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Tag: middleeast

  • Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, Rafah invasion looms, Gaza aid crisis worsens

    Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, Rafah invasion looms, Gaza aid crisis worsens

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    A damaged United Nations vehicle is seen in front of a hospital after a UN employee was killed in an attack on a vehicle in Gaza, according to Israeli media. Ali Jadallah/Anadolu/Getty Images

    The US has assessed that Israel has amassed enough troops on the edge of Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah to launch a full-scale incursion in the coming days, but senior American officials are unsure if a decision to carry out the offensive has been made, two senior administration officials told CNN.

    The White House believes an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah would be a mistake and is “urgently” working toward a ceasefire, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday.

    The Biden administration is urging Israel to connect their military operations to a “clear” end game for the war, Sullivan told reporters. And, a top State Department official said the US and Israel are “struggling over what the theory of victory is” for Israel in Gaza, and that the US does not believe that the kind of total victory Israel says it is fighting for against Hamas is “likely or possible.”

    Here are the major developments:

    Unclear military strategy: The Israeli military has renewed its fighting in northern Gaza where it previously claimed to have dismantled Hamas’ command structure. But it now says the Palestinian militant group is trying to “reassemble” in the area, raising doubts about whether Israel’s goal to eradicate the group in the enclave is realistic and renewing questions about its long-term military strategy.

    Hamas treated in Turkey: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that “more than 1,000 Hamas members are currently under treatment” in Turkish hospitals. He said he does not see Hamas as a “terrorist organization” but as a “resistance organization.”

    Death toll unchanged: The United Nations has clarified the war’s death toll in Gaza, tallied by the enclave’s Health Ministry, remains unchanged at over 35,000, after its casualties report caused confusion.

    Aid ransacked: Israeli activists opposed to helping Palestinians in Gaza intercepted and ransacked an aid shipment. Video from a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank shows at least two trucks ransacked. Other footage showed activists blocking the path of the trucks, throwing packages on the ground and stomping on boxes. It’s unclear whether the aid was coming from Jordan or the Palestinian Authority.

    United Nations staffer killed and wounded: At least one UN aid worker was killed and another wounded after a vehicle marked as belonging to the agency was attacked in Rafah, according to a UN secretary-general spokesperson, who did not assign blame to either Israel or Hamas for the attack.

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  • Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, Rafah invasion looms, new Gaza aid crossing opens

    Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, Rafah invasion looms, new Gaza aid crossing opens

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    Intense shelling and gunfire have continued in much of the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza after Israeli forces began a ground operation there on Saturday.

    Videos from the area uploaded Sunday and Monday show civilians streaming out of the area against a background of constant drone flights, automatic gunfire, and explosions. Panicked families carrying whatever they can are seen leaving a UN school in the refugee camp amid heavy explosions.

    In one video showing the rooftops of Jabalya, the sound of heavy gunfire is constant.

    Communications from much of Gaza have been sporadic in the last few days. But CNN footage from Jabalya filmed early Monday showed terrified and exhausted families trying to leave the area. One child is seen carrying another child. There are also people being pushed in wheelchairs.

    One child said there were Israeli tanks behind the schools. “They are coming for us, we are going to the other schools.”

    An unidentified man also said that tanks were close to the schools, where thousands have taken shelter.

    “They are bombarding the area and randomly shooting everyone. Those people are running away, they were in the schools, hoping they were safe. Where will they go now?”

    Fares Afarna, director of ambulance services in northern Gaza, told the Al Jazeera network Monday that “ambulances are having a hard time to evacuate the dead and injured in the north.”

    He alleged that “more than once our ambulances have been targeted by Israeli occupation forces…”

    Afarna said that since the Israeli operation began on Saturday, ambulance crews had evacuated more than 50 wounded and 20 bodies. He told Al Jazeera that only two hospitals (Kamal Adwan and Al-Awada) were operating “and that’s where we are evacuating the dead and injured to and to some medical field points in the area.”

    CNN is reaching out to the Israeli military for a response to the allegation that ambulances are being targeted.

