Iran not looking for war, says president Masoud Pezeshkian
Iran is not looking for war but will give an “appropriate response” to Israel’s recent attack, the country’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has just said, according to state media.
We do not seek war but we will defend the rights of our nation and country. We will give an appropriate response to the aggression of the Zionist regime,” he told a meeting of the Iranian cabinet, Reuters reports.
How the Islamic Republic chooses to respond to the unusually public Israeli aerial assault on its homeland could determine whether the region spirals further toward all-out war or holds steady at an already devastating and destabilising level of violence, the Associated Press says in an analysis.
A strike of the magnitude that Israel delivered early on Saturday would typically be met with a forceful response. A likely option would be another round of the ballistic missile barrages that Iran has already launched twice this year.
But a carefully worded statement from Iran’s military on Saturday night appeared to offer some wriggle room for the Islamic Republic to back away from further escalation. It suggested that a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon was more important than any retaliation against Israel.
Key events
Closing summary
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The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, has expressed his shock at the appalling straits the remaining residents stuck in northern Gaza are in. His spokesman released a statement, with the UN chief calling the dire situation there “unbearable” as citizens remain trapped in extreme danger and deprivation, under siege by the Israeli military. Guterres was “shocked by the harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction in the north”.
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The number of people reported injured when a truck rammed into a bus stop in Ramat Hasharon, north of Tel Aviv, in Israel earlier today has risen to “about 40”, according to an agency citing Israeli police – and the authorities are saying they suspect it was deliberate. One person was killed in the incident, which took place near a military base. The police said the investigation’s focus was on the suspicion that this was a terrorist attack.
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The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said the Islamic Republican was not looking for war in the wake of air strikes on the country by Israel early on Saturday. “We do not seek war but we will defend the rights of our nation and country. We will give an appropriate response to the aggression of the Zionist regime,” he told his cabinet at a meeting today.
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Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said that his government has proposed a two-day ceasefire in Gaza, after which talks should resume within 10 days in efforts to reach a permanent one. During the two days he suggested a swap of four hostages held in Gaza by Hamas for four Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. This comes as preliminary talks tentatively resume in Qatar with hopes of reviving ceasefire negotiations in earnest.
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One person was killed and dozens of people were reported to have been injured after a truck hit a bus stop in Glilot, central Israel, near Tel Aviv. Many of those injured were reportedly elderly citizens who had disembarked from a bus ahead of a visit to a nearby IDF base. The driver of the truck was shot dead by a civilian at the scene.
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Israeli military strikes killed at least 45 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, most of them in the north of the enclave, Palestinian health officials said. At least 20 people were killed following an Israeli airstrike on houses in Jabalia, while an airstrike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinian families in Shati camp in Gaza City killed nine people, medics said. Three local journalists were among those killed at the school in Shati.
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An Israeli airstrike on Sidon, a city in coastal south Lebanon, killed at least eight people and wounded 25 on Sunday, the country’s health ministry said.
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Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made his first public comments since Israeli warplanes attacked military targets in Iran early on Saturday. He said the attack “should neither be downplayed nor exaggerated”, without directly calling for a retaliation. He added that military officials would discuss Iran’s next steps, suggesting any retaliation may not be imminent.
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Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel’s air attack on Iran was “precise and powerful” and achieved all its goals.
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The directors of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence service will meet Qatar’s prime minister in Doha later today to begin negotiations for a new short-term Gaza ceasefire deal, an official told Reuters.
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The Israeli military urged residents of 14 villages in southern Lebanon, where it says Hezbollah fighters are, to evacuate immediately and move north of the Awali river or risk being killed.
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Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said Hezbollah and Hamas are no longer effective proxies for Iran. He also said “painful concessions” are needed to secure the release of hostages held in Gaza, without specifying what these would be.
The Middle East crisis live blog is now closing. Thanks for following along.
Bethan McKernan
In case you missed it earlier, approximately 70 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in the past day, health officials in Gaza said, as Israel’s renewed campaign in the north of the strip shows no sign of slowing despite the revival of ceasefire talks after a three-month-long hiatus.
Separately, one person was killed when a truck rammed into a bus stop in Ramat Hasharon, north of Tel Aviv, on Sunday, in what Israeli police are treating as a suspected terrorist attack. About 40 people were injured to varying degrees, some seriously, and were taken to nearby hospitals, police said.
The Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad praised the suspected attack but did not claim it.
The driver of the truck was a Palestinian citizen of Israel, police said, and was “neutralised” by passersby carrying firearms.
Also on Sunday, the Israeli military said a Palestinian man was killed after he tried to stab a group of soldiers in the occupied West Bank town of Hizma.
Information about the situation in northern Gaza has become increasingly sporadic and difficult to verify as Israel’s new ground and aerial assault focusing on Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun enters its fourth week.
Internet and phone services have been down for hours at a time, and civil defence workers have been unable to reach the sites of recent strikes due to Israeli forces’ ever-tightening siege and attacks on their crews.
In Lebanon, the health ministry said that at least 21 people were killed today in Israeli strikes on three areas in the south of the country bordering Israel.
Nine people were killed and 38 wounded in a strike on Haret Saida, near the port city of Sidon, the ministry said, with at least seven others, including a nurse and three rescuers, killed in the southern village of Ain Baal and five in Burj al-Shemali.
