Israel’s airstrikes ‘hit hard’ Iran’s defences and missile production, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, as Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the country was considering its response.
Three journalists were killed in Lebanon by an Israeli strike on Friday morning, drawing condemnation from rights advocates about the number of reporters who have lost their lives in the region over the past year.
US Vice-President Kamala Harris said on Sunday she was not concerned about talks between former president Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and reiterated her positions on the conflict in the Middle East.
Netanyahu says Israel hit Iran hard
Israel’s airstrikes “hit hard” Iran’s defences and missile production, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, as Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the country was considering its response.
With warfare raging in Gaza and Lebanon, direct confrontation between Israel and Iran risks spiralling into a regional conflagration. But a day after the airstrikes, there was no sign they would spark another round of escalation.
However, heavy fighting in Lebanon between Israeli forces and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which sharply intensified over recent weeks, continued on Sunday with an Israeli airstrike killing eight people in a residential block in Sidon, medics said.
“The air force attacked throughout Iran. We hit hard Iran’s defence capabilities and its ability to produce missiles that are aimed at us,” said Netanyahu in a speech, calling the attack “precise and powerful” and saying it met all its objectives.
Israel’s army chief, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, said the strike on Iran had shown what the Israeli response to its enemies would be. “We struck strategic systems in Iran, which carries great importance, and we will now see how things develop. We are prepared for all scenarios in every arena.”
The Islamic Republic has not signalled how it will respond to Saturday’s long-anticipated strikes, which involved scores of fighter jets bombing targets near the capital Tehran and in the western provinces of Ilam and Khuzestan.
The heavily armed arch-enemies have engaged in a cycle of retaliatory moves against each other for months, with Saturday’s strike coming after an Iranian missile barrage on 1 October, much of which Israel said was downed by its air defences.
Khamenei said Israel’s calculations “should be disrupted”. The attack on Iran, which killed four soldiers and caused some damage, “should neither be downplayed nor exaggerated”, he said.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran was not looking for war but would give an “appropriate response”.
US President Joe Biden called for a halt to escalation, which has raised fears of a wider Middle East war arising from the year-old Israeli-Hamas conflict in Gaza and Israel’s thrust into south Lebanon to stop Hezbollah rocketing northern Israel.
Separately, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Iran was no longer able to use its allies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel. The two groups “are no longer an effective tool” of Tehran, he said in a speech.
Gallant added that Hamas was no longer functioning as a military network in Gaza and that Hezbollah’s senior command and most of its missile capabilities had been eliminated.
Hamas has repeatedly said it is still able to function militarily, and Israel has recently conducted major new operations in devastated north Gaza against what it calls regrouping Hamas militants.
Hezbollah has said its command structure remains intact and that it retains significant missile capabilities.
On Sunday, the Israeli military urged residents of 14 villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate immediately and move north of the Awali River.
An Israeli strike on Sidon, a city in coastal south Lebanon, killed at least eight people and wounded 25 on Sunday, the country’s health ministry said.
Elsewhere in the south, a strike on Zawtar al-Sharkiya killed three people and a Saturday bombing of Marjayoun killed five, it said.
Israel said four of its soldiers were killed in south Lebanon fighting.
Hezbollah also said it had fired a large missile salvo at the Zevulon military industries facility north of Haifa in northern Israel. Hezbollah rockets hit a house and cars and rescue crews responded to put out the fire.
One woman was seriously injured, according to Israel’s ambulance service.
Deadly Israeli strike on journalists in Lebanon prompts global condemnation
Three journalists were killed in Lebanon by an Israeli strike on Friday morning, drawing condemnation from rights advocates about the number of reporters who have lost their lives in the region over the past year.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it “strongly condemned” the attack, urging the international community to “stop Israel’s long-standing pattern of impunity in journalist killings”.
The strike at around 3am local time hit a collection of guesthouses housing only reporters in the southern Lebanese town of Hasbaya, killing two journalists from the Al-Mayadeen television network and one journalist from Al-Manar.
Muhammad Farhat, a reporter with Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed, was one of at least 18 journalists staying at the guesthouses in Hasbaya.
