Israel Iran attack: Netanyahu vows to fight US sanctions on IDF as ‘mass grave found’ under Gaza hospital

Is this not how wars start? Conventionally, one sovereign state deliberately bombing the embassy of another sovereign state in a third country would be a reason to go to war, and a lawful one.

This is indeed what happened on 1 April, when Israel destroyed a building within the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, Syria. Iran, however, did not declare war in true 19th-century style. It instead launched a huge one-night bombardment of assorted missiles at Israel, almost all of which were dealt with before they could land through intervention by Israel and other, friendly, air forces, with the fabled Iron Dome anti-missile defence system working impeccably.

Again, even though the Iranian assault turned out to be more a show of Israeli than Iranian strength, that attempted bombardment would at least notionally serve as a perfectly adequate casus belli for Israel. Yet it provoked Israel “only” to retaliate via a precisely targeted aerial assault on a Revolutionary Guard airbase and munitions store – more than likely from whence the Iranians had dispatched their own drones towards Israel days before.

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Authorities in Gaza allegedly recovered 180 bodies from a mass grave inside the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza’s Khan Younis.

“In the hospital courtyard, civil defence members and paramedics have retrieved 180 bodies buried in this mass grave by the Israeli military. The bodies include elderly women, children and young men,” Al Jazeera reported quoting its reporter and Palestinian emergency services from Khan Younis.

“Our teams continue their search and retrieval operations for the remaining martyrs in the coming days as there are still a significant number of them,” the Palestinian emergency services said in a statement on Saturday.

A unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is expected to be sanctioned by the Biden administration this week after a ProPublica investigation claimed that the State Department sat for months on evidence of serious human rights abuses.

Sabreen Jouda came into the world seconds after her mother left it.

Sabreen’s father was killed. Her 4-year-old sister was killed. Her mother was killed.

But emergency responders learned that her mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, was 30 weeks pregnant. In a rush at the Kuwaiti hospital where the bodies were taken, medical workers performed an emergency cesarean section.

Iraqi security forces in the western Nineveh province area were searching for “outlaw elements” who fired missiles across the border into Syria late yesterday, targeting a base for US-led coalition forces, Iraq’s Security Media Cell said.

The searchers had found and destroyed a missile launcher, the statement added. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the reported attack.

Major General Tahseen al-Khafaji, head of the Security Media Cell, said about five missiles were launched across the border but it was unclear if they had hit or caused any damage at the targeted base.

The US officials did not comment on whether any US facility had been specifically targeted. One official said a coalition fighter destroyed a launcher in self-defence after reports of a failed rocket attack near a coalition base at Rumalyn, Syria.

No US personnel were injured, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details that were not yet public.

Iran launched hundreds of drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles that sought to overwhelm Israel’s air defences in the 13 April attack – the first on Israel by a foreign power since Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein launched Scud missiles at Israel in the 1991 Gulf War.

However, Israeli air defences and fighter jets, backed by the US, the UK and neighbouring Jordan, shot down the vast majority of the incoming fire.

Satellite images analysed by the Associated Press showed the Iranian attack caused only minor damage at the Nevatim air base in southern Israel, including taking a chunk out of a taxiway that Israel quickly repaired.

Iran’s attack came in response to a suspected Israeli strike on 1 April targeting a consular building next to the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria, which killed two Guard generals and others.

“Today, thanks to the work done by our armed forces, the Revolutionary Guard, the army, the police, each in its own way, praise be to Allah the image of the country around the world has become commendable,” said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, despite Iran facing public anger over its economy and crackdowns on dissent.

Iran’s supreme leader yesterday dismissed any discussion of whether Tehran’s unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel hit anything there, a tacit acknowledgment that despite launching a major assault, few projectiles actually made it through to their targets.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s comments before senior military leaders didn’t touch on the apparent Israeli retaliatory strike on Friday on the central city of Isfahan, even though air defences opened fire and Iran grounded commercial flights across much of the country.

Mr Khamenei, 85, made the comments in a meeting attended by the top ranks of Iran’s regular military, police and paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, a powerful force within its Shiite theocracy.

“Debates by the other party about how many missiles were fired, how many of them hit the target and how many didn’t, these are of secondary importance,” Khamenei said in remarks aired by state television.

“The main issue is the emergence of the Iranian nation and Iranian military’s will in an important international arena. This is what matters.”

Analysts believe both Iran and Israel, regional archrivals locked in a shadow war for years, are trying to dial back tensions following a series of escalatory attacks between them as the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip rages on and inflames the wider region.