, toppling Assad after more than 13 years of civil war.
Their trip to the UAE comes after they visited its Gulf neighbors Qatar on Sunday and Saudi Arabia last week.
Both Qatar and Turkiye, which backed the anti-Assad opposition, reopened their embassies in Damascus in the aftermath of Assad’s flight to Moscow.
Turkiye has long maintained a working relationship with the HTS rebels, leaving it with a direct line to Damascus.
