GAZA: Israel was on alert Thursday after Iran threatened reprisals over a strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria this month that killed two Iranian generals. Meanwhile, Israel continued a relentless bombardment campaign in Gaza despite international community pressure for a ceasefire.
Days after Israel strengthened its air defences and stopped leave for combat units, the United States also warned of the risk of a potential attack by Iran or its allied groups at a time Middle East tensions have soared.
Iran is “threatening to launch a major attack on Israel,” US President Joe Biden said Wednesday, pledging “ironclad” support for Israel despite diplomatic tensions over military conduct in Gaza.
Israel was widely blamed for an April 1 attack that destroyed Iran’s consulate building in Damascus and killed seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including two generals.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Wednesday warned that Israel “must be punished and will be punished”, days after one of his advisors had said that Israeli embassies are “no longer safe”.
Biden said he had told Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that “our commitment to Israel’s security against these threats from Iran is ironclad”.
“Let me say it again — ironclad. We’re going to do all we can to protect Israel’s security.”
Moscow called on both Iran and Israel to exercise restraint, after earlier warning Russian citizens to refrain from travelling to Israel, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.
“It is very important for everybody to exercise restraint in order not to destabilise the region, which is already not gifted with stability or predictability,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
German airline Lufthansa said it had suspended flights to and from Tehran, probably until Thursday, “due to the current situation in the Middle East”.
Since October 7 last year, Israel has launched a relentless bombardment campaign in Gaza killing at least 33,545 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
In Gaza’s Nuseirat area, Imad Abu Shawish, 39, said “the situation is dire and still getting worse, bombardment hasn’t stopped and is still happening now.
Much of the Palestinian territory has been reduced to a bomb-cratered wasteland of destroyed buildings with yet more bodies feared under the mountains of rubble.
An Israeli siege has deprived Gaza’s 2.4 million people of most food, water, fuel and medicines, the dire shortages only alleviated by sporadic aid deliveries.
An Israeli air strike on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Haniyeh insisted that his sons’ deaths would not influence Hamas’ position in ongoing talks in Cairo on a possible temporary ceasefire and hostage release deal.
Those talks, which started Sunday, have brought no breakthrough on a plan presented by US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators, which Hamas said it was studying.
A framework plan would halt fighting for six weeks and see the exchange of about 40 hostages for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, as well as more aid deliveries.
Washington has also ramped up pressure on Netanyahu to agree to a truce, increase aid flows and abandon plans to invade the territory’s far-southern city of Rafah.
About 1.5 million civilians are sheltering in Rafah, the last Gazan city yet to face a ground incursion.
Biden labelled Netanyahu’s handling of the war a “mistake” in an interview broadcast on Tuesday.