    “Following calls to the civilian population to temporarily evacuate from the area of Jabalya to shelters in western Gaza City, IDF troops began an operation overnight based on intelligence information regarding attempts by Hamas to reassemble its terrorist infrastructure and operatives in the area,” the military said.

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  • Live updates: Israel-Hamas war

    Live updates: Israel-Hamas war

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    Hundreds of thousands of people have fled Rafah after the Israel Defense Forces ordered evacuations ahead of a ground offensive. Follow live updates.

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  • Live updates: Israel-Hamas war as Rafah invasion looms

    Live updates: Israel-Hamas war as Rafah invasion looms

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    The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution calling on the Security Council to reconsider Palestinian membership to the UN, a significant but ultimately symbolic move that the US is expected to veto. Follow live updates.

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  • Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, looming Rafah invasion, Israel Eurovision participation

    Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, looming Rafah invasion, Israel Eurovision participation

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    Displaced Palestinians arrive in a truck carrying their belongings to set up shelter in a tent camp after returning to Khan Yunis in southern Gaza on May 9. AFP/Getty Images

    In its most recent ceasefire counterproposal on Monday, Hamas demanded Israel agree upfront to an initial 12-week pause in fighting rather than six weeks, creating a major obstacle in the negotiations, three sources familiar with the deliberations tell CNN. 

    Israeli officials are staunchly opposed to agreeing to the longer request, as they believe it would be no different than agreeing to an effective end to the war.

    One senior Biden administration official said Israel has made clear that it wants to reserve the right to dismantle the four remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah.

    “Need to maintain flexibility to continue the war to do that,” the official said, adding that Israel couldn’t do that if the first six-week ceasefire period simply flowed into the second phase, when a “sustained calm” is supposed to be restored in Gaza, according to the Hamas proposal.

    At an earlier point in the talks, Hamas agreed to engage in negotiations during the first six weeks of a pause in fighting — talks that would require that the parties reach terms before the second phase of the truce, of another six weeks, could go into effect, sources said. They described Hamas’ new demand as a clear reversal.

    Israeli officials privately recognize that a months-long ceasefire would make it difficult to restart the war and send Israeli troops back into Gaza, effectively ending the war.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is loathe to make such an explicit commitment upfront, with several of his right-wing governing partners having threatened to collapse his government if the war ends without a major ground offensive in Rafah and the dismantlement of Hamas. 

    Israel is also taking issue with committing to 12 weeks of pause in fighting upfront before any of the hostages are released, said an Israeli source familiar with the talks. Sources said the wording in the agreement of how phase one of the truce would transition to phase two would be key to securing Israel’s agreement.  

    Hamas’ request appears to be confirmed in a document obtained by CNN, which states: 

    “All measures in this [first] stage, including the temporary cessation of mutual military operations, relief and shelter, and the withdrawal of forces, etc., will continue in the second stage until a sustainable calm is declared.”

    The senior Biden administration official added that the change in Hamas’ position may be due to its negotiators being out of sync with the group’s ultimate decision maker, Yahya Sinwar, who is believed to be underground in Gaza.

    CNN reported Thursday that there is now a pause in the ceasefire talks while Israel’s military operation in Rafah is taking place, according to US officials. 

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  • Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, looming Rafah invasion, Gaza devastation

    Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, looming Rafah invasion, Gaza devastation

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    A displaced Palestinian girl holds a child as she walks at a tent camp on a rainy day in Rafah, Gaza on May 6. Mohammed Salem/Reuters

    Rafah is “hanging on the edge of a precipice” and those left in the southern Gazan city, including 600,000 children, are the most vulnerable and living in “shocking” conditions, according to an official with the United Nations Children’s Fund in Rafah.

    “(They are) living in a very difficult conditions under tents, makeshift tarpaulins, under shocking sanitary conditions because there’s no effective sewage system here,” Hamish Young, UNICEF’s senior emergency coordinator for Gaza, told CNN on Thursday.
    “The level of acute watery diarrhea, which… can kill children quite easily, is now 20 times higher than what it was this time last year.”