There was no evacuation order by Israel’s military. Farhat told Reuters he had been woken up by the sound of Israeli jets flying low overhead and heard two missiles strike nearby guesthouses before the roof of his guesthouse collapsed on him.
“The scenes were terrifying. We saw our colleagues and friends cut up, their limbs strewn all over, others were screaming and begging us to pull them out,” said Farhat on Al-Jadeed, tears in his eyes.
The Israeli military said it had received reports that journalists had been hit several hours after its forces had attacked what it described as a Hezbollah military structure in Hasbaya, adding that the incident was under review.
The last year has been the deadliest period for journalists in more than 30 years, CPJ has said, with at least 126 reporters and media workers among nearly 45,000 people killed in Gaza, the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Lebanon.
Two Israeli journalists were killed in the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel that sparked the war.
Friday was the deadliest day for journalists in Lebanon over the last year. At least five other reporters have been killed in Israeli strikes while on assignment in Lebanon, including Reuters visuals journalist Issam Abdallah.
Sharing a post about Friday’s strike on X, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression Irene Khan wrote: “Deliberate killing of a journalist is a war crime.”
Harris not concerned about Trump’s talks with Netanyahu
US Vice-President Kamala Harris said on Sunday she was not concerned about talks between former President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and reiterated her positions on the conflict in the Middle East.
Democratic presidential candidate Harris faces Republican Trump in a tight race for the 5 November US elections.
“No,” said Harris when asked if talks between Trump and Netanyahu could undermine what the current US government was trying to achieve.
Trump and Netanyahu have spoken on a few occasions in recent weeks. They had close ties when Trump was president as the US moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which delighted Israelis and infuriated Palestinians.
“I do believe that it is critically important that we as the United States of America be an active participant in encouraging one, that this war ends, that we get the hostages out but also that there is a real commitment among nations to a two-state solution and the ‘day after’ [in Gaza],” Harris told reporters on Sunday.
Egypt proposes short Gaza truce with small hostage-prisoner exchange
Egypt has proposed an initial two-day ceasefire in Gaza to exchange four Israeli hostages of Hamas for some Palestinian prisoners, said Egypt’s president on Sunday as Israeli military strikes killed 45 Palestinians across the enclave.
Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made the announcement as efforts to defuse the devastating, more than year-long war resumed in Qatar with the directors of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency taking part.
Speaking alongside Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune during a press conference in Cairo, Sisi also said that talks should resume within 10 days of implementing the temporary ceasefire in efforts to reach a permanent one.
There was no immediate comment from Israel or Hamas but a Palestinian official close to the mediation effort told Reuters: “I expect Hamas would listen to the new offers, but it remains determined that any agreement must end the war and get Israeli forces out of Gaza.”
Israel has said the war cannot end until Hamas has been wiped out as a military force and governing entity in Gaza.
The US, Qatar and Egypt have been spearheading negotiations to end the war that erupted after Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel on 7 October last year, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
The death toll from Israel’s retaliatory air and ground onslaught in Gaza is approaching 43,000, Gaza health officials say, with the densely populated enclave in ruins.
At least 43 of those killed in Gaza on Sunday were in the north of the enclave, where Israeli troops have returned to root out Hamas fighters who it says have regrouped there.
The United Nations said the plight of Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza was “unbearable” and the conflict was being “waged with little regard for the requirements of international humanitarian law”.
Earlier on Sunday, 20 people were killed following an airstrike on houses in Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, which has been the focus of an Israeli military offensive for more than three weeks, said medics and the Palestinian official news agency Wafa.
Another Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinian families in Shati camp in Gaza City killed nine people and wounded 20 others, with many in critical condition, said medics.
Footage circulated on Palestinian media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed people rushing to the bomb site to help evacuate the casualties. Bodies were scattered on the ground, while some carried wounded children in their arms before loading them in a vehicle.
Three local journalists were among those killed at the school in Shati — Saed Radwan, head of digital media at Hamas Al-Aqsa television, Hanin Baroud, and Hamza Abu Selmeya, according to Hamas media.
On Sunday, Israel’s military said it had killed more than 40 militants in the Jabalia area in the past 24 hours, as well as dismantling infrastructure and locating large quantities of military equipment.
Israeli military strikes on the towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza have so far killed around 800 people during a three-week offensive, said the Gaza health ministry.
UN Security Council to meet over Israel’s strike on Iran
The United Nations Security Council would meet on Monday to discuss Israel’s attack on Iran, said council president Switzerland on Sunday.
The Swiss UN mission said the meeting had been requested by Iran with the support of Algeria, China and Russia.
“Israeli regime’s actions constitute a grave threat to international peace and security and further destabilise an already fragile region,” wrote Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, in a letter to the 15-member council on Saturday.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran, in alignment with the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and under international law, reserves its inherent right to legal and legitimate response to these criminal attacks at the appropriate time,” he wrote.
One killed, dozens injured in truck ramming at Israeli bus stop
One person was killed and dozens were injured on Sunday when a truck struck a bus stop at a major intersection near Tel Aviv in central Israel in what police said they suspected was a terrorist attack.
Israeli police said about 40 people were injured to varying degrees, including some seriously, and were taken to nearby hospitals.
Ichilov Medical Center in Tel Aviv said one of the victims succumbed to his wounds. Nearly Sheba Medical Center said it treated eight civilians and soldiers.
The attack, in which a truck ran into a bus stop close to a military base, took place around 10am, said police, noting the driver — who had Israeli citizenship — was “neutralised” by gunfire from a nearby civilian.
“All investigative directions are being examined with an emphasis on the suspicion that this is a terror attack,” said police.
“Initial investigations suggest that the truck driver, who was travelling near the Glilot base [north of Tel Aviv] from north to south, veered off course and hit a bus and people waiting at the stop with the truck.”
Israeli media reported that the attacker was an Israeli Arab from Qalansawe in central Israel.
Israel hit Iran former nuclear weapons test building, say researchers
A US researcher said an Israeli airstrike on Saturday hit a building that was part of Iran’s defunct nuclear weapons development programme, and he and another researcher said facilities used to mix solid fuel for missiles were also struck.
The assessments based on commercial satellite imagery were reached separately by David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector, and Decker Eveleth, an associate research analyst at CNA, a Washington think tank.
They told Reuters that Israel struck buildings in Parchin, a massive military complex near Tehran. Israel also hit Khojir, according to Eveleth, a sprawling missile production site near Tehran.
Reuters reported in July that Khojir was undergoing massive expansion.
Eveleth said the Israeli strikes may have “significantly hampered Iran’s ability to mass produce missiles”.
The Israeli military said three waves of Israeli jets struck missile factories and other sites near Tehran and in western Iran early on Saturday in retaliation for Tehran’s 1 October barrage of more than 200 missiles against Israel.
Iran’s military said the Israeli warplanes used “very light warheads” to strike border radar systems in the provinces of Ilam, Khuzestan and around Tehran.
In posts on X, Albright said commercial satellite imagery showed that Israel hit a building in Parchin called Taleghan 2 that was used for testing activities during the Amad Plan, Iran’s defunct nuclear weapons development program.
Iran may have removed key materials before the airstrike, he said, but “even if no equipment remained inside” the building would have provided “intrinsic value” for future nuclear weapons-related activities.
Albright told Reuters that commercial satellite imagery of Parchin showed Israel damaged three buildings about 320 m from Taleghan 2, including two in which solid fuel for ballistic missiles was mixed.
Eveleth said an image of Parchin from Planet Labs, a commercial satellite firm, showed that Israel destroyed three ballistic missile solid fuel mixing buildings and a warehouse in the sprawling complex.
Planet Labs imagery also showed that an Israeli strike destroyed two buildings in the Khojir complex where solid fuel for ballistic missiles was mixed, he said.
Axios reported that Israel destroyed 12 “planetary mixers” used to produce solid fuel for long-range ballistic missiles, quoting three unnamed Israeli sources as saying this severely damaged Iran’s ability to renew its missile stockpile and could deter Iran from further massive missile strikes against Israel. DM
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