American troops are on their way to the Middle East on Saturday, amid fears of an Iranian response against Israel, more than six months after the start of the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. “We are sending additional assets to the region to support regional deterrence efforts and increase the protection of American forces,” a US Defense Department official said in Washington on Friday evening.
Fears of a regionalization of the conflict are increasing
While the mediators – Qatar, Egypt, United States – await responses from Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas to their latest truce proposal, fears of a regionalization of the conflict are only increasing.
US President Joe Biden said on Friday he expected Iran to take action “soon”, in response to a question about threats against Israel, accused by the Islamic Republic of being at origin of the strike against its consulate in Damascus on April 1. In this context, Mr. Biden sent the head of the US Central Command, General Michael Kurilla, to Israel for talks.
The German company Lufthansa and its Austrian subsidiary Austrian Airlines suspend their flights
On Saturday, the Netherlands announced that its embassy in Iran as well as its consulate in Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, are closed to the public “as a precaution”. The day before, the German company Lufthansa and its Austrian subsidiary Austrian Airlines announced that they would suspend their flights to and from Tehran until Thursday April 18. At the same time, several countries, including France, Germany and the United States, have reiterated their calls on their nationals not to travel to Iran.
Tehran has promised a response to the strike attributed to Israel against the Iranian consulate in Damascus which, according to an NGO, left 16 dead, including two generals of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army. Israel has since been on high alert.
Operations in the center
After withdrawing its troops from Khan Younes (south), the Israeli army announced on Saturday that it was continuing its operations against Hamas militants in the center of the narrow strip of land where nearly 2.4 million people live . In Deir al-Balah (center) an AFP video shows mountains of ruins, including the remains of a mosque. The army “demanded that the entire area be evacuated” before it was “annihilated in a few minutes”, Abdullah Baraka, a witness, told AFP. “There was nothing in the mosque, nothing at all. No one was hiding there. We were just praying there,” he added.
For its part, the Israeli army declared on Saturday that it had struck more than “thirty targets” in the Gaza Strip during the previous day. Warning sirens sounded on Friday in the Israeli town of Sderot, she also said, adding that they had intercepted rockets fired from Palestinian territory.
On Friday, Lebanese Hezbollah, supported by Iran, announced that it had launched “dozens of rockets” at Israeli positions, in response, it said, to Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon. On Saturday, the Israeli army said it had struck “a large military compound” of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
The war was sparked on October 7 when commandos from the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas infiltrated from the neighboring Gaza Strip carried out an attack in southern Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an established toll. by AFP based on official Israeli data.
More than 250 people have been kidnapped and 129 remain detained in Gaza, including 34 who have died, according to Israeli officials. In retaliation, Israel vowed to “annihilate” Hamas — which it considers a terrorist organization along with the United States and the European Union — and launched a vast military operation which left 33,634 dead, in majority of civilians, according to the Hamas health ministry.