Iran's Khamenei says the attack should not be exaggerated or downplayed

28/10/2024 5:55

        Israel's airstrikes
        "hit hard" Iran's defences and missile production, Prime
        Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, as Iranian Supreme
        Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the country was considering
        its response.
        
        With warfare raging in Gaza and Lebanon, direct
        confrontation between Israel and Iran risks spiralling into a
        regional conflagration. But a day after the airstrikes, there
        was no sign they would spark another round of escalation.
        
        However, heavy fighting in Lebanon between Israeli forces
        and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which sharply intensified over recent
        weeks, continued on Sunday with an Israeli airstrike killing
        eight people in a residential block in Sidon, medics said.
        
        "The air force attacked throughout Iran. We hit hard Iran's
        defence capabilities and its ability to produce missiles that
        are aimed at us," Netanyahu said in a speech, calling the attack
        "precise and powerful" and saying it met all its objectives.
        
        Israel’s army chief, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi,
        said the strike on Iran had showed what the Israeli response to
        its enemies would be. “We struck strategic systems in Iran,
        which carries great importance, and we will now see how things
        develop. We are prepared for all scenarios in every arena.”
        
        The Islamic Republic has not signalled how it will respond
        to Saturday's long-anticipated strikes, which involved scores of
        fighter jets bombing targets near the capital Tehran and in the
        western provinces of Ilam and Khuzestan.
        
        The U.N. Security Council will likely convene to discuss the
        attack on Monday, diplomats said.
        
        The heavily armed arch-enemies have engaged in a cycle of
        retaliatory moves against each other for months, with Saturday's
        strike coming after an Iranian missile barrage on Oct. 1, much
        of which Israel said was downed by its air defences.
        
        Khamenei said Israel's calculations "should be disrupted".
        The attack on Iran, which killed four soldiers and caused some
        damage, "should neither be downplayed nor exaggerated", he said.
        
        Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran was not
        looking for war but would give an "appropriate response".
        
        U.S. President Joe Biden called for a halt to escalation,
        which has raised fears of a wider Middle East war arising from
        the year-old Israeli-Hamas conflict in Gaza and Israel's thrust
        into south Lebanon to stop Hezbollah rocketing northern Israel.
        
        Separately, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Iran
        was no longer able to use its allies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah
        in Lebanon against Israel. The two groups "are no longer an
        effective tool" of Tehran, he said in a speech.
        
        Gallant added that Hamas was no longer functioning as a
        military network in Gaza and that Hezbollah's senior command and
        most of its missile capabilities had been eliminated.
        
        Hamas has repeatedly said it is still able to function
        militarily, and Israel has recently conducted major new
        operations in devastated north Gaza against what it calls
        regrouping Hamas militants.
        
        Hezbollah has said its command structure remains intact and
        that it retains significant missile capabilities.
        
        
        
        LEBANON FIGHTING
        
        On Sunday, the Israeli military urged residents of 14
        villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate immediately and move
        north of the Awali river.
        
        An Israeli strike on Sidon, a city in coastal south Lebanon,
        killed at nine people and wounded 25 on Sunday, the country's
        health ministry said.
        
        Elsewhere in the south, a strike on Zawtar al-Sharkiya
        killed three people and a Saturday bombing of Marjayoun killed
        five, it said.
        
        In all, Israeli strikes killed 19 people in Lebanon on
        Saturday, the health ministry said. At least 2,672 people have
        been killed and 12,468 injured in the year since Israel and
        Hezbollah began exchanging rocket fire, it said late on Sunday.
        
        Israel said four of its soldiers were killed in south
        Lebanon fighting.
        
        Hezbollah also said it had fired a large missile salvo at
        the Zevulon military industries facility north of Haifa in
        northern Israel. Hezbollah rockets hit a house and cars and
        rescue crews responded to put out the fire.
        
        One woman was seriously injured, according to Israel's
        ambulance service.