    Young said that malnutrition rates in Rafah are increasing, and children are “in real trouble” after the closure of one of the main hospitals in the city “greatly reduced the ability for children to reach medical services.”

    World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday that hospitals in southern Gaza only have three days of fuel left, “which means services may soon come to a halt.”

    “It’s two days of fuel now,” said Young.

    “We’re rationing the fuel already for hospitals, scaling down operations as we can. When that fuel runs out, life support systems in hospitals stop.”

    If the generators stop running, patients on ventilators and children relying on incubators are at extreme risk, he said.

    “People on ventilators, I don’t know what happens to them when the ventilator stops running. Children in incubators, little tiny babies, often it’s two and three jammed into one incubator because we haven’t been able to bring enough in,” Young said.

    “Probably a large number will die when the fuel runs out.”

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  • Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, Rafah crossing, bombings, Gaza ceasefire deal

    Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, Rafah crossing, bombings, Gaza ceasefire deal

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    Hamas representative Osama Hamdan speaks during a news conference in Beirut, Lebanon, on May 7. Mohamed Azakir/Reuters

    A senior representative of Hamas says the proposed deal it agreed to includes the “withdrawal of the occupation from the Gaza Strip.”

    Osama Hamdan, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, told a news conference in Beirut that the proposed deal would secure “the main issues of the demands of our people and our resistance in stopping the aggression permanently, the withdrawal of the occupation from the entire Gaza Strip, the free return of the displaced, relief, reconstruction, ending the siege, and achieving a real and serious exchange deal.”

    Hamdan said the proposed deal’s three phases would be continuously implemented, claiming that Israel wanted “to complete one stage, in which it would achieve the release of its prisoners held by the resistance, and then resume its aggression against the Gaza Strip.”

    Referring to Egypt and Qatar, Hamdan said “the mediator brothers, if their proposal is approved…will have a role in completing all stages of the agreement, and putting pressure on the occupation to adhere to its provisions and implement them.”

    Israel has said there are significant gaps between what Hamas has agreed to and what was on the table in previous rounds of negotiations. In a statement Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Hamas proposal “was designed to torpedo the entry of our forces into Rafah. That did not happen.”

    Netanyahu said that “as the war cabinet unanimously determined, the Hamas proposal was very far from Israel’s core demands.”

    The White House said Tuesday that a close reading of Israel and Hamas’ separate negotiating positions on a hostage deal indicates the two sides should be able to strike an agreement.

    National security spokesman John Kirby’s comment was a fresh sign of optimism about the state of hostage talks after they appeared to stall Monday. CIA Director Bill Burns was in Cairo Tuesday for continued discussions.

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  • Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, Rafah airstrikes, Gaza ceasefire deal

    Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, Rafah airstrikes, Gaza ceasefire deal

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    Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike east of Rafah, on May 6. Ismael Abu Dayyah/AP

    Israel said the terms of a ceasefire proposal Hamas accepted on Monday remained “far from” meeting its demands and warned its military operations in Rafah would continue, even as it sent negotiators to talk to mediators.

    In a statement Monday, Hamas said the head of its political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, told the Qatari prime minister and Egyptian intelligence minister that the militant group had accepted their proposals for a ceasefire and hostage deal.

    Palestinians celebrated that statement in the streets of Gaza, while in Tel Aviv, hostage families and their supporters implored Israel’s leaders to accept the deal.

    However, shortly afterwards, Israel said the terms Hamas had accepted were still far from meeting its “requirements,” and reiterated its commitment to an offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, saying its war cabinet had “unanimously decided” to continue with the operation “to exert military pressure on Hamas.” It did agree, though, to send a delegation to the mediators for further talks.

    Later on Monday evening, the Israel Defense Forces said it was “conducting targeted strikes against Hamas terror targets in eastern Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.” Video and images obtained by CNN showed multiple explosions in the Rafah area on Monday night.

    CNN political and global affairs analyst Barak Ravid said Israeli forces were going to take over the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing in the next few hours, citing two sources with direct knowledge.

    The news comes just hours after Israel ordered Palestinians living in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza, to “evacuate immediately.”

