TEHRAN: Iran and its regional allies vowed retaliation on Thursday for the deaths of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, raising regional tensions as mourners filled Tehran’s city center calling for revenge.
A public funeral was held for Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital where he was killed early Wednesday in an attack which Israel has not commented on.
Haniyeh’s body was then flown to Qatar, where he had resided and where he is to be laid to rest on Friday, when his group called for a “day of furious rage” in the Palestinian territories and across the region.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, addressing the funeral of the Lebanese group’s top military commander, said Israel and “those who are behind it must await our inevitable response” to Fuad Shukr’s and Haniyeh’s killings within hours of each other.
“You do not know what red lines you crossed,” Nasrallah said, addressing Israel, a day after Shukr was killed in a strike in south Beirut.
Israel, which said Shukr’s assassination was a response to deadly rocket fire last week on the annexed Golan Heights, warned its adversaries on Thursday they would “pay a very high price” for any “aggression.”
“Israel is at a very high level of preparation for any scenario, both defensive and offensive,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.
“Those who attack us, we will attack in return.”
A source close to Hezbollah told AFP that Iranian officials met in Tehran on Wednesday with representatives of the so-called “axis of resistance,” a loose alliance of Tehran-backed groups hostile to Israel, to discuss their next steps.
“Two scenarios were discussed: a simultaneous response from Iran and its allies or a staggered response from each party,” said the source who had been briefed on the meeting, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
The leader of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels vowed a “military response” to Israel’s “major escalation.”
Analysts told AFP that the retaliation would be measured to avoid a wider conflagration.
Iran and the groups it backs “will more than likely try to avert a war, while also strongly deterring Israel from continuing with this new policy, this targeted shock and awe,” said Amal Saad, a Hezbollah researcher and lecturer at Britain’s Cardiff University.
In Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led prayers for Haniyeh having earlier threatened “harsh punishment” for his killing.
Crowds, including women shrouded in black, carried posters of Haniyeh and Palestinian flags in a procession and ceremony that began at Tehran University, an AFP correspondent reported.
Senior Iranian officials, including President Masoud Pezeshkian and Revolutionary Guards chief General Hossein Salami, attended the ceremony, state television images showed.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards announced the day before that Haniyeh and a bodyguard were killed in a pre-dawn strike Wednesday on their accommodation in Tehran.
The New York Times however reported, citing anonymous sources including two Iranian officials, that the blast was caused by an explosive device planted several months ago.
When asked about the report, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters “there was no other Israeli aerial attack... in all the Middle East” on the night of Shukr’s killing.
Qatar-based Haniyeh had been visiting Tehran for Pezeshkian’s swearing-in on Tuesday.
Pezeshkian said Iran “will continue to support with firmer determination the axis of resistance,” the official IRNA news agency said.
Qatar-based network Al Jazeera reported that the plane carrying Haniyeh’s body had landed in Doha, where the Palestinian leader is to be buried following prayers at the Qatari capital’s largest mosque.
Hamas called in a statement for a day of protests on Friday.
“Let roaring anger marches start from every mosque,” it said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Haniyeh a “martyr” and announced a national day of mourning on Friday “in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.” Pakistan too announced a national day of mourning.
The international community has called for calm and a focus on securing a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip — which Haniyeh had accused Israel of obstructing.
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said the strikes in Tehran and Beirut represented a “dangerous escalation.”
In a phone call, the foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt blamed Israel for rising tensions and called for “de-escalation,” Jordan’s official Petra news agency reported.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated appeals for an end to fighting and said achieving peace “starts with a ceasefire.”
But the prime minister of key ceasefire broker Qatar said Haniyeh’s killing had thrown the whole Gaza war mediation process into doubt.
“How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said on social media site X.
US President Joe Biden will speak to Netanyahu later on Thursday, the White House said.
The killings are the latest of several major incidents that have inflamed regional tensions during the Gaza war which has drawn in Iran-backed militant groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
Beyond Gaza, clashes continued on Thursday with Lebanese authorities reporting four Syrians killed in an Israeli strike, followed by Hezbollah announcing a barrage of “dozens” of rockets at Israel.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for its October 7 attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
Concern over the fate of those still held has grown among Israelis, who demonstrated demanding a deal to free them in Tel Aviv on Thursday, marking the war’s 300th day.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed at least 39,480 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.
Iran, allies ready Israel response as funerals held for militant leaders
https://arab.news/ydsn4
Iran, allies ready Israel response as funerals held for militant leaders
- Israel has not claimed responsibility for the assassination
- Iranian officials to meet regional allies to discuss retaliation
Tunisia’s famed blue-and-white village threatened after record rains
- The one-time home of French philosopher Michel Foucault and writer Andre Gide, the village is protected under Tunisian preservation law, pending a UNESCO decision on its bid for World Heritage status
SIDI BOU SAID, Tunisia: Perched on a hill overlooking Carthage, Tunisia’s famed blue-and-white village of Sidi Bou Said now faces the threat of landslides, after record rainfall tore through parts of its slopes.
Last week, Tunisia saw its heaviest downpour in more than 70 years. The storm killed at least five people, with others still missing.
Narrow streets of this village north of Tunis — famed for its pink bougainvillea and studded wooden doors — were cut off by fallen trees, rocks and thick clay. Even more worryingly for residents, parts of the hillside have broken loose.
“The situation is delicate” and “requires urgent intervention,” Mounir Riabi, the regional director of civil defense in Tunis, recently told AFP.
“Some homes are threatened by imminent danger,” he said.
Authorities have banned heavy vehicles from driving into the village and ordered some businesses and institutions to close, such as the Ennejma Ezzahra museum.
- Scared -
Fifty-year-old Maya, who did not give her full name, said she was forced to leave her century-old family villa after the storm.
“Everything happened very fast,” she recalled. “I was with my mother and, suddenly, extremely violent torrents poured down.”
“I saw a mass of mud rushing toward the house, then the electricity cut off. I was really scared.”
Her Moorish-style villa sustained significant damage.
One worker on site, Said Ben Farhat, said waterlogged earth sliding from the hillside destroyed part of a kitchen wall.
“Another rainstorm and it will be a catastrophe,” he said.
Shop owners said the ban on heavy vehicles was another blow to their businesses, as they usually rely on tourist buses to bring in traffic.
When President Kais Saied visited the village on Wednesday, vendors were heard shouting: “We want to work.”
One trader, Mohamed Fedi, told AFP afterwards there were “no more customers.”
“We have closed shop,” he said, adding that the shops provide a livelihood to some 200 families.
- Highly unstable -
Beyond its famous architecture, the village also bears historical and spiritual significance.
The village was named after a 12th-century Sufi saint, Abu Said Al-Baji, who had established a religious center there. His shrine still sits atop the hill.
The one-time home of French philosopher Michel Foucault and writer Andre Gide, the village is protected under Tunisian preservation law, pending a UNESCO decision on its bid for World Heritage status.
Experts say solutions to help preserve Sidi Bou Said could include restricting new development, building more retaining walls and improving drainage to prevent runoff from accumulating.
Chokri Yaich, a geologist speaking to Tunisian radio Mosaique FM, said climate change has made protecting the hill increasingly urgent, warning of more storms like last week’s.
The hill’s clay-rich soil loses up to two thirds of its cohesion when saturated with water, making it highly unstable, Yaich explained.
He also pointed to marine erosion and the growing weight of urbanization, saying that construction had increased by about 40 percent over the past three decades.
For now, authorities have yet to announce a protection plan, leaving home and shop owners anxious, as the weather remains unpredictable.
