Iran has reportedly placed its armed forces on high alert, preparing for potential conflict yet seeking to avoid escalation, according to a report in The New York Times, cited by Times of Israel.
This move follows direct instructions from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ordered Iran’s military to formulate a range of defensive and retaliatory plans in the event of an Israeli strike.
The report quotes four senior Iranian officials, including two members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who indicated that Iran would retaliate if any significant harm or casualties were inflicted in Israeli attacks.
However, they specified that if Israel targets only limited military sites or weapon depots, Tehran’s response may differ.
Besides, Iranian officials clarified that any direct assault on critical assets – including oil facilities, nuclear inst.
Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli air strikes hit two homes at dawn on Friday in Khan Yunis, the territory's main southern city, killing at least 20 people.
Fourteen people were killed in a strike that hit the home of the Al-Fara family, and another six were killed in a separate air raid, according to agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal.
Medics at the Nasser Medical complex confirmed the casualties at the Al-Fara home and released the names of the dead.
The military, in a statement giving an operational update, said that "a number of terrorists were eliminated from the air and ground" in southern Gaza.
While Israeli forces continue to operate across Gaza, recent weeks have seen an intensified air and ground assault in the territory's north, where the military reports Hamas militants are regrouping.
An Israeli airstrike on a compound housing journalists in southeast Lebanon has killed three media staffers, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Friday.
The Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV said two of its staffers were among the journalists killed early Friday. Al-Manar TV of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group said its camera operator Wissam Qassim was killed in the airstrike on the Hasbaya region, that has been spared much of the fighting along the border so far.
UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon staying put despite Israeli warnings to move
Al-Mayadeen said camera operator Ghassan Najar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida died.
Local news station Al Jadeed aired footage from the scene — a collection of chalets that had been rented by various media outlets — showing collapsed buildings and cars marked PRESS covered in dust and rubble. The Israeli army did not issue a warning prior to the strike.
Earlier in the week, a strike hit an office belonging to Al-Mayadeen on the outskirts of Beirut’s southern suburbs, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.
Several journalists have been killed since near-daily exchange of fire began along the Lebanon-Israel border on Oct. 8, 2023.
In November 2023, two journalists for Al-Mayadeen TV were killed in a drone strike. A month earlier, Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded other journalists from France’s international news agency, Agence France-Presse, and Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV.
