The Israeli armed forces Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah launch new deadly bombings launched barrages of rockets at northern Israel, amid growing concern that Iran would attack Israel.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Israel carried out airstrikes on “a large military compound” used by Hezbollah fighters in Al Rihan, southern Lebanon on Saturday morning. “A short time ago, IDF warplanes struck a large military compound belonging to the terrorist organization Hezbollah that contained military facilities and a military outpost in the Rihan region of Lebanon,” they said.

Fears of a strike from Iran within the next few hours are intensifying. According to CNN, the US noticed Iran moving internal military assets, including drones and cruise missiles; signaling that it is preparing to attack Israeli targets, according to two people familiar with US intelligence. One of them said that the US observed Iran preparing up to 100 cruise missiles.

It was not clear whether Iran was preparing to strike from its soil as part of a preemptive strike or to try to prevent Israel or the US from launching a possible counterstrike on its soil.

For its part, Hezbollah, a Lebanese faction close to Tehran, announced yesterday Friday that fired “dozens of rockets” at Israeli positions, in retaliation for Israeli strikes that took place, according to her, in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli army announced for its part that detected “about 40 launches” from Lebanese territory, assuring that “some” rockets were “intercepted” and that “no injuries were reported”. Earlier, he added, two one-way drones, loaded with explosives, launched by Hezbollah against Israeli territory were intercepted.

In Washington, US President Joe Biden said he expects Iran to act “soon”, when asked about Tehran’s threats against Israel, which it blames for the deadly bombing of its consulate in Damascus on April 1.

When asked what his message is to Iran, President Biden simply answered “no”.

“We are committed to the security of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help Israel defend itself and Iran will not succeed,” he added.

Following the statement of US President Biden that Iran is “threatening to launch a major attack against Israel” on Wednesday, US General Michael “Eric” Kurila, the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff responsible for the Middle East region (CENTCOM, “central administration”), rushed to Israel.

Another sign of tension: the German carrier Lufthansa and its subsidiary Austrian Airlines announced yesterday the suspension of their flights to and from Tehran until at least Thursday, April 18, and that they will not use Iranian airspace until further notice.

The US has also announced that it will send reinforcements to the Middle East, while Israel is on alert, in view of a possible Iranian attack.

Tehran has vowed to retaliate against its sworn enemy, Israel, after a bombing at the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital Damascus killed 16 people, according to NGOs, including two Guards lieutenant generals. of the Revolution, an elite body of the Iranian armed forces.

Around midnight, the Israeli military reported that alarms sounded in communities and cities around the Gaza Strip as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second most powerful Palestinian Islamist movement after Hamas, claimed responsibility for firing rockets at Sderot in “retaliation” for shelling of the Gaza Strip.

Waiting and bombing

While the mediators – Qatar, Egypt, the US – await the responses of Israel and Hamas to their latest proposal to declare a cease-fire, the Israeli assault on the Palestinian enclave continues without any respite.

According to the Hamas press office the israeli army carried out dozens of aerial bombardments yesterdays in various areas, especially in the central part of the pouch, including Nuseirat.

At least 25 members of the Tabatibi family were killed when the six-story apartment building where they lived in Daraz neighborhood in the northern part of Gaza City was bombed early yesterday, according to a relative. In March, another 35 members of the same family were killed in a bombing that had gathered for dinner in the first week of Ramadan.

“Nuseirat was bombarded all night. There is nothing but fire and destruction, martyrs are lying in the streets,” Mohammed al Rais, 61, told AFP. “We left in the morning and had nowhere to go. This is the sixth time we have been displaced. Gaza has become unlivable,” he added.

Mediation efforts have so far failed to produce a compromise that would lead to a ceasefire and the release of hostages, indirect negotiations appear to be stalling, with Israel and Hamas blaming each other for the impasse.

The war broke out on October 7, when Hamas’s military arm launched an unprecedented raid from the Gaza Strip into southern parts of the Israeli territory, killing 1,170 people, most of them civilians, according to a French tally. Agency based on official Israeli data.

Another 250-plus people were kidnapped, of whom 129 are still in the Palestinian enclave — but at least 34 of them are believed to have been killed, according to Israeli sources.

In retaliation, Israel has vowed to wipe out Hamas, which it labels a “terrorist” organization like the US and the EU, and its military operations have so far killed at least 33,634 people in the Gaza Strip, the majority of them women and children, according to the Palestinian Islamic Movement’s Ministry of Health.

Aid

Without being counted the huge disasters and the risk of famine in the tiny enclave of 2.4 million inhabitants.

In recent days, the Israeli authorities assure that the number of trucks with humanitarian aid that get permission and enter the Gaza Strip is now setting consecutive records.

The Israeli army assured yesterday that aopen new crossing point in the northwhich media reports say is near the Israeli community of Zikim, not far from Eretz, another crossing point, which remains closed.

For months, humanitarian organizations and various governments, including that of the US, Israel’s main ally, have been pressuring the Prime Minister’s government Benjamin Netanyahu to open routes to increase the amount of food reaching especially the northern part of the Gaza Strip, where the humanitarian crisis is most acute.

“The increase in aid is not yet noticeable,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), via X.

“Aid needs to reach safely to all those who need it,” he insisted, calling on Israel to move to “lift” restrictions on its agency personnel to work in the famine-stricken northern Gaza Strip according to the UN.

Pope Francis emphasized yesterday that he is “suffering” because of the Israel/Hamas war in his message on the occasion of the end of Ramadan. “I am suffering a lot because of the war,” the 87-year-old head of the Roman Catholic church said in a message released by the Vatican.

In the West Bank, the disappearance of a teenage Israeli shepherd sparked violent incidents involving security forces, settlers and Palestinians, killing at least one of the latter and wounding 18 others, about half of them by bullets.