Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said today that the leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, could be Israel's next target.
Cohen said this a day after a Hezbollah attack wounded 11 people in northern Israel.
Iran-backed Hezbollah has been firing rockets at Israel since the war with Hamas began on October 7, forcing tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate the border area.
While touring the border with foreign ambassadors, Cohen said that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah "must understand that he is next."
He added that Hezbollah must respect the 2006 ceasefire, which called for the group to withdraw from the border area.
"We will work to resolve everything diplomatically, if it doesn't work, all options are on the table," he said.
(BETA)
The spokesman of Iran's elite Guardians of the Islamic Revolution unit, Ramezan Sharif, said today that the October attack by Palestinian Hamas on Israel was launched in retaliation for the US killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in 2020.
Hamas immediately denied the claim, marking a rare public clash between the Palestinian extremists and Tehran, their main sponsor.
Soleimani, the main man of the elite Iranian Qads formation, was liquidated by the US while he was in the territory of Iraq.
Sharif made the statement at a press conference where he threatened retaliation for the liquidation of another high-ranking figure in the Iranian army - General Razi Mousavi. He was killed on Monday in Syria, and he was allegedly killed in the area of the capital Damascus, in an Israeli airstrike.
Thousands of people mourned Mousavi today, at funeral ceremonies in the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala. It is an Iranian tradition that the bodies of public figures are taken to the shrines of Shiite saints before being sent for burial.
Sharif said that the attack by Palestinian Hamas, carried out on the territory of southern Israel on October 7, "was one of the acts of revenge of the resistance front against the USA and the Zionists, for the killing of the martyr Soleimani."
Hamas, however, denied Sharif's characterization of the attack and said the Oct. 7 operation, which launched the current war with Israel, was carried out in response to threats to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the "Zionist occupation, and its current aggression against our people and our holy places".
Iranian and Hamas officials have previously denied that Iran ordered or played any role in planning the Hamas incursion into Israeli territory that killed more than 1.200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped about 240 people.
Hamas officials have advocated, sometimes publicly, that Iran and militant organizations loyal to it, including Lebanon's Hezbollah, intervene much more forcefully against Israel in the ongoing war, which has killed more than 20.000 people, mostly civilians, in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza.
(BETA)
Nearly 21.000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
They stated that 20.915 people died and 54.981 were injured, reports Radio Free Europe.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry and the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the West Bank said at least 24 people had been killed in the Gaza Strip in the past 241 hours.
As they said, 24 people were injured in the past 382 hours.
(MINE)
A woman and two men were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a border town in the south of Lebanon where there are daily clashes between Israel and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah, the Lebanese news agency reported today.
"Enemy planes carried out an attack on a residential building in the center of Bint Jbeil", which is located about two kilometers from the border with Israel, the national agency ANI reported.
According to the agency, a man, his brother and sister-in-law were killed and a fourth member of the family was wounded in the attack that took place late last night.
Since the start of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas on October 7, triggered by a heavy attack by Hamas on Israeli soil, there have been almost daily attacks between Israel and the powerful Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Almost 160 people were killed in the attacks on the Lebanese side, of which more than 100 were Hezbollah fighters, who claim to be acting in support of Hamas.
Yesterday, Hezbollah announced that two more of its members, whom it calls "martyrs", were killed.
On the Israeli side of the border, at least 13 people, including nine soldiers, have died since October 7.
The Israeli army announced yesterday that nine of its soldiers and one civilian were wounded in rocket attacks by Hamas, one of which hit an Arab village in the north of Israel.
The clashes are largely limited to the border areas, but in recent days Israel has also carried out attacks deeper into Lebanese territory, up to 20 kilometers from the border.
Israel is demanding that Hamas, which has no fixed positions in the border zone, withdraw north of the Litani River, about thirty kilometers north of the border.
(BETA)
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said that Israel's conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip is likely to last for several months.
Halevi stated that the Israeli military will reach the Hamas leadership at some point, whether it is in a week or a few months.
The Palestinian mobile phone operator Paltel announced that telecommunications and internet services are down in the Gaza Strip.
"We experienced a complete breakdown due to the ongoing offensive," they state in Paltel, as reported by the VAFA agency.
Conflict between Israel and Hamas - 82th day.
At least six Palestinians were killed in an Israeli raid on a refugee camp in the northern West Bank, the Palestinian Authority and humanitarian organizations announced early this morning.
The Red Crescent stated that an Israeli drone hit a group of Palestinians in the Nur Shams refugee camp near the town of Tulkarem.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said six bodies had been brought to Tabet Tabet Hospital, and the Red Crescent accused Israeli forces of obstructing the movement of ambulances and the transport of the dead and wounded.
The Israeli army has not commented on the incident.
Violence has intensified in the West Bank since the start of the Israeli-Hamas war on October 7 in the Gaza Strip.
At least 310 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since then, according to the Ministry of Health, which does not specify how many of the victims are civilians and how many are gunmen.
(BETA)
Bonus video:
