Tensions high after Iran attacks Israel and IDF targets Hezbollah: As it happened

The US had been concerned about the IDF’s attacks on Gaza almost from the very beginning of the escalation that followed the incursion into Israel by Palestinian armed group, Hamas, on October 7 last year, Reuters has reported after reviewing emails exchanges between officials in Washington.

Then-deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, Dana Stroul, warned in a message to senior aides to US President Joe Biden on October 13 that the mass evacuation of Palestinians would be a humanitarian disaster and could violate international law, leading to war-crime charges against Israel, the report read.

Reuters also mentioned another email, in which the State Department’s top public diplomacy official, Bill Russo, told senior US officials that Washington’s “lack of response on the humanitarian conditions for Palestinians is not only ineffective and counterproductive, but we are also being accused of being complicit to potential war crimes by remaining silent on Israel’s actions against civilians.”

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has claimed that Hezbollah has been suffering “very severe blows” at the hands of the IDF.

“We eliminated [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah and we have more surprises in store, some of which have already been carried out and some of which will be carried out,” he said during a visit to the 36th Division’s headquarters in northern Israel.

Hezbollah’s “missile and rocket division suffered a very heavy blow. A significant part was destroyed as a result of a high-quality and precise operation. Command and control headquarters, communications, the entire leadership of [the elite Radwan Force], and in fact the entire second and third tiers of command below Nasrallah were eliminated,” Gallant stated.

During his sermon in Tehran, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called upon Muslim nations to unite against Israel.

“Our enemy is one,” he said, accusing the Jewish state of working “to sow the seeds of division and sedition, to drive a wedge among all the Muslims.” 

“Any strikes at the Zionist regime [Israel] from any person and any organization is a service to the whole region and perhaps the whole of humanity,” Khamenei stated.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has insisted that the IDF “cannot seriously harm” Hezbollah and Hamas, as he delivered his first public sermon in five years in Tehran. Israel “will not last long” fighting on several fronts, he claimed.

Khamenei also praised the Iranian missile attack on Israeli territory on Tuesday, calling it a “brilliant action” that was “completely legal and legitimate.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei leads Friday prayers at the Imam Khomeini Musalla Mosque in Tehran. © Getty Images / Iranian Leader Press Office

The IDF has claimed that the head of Hezbollah’s communications division, Muhammad Rashid Sakafi, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut on Thursday.

Sakafi, who had been in the job since 2000, “invested significant efforts to develop communication capabilities between all of Hezbollah’s units in all periods of operation, to maintain the flow of information throughout the terrorist organization,” it said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has arrived in Beirut, the Lebanese National News Agency has reported. “An Iranian plane has landed at the Rafik Hariri International Airport with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on board,” the agency said.

The Israeli military has published a series of photos and videos showing the IDF troops involved in the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza celebrating Rosh Hashanah. The holiday, which is the New Year in Judaism, is marked between October 2 and 4 this year.

“Even during Rosh Hashanah, the IDF forces continue their operational activity and remain in full readiness in all sectors – in the north, the south and the center,” the Israeli military said.

The IDF has demanded that Lebanese civilians in another 37 villages and towns in the south of the country “evacuate immediately” and head north of the Awali River.

"Hezbollah’s activity forces the IDF to act against it. The IDF does not wish to harm you,” Colonel Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman, wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

Adraee warned that “anyone who is near Hezbollah operatives, their facilities or their weapons, puts themselves at risk.”

Hezbollah has claimed to have targeted Israel’s third largest city, Haifa, with rockets. The strike was carried out in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, the group said in a post on Telegram. There has so far been no comment from the IDF, or reports of casualties or damage.

The IDF has said it killed senior Hamas commander Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi and several other operatives of the Palestinian armed group in an airstrike on the Tulkarem refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

Oufi “worked to establish terrorist networks on behalf of Hamas and assisted terror operatives in the area to carry out significant shooting and explosive attacks,” the Israeli military said. The Hamas commander was targeted because he “intended to carry out an attack in the immediate time frame,” it added.

The health ministry in Gaza has said at least 18 people were killed in the airstrike on Tulkarem. According to Al Jazeera, it was the first time in 20 years that Israel had used a fighter jet against a building in the West Bank.