Iran vows to ‘respond firmly’ to Israeli strikes
Agence France-Presse . Tehran 29 October, 2024, 00:28
A woman walks above the rubble of a building following an Israeli strike in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on October 28, 2024. | AFP photo
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday that Tehran would ‘respond firmly and effectively’ to deadly Israeli strikes on military sites over the weekend.
‘We are using all available means to respond firmly and effectively to the aggression of the Zionist regime,’ Baghaei told a regular news conference.
‘The nature of our response will depend on the nature of the attack.’
On Saturday, Israel conducted air strikes on military sites in Iran in response to Tehran’s October 1 attack on Israel, itself retaliation for the killing of Iran-backed militant leaders and a Revolutionary Guards commander.
At least four soldiers were killed in the strikes, according to the military, and Iranian media reported Monday that a civilian was also killed in the attack.
‘The martyr Allahverdi Rahimpour, a civilian who was killed near Tehran during the recent attack by the Zionist regime, has been buried,’ the local Fars news agency reported.
Tasnim news agency also reported the death, saying Rahimpour worked as ‘a (security) guard in a company’ and lived in the city of Nassimshahr southwest of Tehran.
Authorities had not previously reported civilian deaths in the strikes.
Saturday’s strikes took place against the backdrop of Israel’s on-going war with Hamas, which expanded in recent weeks to also focus on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Both groups are part of the ‘axis of resistance’ aligned with Iran against Israel.
Baghaei said a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon has remained the ‘goal’ for Iran.
He further urged the United Nations Security Council, which is set to hold a meeting Monday on the Israeli strikes, to take a ‘decisive and firm’ stance with regards to the attack.
Iran had called for the meeting on Sunday.
During the conference, Baghaei decried Israel’s ‘abuse’ of Iraq’s airspace to launch the attack on Iran.
‘The Zionist regime does not respect any limits in its law-breaking approach it has repeatedly violated the airspace of many countries,’ he said.
On Monday, Israeli forces launched deadly strikes on Lebanon and Gaza, pressing their offensive against militants after Egypt’s president proposed a two-day truce in the Israel-Hamas war.
There was no comment from either Israel or Hamas on the plan unveiled Sunday by Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, but Israeli media said spy chief David Barnea was in Qatar for renewed talks on a hostage release deal.
More than a year into the war unleashed when Palestinian armed group Hamas launched the deadliest attack on Israel in its history on October 7, 2023, there was no let-up in the violence.
Iran, which supports Hamas but has largely avoided a direct confrontation with arch-foe Israel, warned it would ‘respond firmly and effectively’ to Israeli strikes on military sites over the weekend.
The war has drawn in Tehran-backed allies of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, where strikes hit the southern port of Tyre on Monday.
The Lebanese health ministry said at least seven people were killed when Israel struck the city centre. An AFP journalist saw an entire apartment block collapsed into smouldering rubble.
The ministry said at least 17 more people were wounded as rescue workers were racing to pull more survivors from the pancaked building.
Hours later, the Israeli army issued a new warning to residents, telling them to leave ahead of another attack on Hezbollah targets there. Lebanon’s National News Agency subsequently reported ‘a series of strikes’ of the city.
Hezbollah said its fighters had attacked Israeli forces along the border with rockets and artillery.
Last month, Israel escalated its air strikes on Hezbollah bastions across Lebanon and launched ground operations, following a year of low-intensity exchanges and cross-border Hezbollah attacks that the Lebanese group says were in support of Hamas.
At least 1,634 people have been killed in Lebanon since September 23, according to an AFP tally based on official figures, though the real number is likely to be higher due to gaps in the data.
In Gaza, where Israel’s year-long military campaign has killed Hamas’s senior leadership while killing tens of thousands of people and triggering a humanitarian crisis, rescuers reported fresh strikes on Monday.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said three people were killed in a drone attack on Gaza City, while the civil defence agency and an AFP correspondent reported more air strikes and shelling in other areas of the territory’s north and centre.
The Israeli military said it had hit north Gaza’s Jabalia — the focus of an on-going sweeping assault since early October — and ‘eliminated dozens of terrorists in ground and aerial activity’.
An Israeli military official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said that the goal of the operation was to clear the Jabalia refugee camp of militants, which ‘will take us at least (several) weeks’ to achieve.
He said there was ‘heavy fighting’ in areas where Hamas militants were present.
The official said Israel was not forcing residents to leave, claiming that ‘the safer zone in the Gaza Strip is in the south, but it’s up to them’ to decide whether to go.
Many Palestinians have been displaced several times during the war, as the Israeli military’s focus shifts from one area to another.
‘I fled at the start of the war with my family of nine,’ said 40-year-old Waleed Abu Shawish, who was forced to flee Gaza City to Khan Yunis in the south.
‘I spent everything I had just to provide food and clean drinking water.’
Ahmad Abu Aita, a 25-year-old man displaced from the north of Gaza to a camp in the centre of the territory, said the approaching winter was making already dire conditions even worse.
‘Two weeks ago, it rained at night, and we were soaked in rainwater,’ he said.
As Israel pushed ahead with its military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, a top Iranian general said it would face ‘bitter consequences’ after Saturday’s attack on military sites.
Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami, quoted by Tasnim news agency, said the Israeli air raid had failed, calling it a sign of ‘miscalculation and helplessness’.
The UN Security Council will meet later on Monday at Iran’s request, with Tehran urging the world to condemn Saturday’s strikes which authorities said killed four soldiers and caused some damage.
Iranian media said a civilian guard was also killed in the first direct action on Iranian soil that Israel has publicly confirmed.
In a bid to stop the war, Egypt’s Sisi proposed a two-day pause in Gaza and a limited hostage and prisoner exchange, aimed at eventually securing an elusive ‘complete ceasefire’ between Hamas and Israel.
The proposal includes exchanging four Israeli hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, and would be followed by more negotiations within 10 days, Sisi said.
Out of 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the October 7 attack, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead. More than 100 were released during a one-week truce last November.
Families of hostages have called on the Israeli government to broker an agreement in the wake of the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar earlier this month.
Israel launched the offensive in Gaza after Hamas’s October 7 attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures which includes hostages killed in captivity.
At least 43,020 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in the Israeli offensive on Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry, which the UN considers reliable.
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