    The order raised fears that Israel’s long-threatened assault on the city could be imminent. More than 1 million Palestinians have fled to Rafah, where Hamas is believed to have regrouped after Israel’s destruction of much of the north of Gaza.

    Read the full story.

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  • Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, eastern Rafah evacuations

    Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, eastern Rafah evacuations

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    Children queue to receive food aid from a charity organization in Rafah, on May 3. Doaa Albaz/Anadolu/Getty Images

    The “necessary conditions for survival are absent” in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, as medical facilities have been stretched to the limit, according to a report from Medical NGO Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).

    The devastation in Rafah extends “far beyond those killed by Israeli bombardments and airstrikes”, saying that deaths as a result of the disruption to critical healthcare are “silent killings” that are “equally tragic.”

    It notes a “marked deterioration” in people’s health, with rising rates of “acute malnutrition”, medical facilities that are “inundated with patients and operating beyond their limits”, and the current medical response “rendered ineffective by the Israeli authorities’ siege”. 

     “This crisis is entirely man-made; what is being witnessed is a situation of deliberate deprivation,” MSF wrote in the report released on April 29.

    The current situation could result in “tens of thousands of non-trauma-related” deaths that could happen in the next six months, even in the event of a ceasefire, the report said.

    Malnutrition: Between January 2024 and the end of March 2024, MSF registered 216 cases of moderate and severe acute malnutrition in children under five at Al-Shaboura and Al-Mawasi primary healthcare centers in Rafah and 25 cases among pregnant women and new mothers.

    These figures represent only a small part of the larger reality, as they are based on screening of patients coming to the primary healthcare centers, while many people in Rafah do not have access to MSF’s services,” the report said. 

     “The more than one million Palestinian men, women and children who have risked everything to seek refuge in Rafah remain exposed to serious physical and mental harm, with no information about the future besides the confirmation of an imminent invasion of Rafah by the Israeli army,” it added. 

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  • Live updates: Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks, Gaza death toll rises

    Live updates: Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks, Gaza death toll rises

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    Deadly Israeli airstrikes have hit residential buildings across Gaza, killing nine people.

    Three people were killed and several were injured, including two children, after an Israeli airstrike targeted two residential buildings east of Rafah, according to a Gaza General Directorate of Civil Defense statement.

    The Israel Defense Forces released a statement Saturday has confirmed hitting targets, saying it “is operating to dismantle Hamas military and administrative capabilities,” and that “the IDF follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”

    Israeli airstrikes have been targeting Rafah, where at least 1.2 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, for weeks ahead of an anticipated ground offensive. 

    Elsewhere, in northern Gaza, three people were killed and three injured after an Israeli airstrike targeted a family home in Jabalya in the early hours of Saturday morning. 

    In another instance, three people were killed, including a woman, in an Israeli airstrike that hit a family home east of Al-Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza on Friday at midnight, according to the director-general at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, Iyad Issa Abu Zaher. 

    CNN has reached out to the IDF about the specific airstrikes reported in northern and central Gaza. 

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  • Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, US funding for Israel, crisis in Gaza

    Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, US funding for Israel, crisis in Gaza

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    Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder speaks during a press briefing on April 23, 2024 at the Pentagon in Washington. Kevin Wolf/AP

    US military vessels are in the Mediterranean region and “standing by” and prepared to begin construction on the temporary pier off the coast of Gaza when given the order to do so, Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Tuesday. 

    He also said the United States was “positioned to begin construction very soon, in the near future.”

    Officials are working through a checklist of processes and procedures, including security on the ground, coordination with partners supporting this effort and drawing up a timeline for implementation, Ryder said.

    Ryder has said the expectation is for the temporary pier to be operational by the end of April or early May, and said Tuesday the military is on track to meet that timeline. 

    The World Food Programme will support the distribution of aid from the pier following weeks of diplomatic wrangling, the organization said Saturday.

    The temporary pier, which will be several miles off Gaza’s coast, will receive military and civilian vessels, Ryder said. The aid brought by those vessels will then be transported by US military vessels to the causeway, where non-military trucks — driven by non-profit organization personnel — will take the aid and then distribute it into Gaza.

