Iranian leader vows response to Israel after attacks

The World Health Organization said four children were among six people injured in an attack on a polio vaccination center in northern Gaza, where UN agencies have spoken of “apocalyptic” conditions in the face of a blistering Israeli attack.

Days before presidential elections in the United States – Israel’s top military supplier – Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran’s response would focus on attacks on both the Islamic republic and its allies.

“The enemies, both the US and the Zionist regime, should know that they will definitely receive a teeth-breaking response,” Khamenei said, referring to Iran-linked groups including those in Yemen and Syria.

On October 26, Israel bombed military sites in Iran, killing four soldiers, in response to a barrage of about 200 rockets on October 1, which Tehran called a retaliation.

Israel has warned Iran not to respond to the October 26 attack.

Analysts say Israel has inflicted serious damage on Iran’s air defenses and missile capabilities and yet could take broader action against the Islamic republic.

The US military said on Saturday its B-52 bombers have arrived in the Middle East, a day after Washington announced their deployment in a warning to Tehran.

– Gaza ‘darkest periods’ –

Since late September, Israel has been engaged in a full-scale war against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, while the battle continues against the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which sparked the Gaza war by attacking Israel on October 7 last year.

Israeli forces have carried out a major air and ground assault in northern Gaza since October 6, centered in the Jabalia area, vowing to prevent Hamas from regrouping.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the organization had received “an extremely worrying report” of an attack on the Sheikh Radwan health center.

The facility “was hit today while parents were taking their children for the life-saving polio vaccination,” he said.

Tedros did not specify who carried out the attack, but a source in Gaza’s civil defense told AFP it was “an Israeli quadcopter that fired two rockets that hit the wall of the Sheikh Radwan clinic.”

The Israeli military denied an attack near the clinic at the time.

The UN children’s agency said that “the attacks on Jabalia, the vaccination clinic and the UNICEF staff member are further examples of the serious consequences of the indiscriminate attacks on civilians in the Gaza Strip.”

UNICEF chief Catherine Russell said 50 children were killed in Jabalia in 48 hours.

“Together with the horrific levels of child mortality in northern Gaza due to other attacks, these latest events add up to a new dark chapter in one of the darkest periods of this terrible war,” she said in a statement on Saturday.

The Israeli military said dozens of militants around Jabalia were killed “in air and ground activities.”

Two rockets were fired into Israel from the area on Saturday, the army said, the first such attack in weeks.

Medics and the Gaza Civil Protection Organization said three people were killed in an attack on Nuseirat, in central Gaza.

“We came out and there were planes and gunfire above us,” said Ashraf Abdullah, describing the victims as “all torn to pieces.”

Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s military retaliation campaign has killed 43,314 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run Health Ministry, which the UN considers reliable.

The Israeli army said two soldiers were killed in Gaza on Saturday, bringing losses to 370 since the ground offensive began on October 27 last year.

– No heating, warm clothes –

After nearly a year of tit-for-tat exchanges on Israel’s northern border, Israel escalated its bombing campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon on September 23 and later sent ground troops.

Hezbollah has since fired deeper into Israel.

On Friday, Israeli naval commandos captured a trainee sailor, a military official described as a “senior operative” of Hezbollah, in a raid in northern Lebanon and brought him to Israel.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has instructed the Foreign Ministry to file a complaint with the UN Security Council over the raid on the coastal town of Batroun, his office said.

The Lebanese army and the UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL are both conducting investigations into the raid, Mikati’s office said, adding that he had called for “accelerated” results.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said an “unidentified military force” carried out a “sea landing” on the coast of Batroun at dawn on Friday.

An acquaintance of the abductee identified him as a student at the city’s state-run Maritime Science and Technology Institute (MARSATI), Lebanon’s basic training college for the shipping industry.

Israel’s broader attacks across Lebanon have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee.

“There is no heating. We have no warm clothes,” said Fatima, 17, who is now camping with her family at a school near Deir al-Ahmar, in Lebanon’s eastern Baalbek area.

At least 1,930 people have been killed in the bombing in Lebanon since the war escalated, according to AFP Health Ministry figures.

The Israeli military says 38 soldiers have been killed in Lebanon since the country began ground operations on September 30.

One person was killed and 15 injured in Israeli attacks on Hezbollah’s southern Beirut stronghold on Saturday, the Health Ministry said.

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