Ramat Hasharon, Oct 27: Israeli strikes on northern Gaza have killed at least 22 people, mostly women and children, Palestinian officials said Sunday, as the Israeli offensive in the hard-hit and isolated north entered a third week and aid groups described a humanitarian catastrophe. Israel said it targeted militants.
In a separate development, a truck rammed into a bus stop near the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, wounding 35 people, according to first responders. Israeli police described it as an attack and said the assailant was an Arab citizen of Israel. The ramming occurred near the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
Iran’s supreme leader, meanwhile, said Israeli strikes on the country over the weekend “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed,” while stopping short of calling for retaliation, suggesting Iran is carefully weighing its response to the attack.
On Saturday, Israeli warplanes attacked military targets in Iran in response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack earlier this month.
The exchange of fire has raised fears of an all-out regional war pitting Israel and the United States against Iran and its militant proxies, which include Hamas and the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, where Israel launched a ground invasion earlier this month after nearly a year of lower-level conflict.
The Israeli military said Sunday that four soldiers, including a military rabbi, were killed in fighting in southern Lebanon, without providing details about the circumstances. It said five other personnel were severely wounded.
An explosive drone and a projectile fired from Lebanon wounded five people in Israel on Sunday, authorities said.
Netanyahu says strikes on Iran achieved Israel’s goals Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the strikes “severely harmed” Iran and achieved all of Israel’s goals.
“The air force struck throughout Iran. We severely harmed Iran’s defence capabilities and its ability to produce missiles that are aimed toward us,” Netanyahu said in his first public comments on the strikes.
Satellite images showed damage to two secretive Iranian military bases, one linked to work on nuclear weapons that Western intelligence agencies and nuclear inspectors say was discontinued in 2003 and another linked to Iran’s ballistic missile program. (AP)