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  • Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, Netanyahu criticizes US sanctions plans, UNRWA review

    Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, Netanyahu criticizes US sanctions plans, UNRWA review

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    A grave with nearly 300 bodies has been uncovered at a hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, Gaza Civil Defense workers said, following the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the area earlier this month.

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  • Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, West Bank violence, Iran tensions

    Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, West Bank violence, Iran tensions

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    Israeli troops stand guard near the scene of a shooting near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on April 21. Mussa Qawasma/Reuters

    Israeli soldiers shot and killed two Palestinians at Beit Einun Junction, near Hebron, in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, in what the military says was an attempted attack on soldiers.

    The Israel Defense Forces said that two men arrived at the junction, and one of them “attempted to stab IDF soldiers that were in the area, who responded with live fire and neutralized him.”

    Another man then “opened fire at the soldiers, who responded with live fire and neutralized him too,” the military said.

    The Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank named the two men as 19-year-old Muhammad Jabarin and 18-year-old Musa Jabarin.

    A video believed to be of the incident, which CNN cannot independently verify, shows one man ducking behind a large concrete block — often placed by the Israeli military at checkpoints and junctions to create barriers and block roads.

    The man does not appear to move from his location and it is not immediately clear in the video if he is holding anything in his hands. After about 30 seconds, gunfire is heard and the man falls to the ground.

    There was only one man in the video.

    Violence by Israeli settlers and troops in the occupied West Bank has surged during Israel’s war in Gaza. 

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  • Live updates: Tensions simmer between Iran and Israel as war devastates Gaza

    Live updates: Tensions simmer between Iran and Israel as war devastates Gaza

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    Members of the United States Congress are pictured during voting in the House Chamber in Washington, DC, on April 20. House TV

    A spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority president strongly condemned the US House of Representatives’ approval Saturday of a $26 billion aid package for Israel.

    The aid will directly correlate to the increasing number of Palestinian casualties, said the spokesperson, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, according to a statement published by the Palestinian official news agency WAFA.

    Abu Rudeineh labeled the aid package a “dangerous escalation” and an act of aggression against the Palestinian people. He said the support gives Israel the green light to broaden its war across the region, and undermines the prospects for regional and global stability.

    The aid package passed by the House still faces a vote in the US Senate before being approved.

    Back in the US: Protesters have gathered near the Wilmington, Delaware, home of US President Joe Biden — who has backed the aid package — holding signs and chanting, calling for a ceasefire.

    One chant that can be heard is “Biden, Biden you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” They are also chanting “Biden is a war criminal,” and “Genocide Joe has got to go.”

    The president is spending the weekend in Wilmington.

    CNN’s Samantha Waldenberg contributed reporting to this post.

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  • Live updates: Israel-Hamas war and the latest on the Middle East conflict

    Live updates: Israel-Hamas war and the latest on the Middle East conflict

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    The European Union imposed sanctions on “extremist settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem,” the European Council announced on Friday, listing four people and two entities.

    According to the statement, the entities Lehava, a “radical right-wing Jewish supremacist group,” and Hilltop Youth, a “radical youth group consisting of members known for violent acts against Palestinians and their villages in the West Bank,” were added to the EU sanctions regime alongside two leading figures of Hilltop Youth, Meir Ettinger and Elisha Yered.

    Neria Ben Pazi, who the EU’s governing body said has been “accused of repeatedly attacking Palestinians,” and Yinon Levi, who the council said has “taken part in multiple violent acts against neighbouring villages,” were also added to the listing.

    The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said in a post on X that “the EU has decided to sanction extremist settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem for serious human rights abuses against Palestinians. We strongly condemn extremist settler violence: perpetrators must be held to account.”

    Belgium’s Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib said that she “welcomes” the sanctions, adding that the “recent escalation of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop; these settlers must be held accountable.”

    Yered responded later Friday, saying he was “honored to be included in this respected list” and that “we shall continue holding onto the land of our forefathers — until the victory.”

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  • Live updates: Israel attacks Iran, explosions in Isfahan, war in Gaza

    Live updates: Israel attacks Iran, explosions in Isfahan, war in Gaza

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    An aerial attack on Iran on Friday came fresh on the heels of earlier tit-for-tat Iranian and Israeli strikes, a potentially dangerous escalation of the Middle East conflict as a decades-long shadow war between the two countries emerges into the open.

    What the US says: Israel carried out the strike, a US official told CNN. The US was given advance notification Thursday of an Israeli strike in the coming days, but “didn’t green light” an Israeli response, another senior US official told CNN.

    What Israel says: Israel has not claimed responsibility or commented.

    What Iran says: Iranian officials and state-aligned media have so far sought to play down the incident.

    Iranian air defenses intercepted three drones, a Tehran official said, after reports of explosions near an army base in the central province of Isfahan. There were no reports of a missile attack, he said.

    A loud blast near Isfahan city was caused by “air defense firing at a suspicious object,” a senior Iranian military commander said, adding there was no “damage or incident,” according to the state-aligned Tasnim news agency.

    All facilities around Isfahan were secure, including significant nuclear sites, Iranian media reported. The UN nuclear watchdog confirmed no Iranian nuclear sites were damaged.

    Why is this happening now? The attack follows an unprecedented Iranian assault on Israel last weekend that Tehran said was retaliation for a deadly suspected Israeli airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Syria on April 1. The reprisals marked the first time the Islamic Republic had launched a direct assault on Israel from its soil.

    In the wake of Iran’s retaliatory attack, countries including the US called for restraint from Israel to prevent escalation, as Israel’s war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza has already stoked regional tensions.

    What’s next? Hours before the first reports of explosions in Iran emerged Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian had warned that Tehran’s response to any further Israeli military action against it would be “immediate and at a maximum level.”

    The details of a potential “maximum response” have been planned by Iran’s armed forces, he added.

    Iranian media, however, appeared to downplay the severity of Friday’s attack, publishing footage and images of calm scenes in Isfahan and the northwestern city of Tabriz.

    A regional intelligence source with knowledge of Iran’s potential reaction said Tehran was not expected to respond to the strikes — but did not give a reason.

    Here are more details on what we know.

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  • Live updates: Israel weighs response to Iran as war devastates Gaza

    Live updates: Israel weighs response to Iran as war devastates Gaza

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    Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich speaks to the press on February 5, 2024, in Jerusalem. Amir Levy/Getty Images

    Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said that Israel’s response to Iran’s attack should inflict a “disproportionate toll” and “rock Tehran” to deter Iran from future strikes.

    Smotrich said Israel’s response to Iran’s missile and drone attack should make Tehran “regret the moment they even thought about firing” and be “fierce, severe and inflict a disproportionate toll.”

    Smotrich, who is technically also a minister in Israel’s defense ministry due to a deal struck in coalition agreements, told Israel’s Army Radio (GLZ) that the nature of Israel’s response would “shape [Israel’s] position in the Middle East.”

    The response, he said, “should rock Tehran, so everyone there will realize they shouldn’t mess with us,” he said, adding that “this is the language spoken in the Middle East.”

    The minister, who is head of the far-right Religious Zionism party, also said that Israel should maintain its strategic ties with the United States and other partners but must prevent itself from finding itself in a “bear-hug, which will limit and make us incapable.”

    Key context: Smotrich is not a member of Israel’s war cabinet, which the security cabinet has authorized to decide on how to respond to the Iranian attack.

    As tensions in the region intensify, many world leaders have urged restraint as Israel weighs the size and scope of its response to Iran.

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  • Live updates: Israel weighs response to Iran attack, US will impose new sanctions on Tehran

    Live updates: Israel weighs response to Iran attack, US will impose new sanctions on Tehran

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    Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on July 5, 2023. Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images/File

    Israel, aided by its allies, dodged a bullet Sunday.

    To be more precise, 60 tons of explosives aboard more than 350 Iranian projectiles, some bigger than a family car, failed to dodge Israel’s defenses.

    Yet Israel, in defiance of US President Joe Biden’s warnings to “take the win” and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s threat of a “severe, extensive and painful” response to any retaliation, is contemplating just that.

