DUBAI/BEIRUT – The commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards warned Israel on Oct 17 against attacking the Islamic Republic in retaliation for a missile barrage as its arch-foe stepped up its offensive in Lebanon against Tehran-backed Hezbollah.
Fears of wider conflict have increased as Israel plans its response to the Oct 1 missile attack carried out by Iran after Israeli air strikes on Iranian-allied militants.
“We tell you that if you commit any aggression against any point we will painfully attack the same point of yours,” Mr Hossein Salami said in a televised speech, adding that Iran can penetrate Israel’s defences.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on Oct 16 about Israel’s operations in Lebanon and Gaza, aiming to avert a regional war.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, on a Middle East tour, met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo, with Mr Sisi reiterating Egypt’s call to avoid an expansion of the conflict, the Egyptian presidency said.
However Israel shows no signs of easing its military campaigns against Hezbollah in Lebanon after assassinating several of its leaders, and Hamas in Gaza and it has vowed to punish Iran for its Oct 1 attack.
In the north of the enclave on Oct 17, Israeli strikes killed 19 Palestinians including children at a school in the Jabalia camp that is sheltering displaced people, Gaza health ministry official Medhat Abbas told Reuters.
Dozens were also injured in the strike, he said.
Israel’s military said dozens of militants were at the site and it conducted a precise strike on a meeting point for Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group inside the compound. Israel struck Syria’s port city of Latakia early on Oct 17, Syrian state media reported, and the United States said it carried out strikes on Oct 16 in areas of Yemen controlled by Iran-aligned Houthis.
The European Union held its first summit with Gulf states and issued a statement calling for calm: “We underscore the importance of diplomatic engagement with Iran – to pursue regional de-escalation,” it said.
Qatar, which has mediated in talks aimed at securing a ceasefire in Gaza, said there had been no engagement with any parties for the last three to four weeks on the issue.
Israeli airstrikes killed 11 Palestinians in Gaza City on Oct 17, medics said, while Israeli forces sent tanks into Jabalia in the north, where Palestinians and United Nations officials expressed alarm over shortages of food and medicine.
On its northern front in Lebanon, Israel has said it will not stop fighting a now weakened Hezbollah before it can safely return its citizens to their homes near the Lebanese border. It added that any ceasefire negotiations will be held “under fire”.
Hezbollah member of parliament Hassan Fadlallah said the armed group would keep fighting, but he reiterated its leaders are carefully coordinating with Lebanon’s speaker of parliament in efforts to reach a ceasefire. Israeli soldiers have not managed to control any villages in south Lebanon, he added.
Israel says its ground operation has so far killed dozens of Hezbollah fighters and that its troops have seized thousands of weapons and destroyed the group’s bunkers and tunnel bellow southern Lebanon’s villages.
The Israeli military said on Oct 17 that over the past 24 hours it had killed 45 Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, including a battalion commander, and seized many weapons.
Israeli operations in Lebanon have killed at least 2,350 people over the last year, according to the health ministry, and more than 1.2 million people have been displaced. The death toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but includes hundreds of women and children.
Around 50 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in the same period, according to Israel.
The Israeli military on Oct 17 issued evacuation warnings for residents of the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon focusing on three buildings in Tamnine town, and Saraain El Tahta and Sefri villages where it said Hezbollah maintained facilities.
“For your safety and the safety of your family, you must evacuate this building and the surrounding buildings immediately and stay at least 500 metres away from them,” military spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted on X.
The mayor of a major town in south Lebanon was among 16 people killed on Oct 16 when an Israeli air strike destroyed its municipal headquarters in the biggest attack on an official Lebanese state building since the Israeli air campaign began.
Lebanese officials denounced the incident, which also wounded more than 50 people in Nabatieh, a provincial capital, saying it was proof that Israel’s campaign against the Hezbollah armed group was now shifting to target the Lebanese state.
The Israelis “intentionally targeted a meeting of the municipal council to discuss the city’s service and relief situation” to aid people displaced by the Israeli campaign, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said.
Israel and Hezbollah have been fighting since the militant group began firing missiles at its arch-foe a year ago in support of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza and the conflict has sharply escalated in recent weeks.
Mr Abdelnaser, a man displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, which Israel has repeatedly bombed, was on the waterfront early on Oct 17 morning.
“War has become normal for us. We know that every 10 years Lebanon gets built, and every 10 years it gets destroyed again,” he said.
Israel has come under scrutiny for its dealings with UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon.
The UN mission in Lebanon (Unifil) said its peacekeepers observed an Israeli tank firing at their watchtower near southern Lebanon’s Kfar Kela on the morning of Oct 16. Two cameras were destroyed, and the tower was damaged, Unifil said.
Israel’s military said the incident, the latest in a number of attacks that Unifil says have targeted its troops, was under investigation.
“Unifil infrastructure sites and forces are not a target and every irregular incident will be thoroughly examined,” the Israeli military said, adding that Hezbollah has been operating from “sites that have been built within and adjacent to Unifil posts for many years”.
Israel has called on the UN to move members of the Unifil peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon out of the combat zone for their safety.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, on a visit to northern Israel near the border, said Israel would not halt its assault on Hezbollah to allow negotiations.
“We will hold negotiations only under fire. I said this on day one, I said it in Gaza and I am saying it here,” he said according to a statement from his office. REUTERS