Middle East War: Iran Vows to Respond to Israeli Attack, Iraq Added to Conflict

Israel Continues Raids Against Hezbollah in Lebanon and thinks about a response against Iran, but the Hebrew state also suffered Lebanese and even Iraqi strikes this Thursday, October 17. Iran promises for its part to strike Israel “painfully” in case of attack.

The essential

• This Thursday, October 17, several strikes targeted Israel: rockets fired from Lebanon hit the north of the Hebrew state, while the Iraqi Islamic Resistance group, another supporter of Iran, announced that it had launched a drone attack on the city of Eliat in Israel's far south.
• Israeli raids also continue against Lebanon. UNIFIL, a UN peacekeeping force based in southern Lebanon, denounces “direct and apparently deliberate” shelling by Israeli forces, while a previous strike by the Hebrew state was condemned by the international community.
• Israel continues to consider how to respond to Iran after Tehran fired 200 missiles on October 1. An attack on military bases has been mooted, but on Thursday, October 17, Iran warned the Hebrew state that it would strike “painfully” if a response is carried out. “If you make a mistake and attack our targets, whether in the region or in Iran, we will hit you again painfully,” said General Salami, head of the Ideological Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
• While the conflict has moved to Lebanon, Israel continues to strike Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Islamist group, with which negotiations have been ongoing for months, has turned its back on the idea of ​​a ceasefire after the conflict spread to Lebanon. “The two fronts are so complicated and intertwined that it is not easy to achieve a permanent ceasefire or a permanent solution to the conflict,” he said. this conflict without resolving the original conflict, which is taking place in Gaza,” a senior Hamas official, Basem Naim, told Reuters. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, believes that “we cannot simply start negotiating new terms” for a ceasefire.

Latest updates

14:52 – Israeli attack on Gaza school kills 14

An Israeli strike in the northern Gaza Strip hit a school that was sheltering refugees from the Jabaliya camp. 14 people were killed in the bombing, according to two hospitals in the area. 10 bodies were taken to Kamal Adwane Hospital and four at Al-Awda Hospital, according to hospital officials. Israel justifies its attack by the fact that it targeted Palestinian fighters.

13:04 – Famine feared in the Gaza Strip

The Gaza Strip and its residents are at risk of famine. Approximately 1.84 million Gazans are living in conditions of acute food insecurity, including 133,000 facing a state of absolute emergency according to an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report. The report states that “the risk of famine persists throughout the Gaza Strip. Given the recent upsurge in hostilities, there are growing fears that this worst-case scenario could materialize.”

With access to food already complicated, Israel has stopped delivering to Gaza Strip traders, according to Reuters, citing 12 people from this trade. Since October 11, Gaza traders have no longer had access to imports from Israel and the West Bank permitted by COGAT, a Defense Ministry agency that oversees aid and commercial shipments. A problematic situation for Gazans, because this route accounts for more than half of the supplies supplied to the Palestinian enclave.

11:47 – Israel hit in the north by Lebanon, in the south by Iraq

Mutual exchanges of strikes continue between Israel and Lebanon. The Israeli army announced that it had eliminated a Hezbollah officer in a raid in southern Lebanon, while around thirty rockets from Lebanon targeted Israel, according to the IDF. Hezbollah did not claim responsibility for the attack, but indicated that it had hit Israeli army soldiers in occupied territory. by Tsahal along the border between Lebanon and Syria.

In the Hebrew state, sirens have also sounded, but this time it is an Iraqi Islamist group, also a supporter of Iran, that has claimed responsibility for a drone attack. Iraq has taken a position in the conflict, but has never taken part in it. The strike by a group called the Islamist Resistance appears to be the first to come from Iran's neighboring country.

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11:10 – Iran promises to strike Israel “painfully” in case of response

While Israel has discussed and begun to specify the form that a possible response against Iran would take, after the rain of 200 missiles launched by Tehran on October 1, at the beginning of the week, Iran warned the Hebrew state of the consequences that this would entail: “If you make a mistake and attack our targets, whether in the region or in Iran, we will strike you again painfully,” declared the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hossein Salami. A statement made at the funeral of a Guards general killed by an Israeli strike at the same time as former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

10/16/24 – 11:02 PM – Shock & Washington after the New York Times revelations on the practices of the Israeli army

END OF LIVE – In an investigation published by the New York Times, it is alleged that various units of Israeli soldiers simply forced Palestinian civilians to perform tasks deemed dangerous, in order to protect the men of Tsahal. Thus, civilians were allegedly forced to search for explosives or to scout certain Hamas tunnels at their own risk. “If the facts presented in this article are accurate, they are entirely “These are unacceptable acts,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Wednesday night, insisting that “there is no justification for using civilians as human shields” and that it would be “a violation not only of international humanitarian law, but [also] of the Israeli military's own code of conduct.”

10/16/24 – 9:52 PM – A major first in Egypt in twelve years, the head of Iranian diplomacy received

This had not happened since 2013. This Wednesday evening, the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abbas Araghtchi, arrived on Egyptian soil, “with the official welcome of the country's leaders”, specifies the IRNA agency on Telegram. The meeting is unprecedented. As Le Monde points out, this visit comes at a time when Iran has been consulting extensively since its attack on Israel and when the Hebrew state is threatening to retaliate at any moment.

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42,409. This is the number of deaths in the Gaza Strip since the Hamas terrorist offensive on October 7, 2023 in Israel. A figure communicated by the Ministry of Health of the Hamas government, on Monday, October 14, 2024, which reveals the intensity of the fighting that has now lasted for more than a year. Over the months, tensions have intensified, and as of October 27, 2023, Israel extended its ground operation to Gaza. The goal for Netanyahu and the IDF is clear: to “annihilate” Hamas. A week-long ceasefire was nevertheless in place in November 2023. After a major leap forward, on April 13, 2024, Iran launched its first massive attack on Israel. Allied to Hamas, Iran then fired nearly 350 explosive drones and missiles at the Hebrew state. An attack in response to missiles fired at the embassy in Damascus in Syria on April 1, in which 11 people lost their lives, including seven Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

On Tuesday, September 17, 2024, a new type of attack broke into the war. Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies exploded. Twelve dead and nearly 3,000 injured were reported in Lebanon. Since its coordinated explosions, Israel has continued to strike Lebanon with air and ground raids. More than 1,000 people were killed in IDF strikes and thousands of Lebanese were forced to be displaced. On October 1, 2024, Iran responded by sending nearly 200 ballistic missiles directly to Israel. Since then, the two countries have been engaged in a merciless war, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatening on October 8, 2024 that Lebanon would experience “destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza” if the country's population did not “free itself” from Hezbollah. Remarks described as “provocation” by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot.

On Monday, October 14, 2024, the Lebanese Hezbollah threatened Israel with new attacks in a press release. As a reminder, Hezbollah had struck Haifa two days earlier, killing four Israeli soldiers and injuring no fewer than 60. At the beginning of the week, the terrorist organization indicated that “the resistance (…) promises the enemy”. The raid carried out “south of Haifa is only a foretaste of what awaits it if it decides to continue its aggression against our people”, it threatens. According to Palestinian doctors quoted by the Associated Press, the courtyard of a hospital in the Gaza Strip was then shelled by the Israeli army, killing at least four people and setting fire to a camp for displaced people.