    Deterrence, shorthand for “meanest S.O.B. in the room,” Israel believes, is the cornerstone of its survival. Iran is stealing that brick.

    When faced with existential threats in the past, Israel has executed the most audacious raids the region has ever witnessed. The point is that Israel won’t telegraph its attack plans as Iran did at the weekend.

    Aside from the core members of Israel’s war cabinet, more than a dozen other people have sat at the table deep inside the Kirya, Israel’s maximum security defense headquarters in Tel Aviv, thrashing out their next move.

    Netanyahu’s next move will likely try to lock in sanctions and strike before negative Gaza headlines dump the international goodwill filling his sails.

    The clock is ticking. He needs two things: time to prepare a significant surprise strike and time to coalesce international diplomacy. As both march to different beats, his legendary political acumen faces one of its stiffest tests yet.

    Netanyahu is famed as a political survivor. But now he faces the biggest gamble of his career. He is betting the blood of his nation over Iran’s read of his rift with America.

    Read the full analysis.

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  • Live updates: Israel weighs response to Iran attack, delays Gaza city offensive

    Live updates: Israel weighs response to Iran attack, delays Gaza city offensive

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    Hamas has slashed the number of hostages it is willing to release during the first phase of a proposed ceasefire deal by more than half, an Israeli source close to the negotiations said.

    In its latest counterproposal, Hamas offered to release fewer than 20 hostages in exchange for a six-week ceasefire, more than halving the number of 40 hostages that has been the basis of negotiations for months — a significant step backward in the talks.

    A senior Biden administration official confirmed that Hamas is focused on those 20 for the first phase of a potential deal. The official also confirmed Hamas is telling mediators that it only has around 20 remaining hostages who are women or sick, wounded and elderly men.

    Hamas also called for the release of more Palestinian prisoners in exchange for fewer hostages, the source said, as well as a higher number of prisoners serving life sentences.

    The Israeli source said the latest Hamas counterproposal signals that Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, does not want a deal, seeking to exploit fissures between the US and Israel over Israeli military operations in Gaza and domestic pressure on the Israeli government.

    Hamas spokesperson Basem Naim said the group had proposed “releasing (three) captured Israelis each week,” but said “no one is talking about final numbers.”

    Beyond the ratio of Palestinian prisoners, Hamas is continuing to demand assurances about a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, and unrestricted access for Palestinians to return to northern Gaza.

    “I think part of this is Hamas thinks they’re winning. Because their definition of success is survival and they’ve survived so far,” the Biden official said. “The longer the conflict has gone on the more recalcitrant Hamas has become rather than the other way around.”

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  • Live updates: Israel intercepts Iran drone attacks and weighs response, Gaza crisis continues

    Live updates: Israel intercepts Iran drone attacks and weighs response, Gaza crisis continues

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    Israel and Iran’s United Nations ambassadors condemned each other’s actions during Sunday’s UN Security Council emergency session called to address Iran’s attack on Israel.

    Israel’s UN ambassador Gilad Erdan said Iran “must be stopped before it drives the world to a point of no return, to a regional war that can escalate to a world war.”

    Erdan accused Iran of seeking world domination and that its attack proved that Tehran “cares nothing, nothing for Islam or Muslims” before pulling out a tablet to show a video of Israel intercepting Iranian drones above Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque.

    Erdan called on the Security Council to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terror organization.

    “Action must be taken now, not for Israel’s sake, not for the region’s sake, but for the world’s sake. Stop Iran today.”

    Iran’s UN Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani said his country’s operation was “entirely in the exercise of Iran’s inherent right to self-defense, as outlined in Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations and recognized by international law.”

    Iravani said:

    “Iran is never seeking to contribute to the spillover of the conflict in the region, nor does it to escalate or spread the tension to the entire region,” he said.

    Tehran’s attack had been anticipated since a suspected Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic complex in Syria earlier this month.

    Iravani added Iran has “no intention of engaging in conflict with the US in the region” but warned Iran will use its “inherent right to respond proportionately” should the US initiate a military operation against “Iran, its citizens or its security.”

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