US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken begins a new tour of the Middle East today to try to prevent the war from spreading to the Gaza Strip, against the backdrop of an airstrike in Lebanon that killed the deputy leader of Hamas and deadly explosions in Iran.

The US Secretary of State is leaving Washington tonight for the difficult diplomatic venture, his fourth tour of the region since the start of the Israel/Hamas war; is scheduled to make a stop on Israeli soil, a US official said Wednesday night.

Neither country has an “interest” in an “escalation,” Matthew Miller saidhis State Department spokesman, as Washington comes under fire for its broad support for Israel since the Israeli military began shelling the Gaza Strip.

The concern that this war will set the entire Middle East on fire intensified further after Tuesday’s deadly strike targeting Hamas number two Saleh al-Aruri in a southern suburb of Beirut and the twin blast in Kerman, southern Iran, which killed hundred people and injured more than 200 others.

in Tehran, officials accused Israel of being behind the “assassination” of a top Hamas official and the “terrorist” attack near the tomb of Qassem Soleimani, the general who has been the architect of Iran’s military operations and the building of the “axis of resistance” in Messina East, targeting the crowd attending an event marking the fourth anniversary of his death.

Israel has not commented on the accusations. In Washington, a Defense Ministry official said the strike against Saleh al-Arouri was “Israeli”, while US State Department spokesman Miller described as “absurd” the idea that Israel or the US were responsible for the double bombing in Kerman.

The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that there will be a “very harsh” retribution for the double bombing in Kerman.

And the leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah;warned Israel against any further escalation following the death of Saleh al-Arouri, a longtime Hamas official, who is expected to be buried in Beirut’s Shatila Palestinian refugee camp.

“So far, we are involved in frontline battles in a rhetorical way (…) but if the enemy launches a war against Lebanon, we will fight without limits, without restrictions and without borders (…) We are not afraid of war,” said Hassan Nasrallah.

“Maximum” degree of “preparation”

In Israel, the chief of the general staff, Herchi Halevi, said that his forces are on high alert on the border with Lebanon (north), a scene of practically daily exchanges of fire since the day after the outbreak of the war in the Gaza Strip.

“We are at a very high level of preparation in the north (…) I believe our preparation is at the maximum level,” General Halevi said, adding that there are “opportunities” for “significant change” in the region.

In northern Israel, the population fears a further escalation of tensions with Hezbollah.

“Of course we are worried, my poor parents, my brother and his wife (their son is a soldier) don’t sleep at night. My mother is on pills,” says Lee Zorviv, who owns a clothing store in Nahariya (north).

Israel’s civil-military leadership has vowed to “eliminate” Hamas after its unprecedented attack on southern sectors of Israeli territory on October 7, which killed some 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official statements from the authorities. It was the deadliest attack by the Jewish state in 1948.

Fighters from Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups also took about 250 people hostage that day, more than 100 of whom were released in late November as part of a week-long truce in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinians.

In retaliation, the Israeli army has been relentlessly pounding since then from air, land and sea the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian enclave ruled by Hamas, under Israeli blockade since 2007 and under total siege since October 9. His operations have claimed the lives of at least 22,313 people, the vast majority of them women and children, according to the Palestinian movement’s health ministry. In other words, almost 1% of the population of the Palestinian enclave (2.4 million).

Tensions have skyrocketed since the war broke out in Syria and Iraq, where US bases have come under more than a hundred attacks, and in the Red Sea, where Houthi rebels have been launching strikes against merchant ships, disrupting international trade by sea.

Eighteen major shipping companies have now decided to have their ships go around the African continent to avoid the Red Sea, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) announced yesterday. While a coalition under the US told the Houthis to “immediately stop their attacks” because otherwise they will suffer the “consequences”.

The baker who wanted to relieve the children

In the Gaza Stripthe Israeli army continued on the night of Wednesday to Thursday the aerial bombardment, especially in the city of Khan Yunis (south) and Deir al-Bala (central), where the Health Ministry of Hamas spoke of dead.

Hamas — a movement that Israel, the EU and the US label a “terrorist” organization — still maintains “always great capabilities in Gaza,” the US president’s National Security Council spokesman, John Kirby, said in Washington.

“We believe that the goal of reducing and destroying Hamas’s ability to carry out attacks in Israel is an entirely achievable goal for the Israeli armed forces. It can be done, from a military point of view. But can its ideology be eliminated? No. And can this organization disappear? Probably not,” he added.

In addition to aerial bombardments and ground operations by the Israeli army, Gazans are also facing severe shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine, while humanitarian aid continues to trickle in despite a recent UN Security Council resolution.

THE Hazem al-Najer Abu Ahmed, bakerso he decided to make cheap cookies to “relieve” the children in his village, al Musadar.

“Most of the bakeries were bombed (…), the prices of basic food items remain very high and we lack everything. So we had this idea together with neighbors to relieve our population and children,” he explains.