JERUSALEM: Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday said those responsible for a rare roadside bomb attack this week which officials said may have involved Lebanon’s Hezbollah, would be found and held accountable.
Israel’s military said on Wednesday that security forces had killed a man carrying an explosive belt after he apparently crossed from Lebanon into Israel and detonated a bomb on Monday, seriously wounding a motorist. It was examining whether Iran-backed Hezbollah was involved.
“Whoever carried out this attack will regret having carried out an attack against the citizens of Israel and against the state of Israel. We will find the right timing and appropriate manner to hit back,” Gallant told reporters while touring the Israel-Lebanon border.
The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon said Thursday it had not observed any border crossings after Israel said it killed a suspect wearing an explosive belt who may have entered from Lebanon.
Hezbollah has not commented on the allegation.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) “has not observed any crossing of the Blue Line in recent days,” said spokesman Andrea Tenenti, referring to the frontier demarcated by the UN in 2000 after Israeli troops withdrew from southern Lebanon.
He said force commander Major General Aroldo Lazaro Saenz urged both sides to exercise restraint and use UNIFIL coordination mechanisms to “avoid misunderstandings and decrease tensions.”
UNIFIL acts as a buffer between Lebanon and Israel, neighbors that remain technically at war and have no diplomatic relations.
The force operates in the south near the border, a Hezbollah stronghold.
The discovery of the explosive belt in Israel came with tensions already high over violence which has worsened in the Israeli-occupied West Bank this year.
There has been no suicide attack targeting Israelis since a bombing in Jerusalem almost seven years ago that wounded 21 people.
The suspected attacker is believed to have asked a driver to take him back to northern Israel, but he was intercepted on the way, the army said.
It released neither his identity nor his nationality.
Iran-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah, considered a “terrorist” organization by many Western governments, is the only Lebanese faction that kept its weapons after the end of the country’s 1975-1990 civil war.
Israel and Hezbollah fought a devastating war in 2006 after the group captured two Israeli soldiers.
Lebanon and Israel agreed a deal last October to resolve a maritime border dispute involving offshore gas fields after years of US-mediated talks.
After the deal was struck, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said the group would end an “exceptional” mobilization against Israel after threatening to attack for months.
The Israeli prime minister at the time, Yair Lapid, said the agreement made conflict with Hezbollah less likely.
UNIFIL was set up in 1978 to monitor the withdrawal of Israeli forces after they invaded Lebanon in reprisal for a Palestinian attack. It was expanded after the 2006 war.
At Lebanon border, Israeli minister vows reprisal for rare bomb attack
https://arab.news/wzg37
At Lebanon border, Israeli minister vows reprisal for rare bomb attack
- Nobody crossed Lebanon-Israel border in recent days says UN peacekeepers
- Security forces had killed a man carrying an explosive belt after he apparently crossed from Lebanon into Israel
Netanyahu says Israel operation against Iran to ‘continue as many days as it takes’
- “We are at a decisive moment in Israel’s history,” Netanyahu said in a video message
- Says Israel also targetting scientists working on Iran nuclear weapons
JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s attack on Iran would “continue for as many days as it takes” after Israel announced it had carried out strikes on Iranian nuclear and military sites.
“This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat,” Netanyahu said in a video statement, adding that Israel launched a ‘targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival.’
Calling the offensive “Rising Lion,” he said Israel was also targeting Iranian commanders and missile factories, and declared a state of emergency in anticipation of retaliatory missile and drone strikes by Tehran.
“We are at a decisive moment in Israel’s history,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in therecorded video message.
“We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. We targeted Iran’s main enrichment facility at Natanz... We also struck at the heart of Iran’s ballistic missile program,” he said, adding that Israel had also hit Iranian nuclear scientists “working on the Iranian bomb.”
A witness in Nantanz city said multiple explosions were heard near the facility, and a senior Iranian official told Reuters that the country’s leadership was holding a top security meeting.
Rubio warns Iran against targetting US positions
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Iran late Thursday not to respond to Israeli strikes by hitting American bases, saying Washington was not involved.
“We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” Rubio said in a statement.
“Let me be clear: Iran should not target US interests or personnel.”
Israel announced strikes on Iran, where loud explosions were heard, hours after US President Donald Trump publicly said they should not do so.
Trump had said that Israel would ruin chances for a peacefully negotiated solution, which he said was close.
A sixth round of talks over Tehran’s nuclear program had been scheduled between the United States and Iran on Sunday in Oman.
“Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense,” Rubio said, without offering support or criticism of the strikes by the close US ally.
“President Trump and the administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners,” he said.
Israel attacks Iran’s capital with explosions booming across Tehran
JERUSALEM: Israel attacked Iran’s capital early Friday, with explosions booming across Tehran as Israel said it targeted nuclear and military sites.
The attack comes as tensions have reached new heights over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program. The Board of Governors at the International Atomic Energy Agency for the first time in 20 years on Thursday censured Iran over it not working with its inspectors. Iran immediately announced it would establish a third enrichment site in the country and swap out some centrifuges for more-advanced ones.
Israel for years has warned it will not allow Iran to build a nuclear weapon, something Tehran insists it doesn’t want — though official there have repeatedly warned it could build them. The US has been preparing for something to happen, already pulling some diplomats from Iraq’s capital and offering voluntary evacuations for the families of US troops in the wider Middle East.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address on YouTube that the attacks will continue “for as many days at it takes to remove this threat.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Israel took “unilateral action against Iran” and that Israel advised the US that it believed the strikes were necessary for its self-defense.
“We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” Rubio said in a statement released by the White House.
Rubio also issued a warning to Iran that it should not target US interests or personnel.
People in Tehran awoke to the sound of the blast. State television acknowledged the blast.
It wasn’t immediately clear what had been hit, though smoke could be rising from Chitgar, a neighborhood in western Tehran. There are no known nuclear sites in that area — but it wasn’t immediately clear if anything was happening in the rest of the country.
An Israeli military official says that his country targeted Iranian nuclear sites, without identifying them.
The official spoke to journalists on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing operation, which is also targeting military sites.
Benchmark Brent crude spiked on the attack, rising nearly 5 percent on the news.
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said that his country carried out the attack, without saying what it targeted.
“In the wake of the state of Israel’s preventive attack against Iran, missile and drone attacks against Israel and its civilian population are expected immediately,” he said in a statement.
The statement added that Katz “signed a special order declaring an emergency situation in the home front.”
“It is essential to listen to instructions from the home front command and authorities to stay in protected areas,” it said
Both Iran and Israel closed their airspace.
As the explosions in Tehran started, President Donald Trump was on the lawn of the White House mingling with members of Congress. It was unclear if he had been informed but the president continued shaking hands and posing for pictures for several minutes.
Trump earlier said he was urging Netanyahu to hold off from taking action for the time being while the administration negotiated with Iran.
“As long as I think there is a (chance for an) agreement, I don’t want them going in because I think it would blow it,” Trump told reporters.
US says airstrike killed Daesh official in Syria
WASHINGTON: The US military announced Thursday that a recent airstrike had killed an Daesh group official in northwest Syria.
In a post to social media, US Central Command said its forces “conducted a precision airstrike in northwest Syria killing Rakhim Boev, a Syria-based Daesh official,” using another name for Daesh.
The post on X said Boev was “involved in planning external operations threatening US citizens, our partners, and civilians.”
The accompanying image depicts an SUV vehicle with a bashed-in windshield and roof.
AFP previously reported that two people were killed in separate drone strikes Tuesday, on a car and a motorcycle, in the northwestern bastion of the Islamist former rebels who now head the Syrian government.
A call to CENTCOM seeking confirmation that the incidents are related was not immediately returned.
The twin drone strikes in the Idlib region mirror the US-led coalition’s past strikes on jihadists in the area.
During a meeting in Riyadh last month, US President Donald Trump called on his Syrian counterpart Ahmed Al-Sharaa to help Washington prevent a resurgence by Daesh.
Returning Syrian refugees cut global displaced total
- UN believes 1.5m from abroad and 2m internally displaced will be home by the end of 2025
GENEVA: Refugees returning to Syria have cut the global total of displaced people from a record peak at the end of 2024, the UN said on Thursday.
More than 500,000 have returned from abroad and 1.2 million internally displaced people have gone back to their home areas since Bashar Assad was deposed in December. The UN refugee agency estimates 1.5 million from abroad and 2 million internally displaced will return by the end of 2025.
Worldwide, a record 123.2 million were forcibly displaced by last December, but the total had fallen to 122.1 million by the end of April. The main drivers of displacement were conflicts in Sudan, Myanmar and Ukraine.
“We are living in a time of intense volatility ... with modern warfare creating a fragile, harrowing landscape marked by acute human suffering,” UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said. “We must redouble our efforts to search for peace and find long-lasting solutions for refugees and others forced to flee their homes.”