Two more Palestinian journalists have been killed, Al Jazeera English has reported.
The 24-hour news channel, based in Doha, the capital of Qatar, cited authorities in Gaza in saying that the latest deaths bring the total number of journalists reported killed to 182 in the war that Israel launched in Gaza after Hamas, which controls the Palestinian territory, led a surprise attack on southern Israel on 7 October last year.
The network said authorities have named the two journalists as Nadia Imad Al-Sayed and Abdul Rahman Samir al-Tanani.
This reported toll comes in addition to the three journalists from the Hezbollah-affiliated TV stations Al Mayadeen and Al-Manar who were killed in southern Lebanon last Friday, in an Israeli airstrike on their press station in Hasbaya.
António Guterres, UN secretary-general, continues to blast the Israeli stranglehold on northern Gaza and calls not only once again for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Hamas but also “accountability under international law.”
The UN cites Gaza’s health ministry reporting that hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks and more than 60,000 others were forced to flee, AFP reports.
Guterres’s spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, has been issuing strong statements on behalf of the UN chief, earlier describing him as having said the harrowing levels of death and suffering are “unbearable.”
Repeated efforts to deliver humanitarian supplies essential to survive – food, medicine and shelter – continue to be denied by the Israeli authorities, with few exceptions, putting countless lives in peril. In the name of humanity, the Secretary-General reiterates his calls for an immediate ceasefire, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, and accountability for crimes under international law,” Dujarric said.
Plight of Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza “unbearable” – UN
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, has expressed his shock at the appalling straits the remaining residents stuck in northern Gaza are in.
The plight of Palestinian civilians trapped in North Gaza is unbearable,” Guterres’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said today, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
Israel, vowing to stop Hamas militants from regrouping in the north of the Palestinian territory, launched a major air and ground assault on 6 October this year.
The UN spokesperson said that according to Gaza’s health ministry, hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks and more than 60,000 others were forced to flee.
The Secretary-General is shocked by the harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction in the north, with civilians trapped under rubble, the sick and wounded going without life-saving health care, and families lacking food and shelter,” Dujarric said.
The situation in northern Gaza continues to be utterly dire for Palestinians, with residents describing death and famine as the Gazan authorities say about 100,000 people are still trapped there, besieged by the Israeli military.
Israel, vowing to stop Hamas militants from regrouping in the north of the Palestinian territory, launched a major air and ground assault on 6 October this year, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports tonight.
Gaza civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal slammed Israel’s ongoing “siege” in Jabalia, Beit Hanun and Beit Lahia in northern Gaza.
For 22 days, not a drop of water or bread has entered the northern Gaza Strip. The occupation forces kill anyone who tries to provide services to the residents of north Gaza,” Bassal said in a statement.
Beit Lahia resident Bilal al-Hajri, 25, said the siege was unleashing a “famine” in the area.
We are really dying under a tight siege and famine. None of us can leave our homes to even provide some food and drink … anyone who leaves is targeted,” he told AFP.
An emergency United Nations Security Council meeting will take place on Monday at Iran’s request, with Tehran calling for it to condemn the strikes by Israel early on Saturday which killed four Iranian soldiers.
Switzerland, which holds the council’s rotating presidency, said Russia, China and Algeria, the council’s Arab representative, supported the request.
Deadly ramming at bus stop north of Tel Aviv being investigated as terrorist attack – Israeli authorities
The number of people reported injured when a truck rammed into a bus stop in Ramat Hasharon, north of Tel Aviv, in Israel earlier today has risen to “about 40”, according to an agency citing Israeli police – and the authorities are saying they suspect it was deliberate.
One person was killed and it was known earlier that dozens had been injured in the incident, which took place near a military base. Hamas and Islamic Jihad praised the suspected attack but did not claim it.
The driver of the truck was a Palestinian citizen of Israel, police said, and was “neutralised” by passersby carrying firearms.
Reuters has reported that Israeli police said about 40 people were injured to varying degrees, including some seriously, and were taken to nearby hospitals.
All investigative directions are being examined with an emphasis on the suspicion that this is a terror attack. Initial investigations suggest that the truck driver, who was traveling near the Glilot base from north to south, veered off course and hit a bus and people waiting at the stop with the truck,” police said.
Israeli media reported that the attacker was an Israeli Arab from Qalansawe in central Israel.
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said today he had “received indications” of an attack before Israel’s strikes the day before.
We had received indications since the evening about the possibility of an attack that night,” Araghchi told reporters on Sunday, without specifying the nature of the indications, Agence France-Presse reports.
British foreign secretary David Lammy spoke to Araghchi by phone earlier today, and made a separate phone call to his Israeli counterpart, warning that a wider war in the Middle East would be a catastrophe.
Ehud Olmert is not an uncontroversial figure in Israel and internationally.
He was convicted of corruption in 2014 and in 2016 became the first Israeli premier to be imprisoned, capping a years-long legal saga that forced him to resign in 2009 during an intense round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, then released early, in 2017.
His appearance in London at a conference this weekend did not go down well with some. Here’s Shane Darcey on X, a senior lecturer at the Irish Centre for Human Rights in the National University of Ireland Galway.
Here is the 2009 article from the Guardian that he cites in the post.