JERUSALEM: Israel will respond forcefully to any attack on it, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday, after the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and of a senior Hezbollah leader in Beirut.
Netanyahu said Israel had delivered crushing blows to Iran’s proxies over the past few days, including Hamas and Hezbollah. But he did not mention Haniyeh’s killing, which has drawn threats of revenge on Israel and fueled further concern that the conflict in Gaza was turning into a wider Middle East war.
“Citizens of Israel, challenging days lie ahead. Since the strike in Beirut there are threats sounding from all directions. We are prepared for any scenario and we will stand united and determined against any threat. Israel will exact a heavy price for any aggression against us from any arena,” Netanyahu said in a televised statement.
Israel’s military announced late on Tuesday it had killed Fuad Shukr, whom it named as Hezbollah’s most senior commander and whom it blamed for an attack at the weekend that left a dozen youngsters dead in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Shukr was an adviser to Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, according to Hezbollah sources and to Israeli officials.
Iran-backed Hezbollah confirmed his death on Wednesday, hours after the Palestinian armed group Hamas announced its leader, Haniyeh, had been assassinated in Teheran.
Although the Tehran attack was widely assumed to have been carried out by Israel, Netanyahu’s government made no claim of responsibility and said it would make no comment on Haniyeh’s killing.
Netanyahu says Israel will exact heavy price for revenge attacks
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Netanyahu says Israel will exact heavy price for revenge attacks
- Netanyahu said Israel had delivered crushing blows to Iran’s proxies over the past few days
- “Citizens of Israel, challenging days lie ahead”
Thirty four Australians released from Syrian camp holding Daesh affiliated families
- Roj camp holds more than 2,000 people from 40 different nationalities, the majority of them women and children
ROJ CAMP: Syrian Kurdish forces on Monday released 34 Australians from a camp holding families of suspected Daesh militants in northern Syria, saying they would be flown to Australia from Damascus.
Hukmiya Mohamed, a co-director of Roj camp, told Reuters that the 34 Australians had been released to members of their families who had come to Syria for the release. They were put on small buses for Damascus.
Roj camp holds more than 2,000 people from 40 different nationalities, the majority of them women and children.
Thousands of people believed to be linked to Daesh militants have been held at Roj and a second camp, Al-Hol, since the militant group was driven from its final territorial foothold in Syria in 2019.
Syrian government forces seized swathes of northern Syria from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in January, before agreeing a ceasefire on January 29.
The US military last week completed a mission to transfer 5,700 adult male Daesh detainees from Syria to Iraq.
