Iran’s supreme leader vowed retaliation for last weekend’s attacks by Israel as an Israeli military official confirmed naval commandos seized a suspected Hezbollah operative in a raid in Lebanon.
Days before the presidential election in the United States — Israel’s main military supplier — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran’s response would cover attacks on both the Islamic republic and its allies.
“The enemies, both the USA and the Zionist regime, should know that they will definitely receive a tooth-breaking response,” Khamenei said, referring to Iran-aligned groups including those in Yemen and Syria.
, in response to a 1 October barrage of about 200 missiles that Tehran called a reprisal.
Israel has warned Iran against responding to the 26 October attack.
Analysts say Israel inflicted severe damage on Iranian air defences and missile capacities and could yet launch more wide-scale action against the Islamic republic.
Israeli naval forces detain ‘senior Hezbollah operative’
Since late September Israel has been engaged in full-scale war against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon while fighting continues against the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which triggered the Gaza war by attacking Israel on October 7 last year.
Ahead of the US election on Tuesday, administration officials have been pushing for a resolution of the Lebanon war.
Israeli naval commandos seized a trainee mariner a military official described as a “senior operative” of Hezbollah in a raid in Lebanon and brought him to Israel for questioning.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati instructed the foreign ministry to submit a complaint to the UN Security Council over Friday’s raid on the coastal town of Batroun, his office said.
The Lebanese army and UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL are both conducting investigations into the raid, Mikati’s office said, adding that he had called for “expedited” results.
First reported by Lebanese sources before an Israeli military official confirmed the military’s involvement, the raid was the first of its kind since the Israel-Hezbollah war erupted in September.
“A senior operative of Hezbollah, who serves as an expert in his field, was apprehended,” the Israeli military official said. “The operative has been transferred to Israeli territory and is currently being investigated.”
Lebanon’s state-run National News agency said an “unidentified military force” carried out a “sea landing” on the shore of Batroun, south of Tripoli, at dawn on Friday.
An acquaintance of the abductee identified him as a student at the state-run Maritime Sciences and Technology Institute (MARSATI) in Batroun, Lebanon’s primary training college for the shipping industry.
Gaza vaccination centre hit
Since 6 October, Israeli forces have carried out a major air and ground assault in north Gaza, centred on the Jabalia area, vowing to stop Hamas from regrouping.
Two rockets were fired into Israel from the area on Saturday, the military said, the first such attack in weeks.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said four children were among six people wounded in a strike on a polio vaccination centre in north Gaza.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the agency had received “an extremely concerning report” that the Sheikh Radwan health centre “was struck today while parents were bringing their children to the life-saving polio vaccination” drive.
Tedros did not specify who carried out the strike but a source in Gaza’s civil defence agency told AFP that it was “an Israeli quadcopter that fired two missiles which hit the wall of Sheikh Radwan clinic”.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment.
Israel’s military said dozens of militants were killed around Jabalia “in aerial and ground activity”.
Medics and Gaza’s civil defence agency reported three people killed in a strike on Nuseirat, in central Gaza.
“We came out and there were planes and gunfire above us,” said Ashraf Abdullah, describing the victims as “all torn to pieces”.
Attack on central Israel injures 19
After nearly a year of tit-for-tat exchanges across Israel’s northern border, Israel escalated its bombing campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon on 23 September and later sent in ground troops.
Hezbollah has since fired more deeply into Israel.
A strike in the coastal plain north of Tel Aviv wounded 19 people, four of them moderately, police said on Saturday.
Hezbollah said it had again launched rockets at Israel’s Glilot intelligence base near Tel Aviv, and also claimed rocket fire against “military industries” in the Haifa area.
Since the war escalated, Israeli strikes have killed at least 1,930 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures.
Israel’s military says 38 soldiers have been killed in Lebanon since it began ground operations on 30 September.
Israeli strikes against Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold on Saturday killed one person and wounded 15, the health ministry said.
The war has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon.
“There’s no heating. We don’t have warm clothes,” said Fatima, 17, who now camps out with her family at a school near Deir al-Ahmar, in Lebanon’s eastern Baalbek area.
Since Israel launched its offensive against Gaza in October last year, more than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to local health authorities.
Hamas-led militants’ October 7 attack on Israel last year killed 1,200 people, taking around 250 hostages. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
About 90 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million population have been displaced from their homes, often multiple times.
