New York: The world is anxiously waiting for a peaceful resolve to the escalating Israel-Iran-Lebanon-Yemen-Syria conflict as US President Joe Biden said he was discussing possible Israeli strikes on Iranian oil facilities — a comment that sent oil prices soaring just a month before the US presidential election.
However, Biden told reporters at the White House that he was not expecting Israel to launch any retaliation soon for Tehran's missile barrage on Israel.
In the meantime, the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of villages and towns in southern Lebanon that are north of a United Nations-declared buffer zone established after the 2006 war. The warning signaled a possible broadening of Israel’s incursion into southern Lebanon, which until now has been confined to areas close to the border.
According to the Tehran Times, strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs were carried out for the first time using Israeli naval vessels. Iran fired ballistic missiles in retaliation to the killing of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, amplifying tensions in the Middle East that are increasingly marked by “escalation after escalation," as United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres put it.
The total number of displaced persons in Lebanon due to Israeli airstrikes has risen to nearly 1.2 million. The death toll from Israeli airstrikes on different areas in Lebanon over the past 24 hours reached 46 while injuries stood at 85, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported.
Meanwhile, in a fresh claim, the Israeli military said a strike three months ago killed three senior Hamas leaders in Gaza, where the army has been battling the Palestinian operatives for nearly a year. The military said the strike killed Rawhi Mushtaha, the head of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, and Sameh al-Siraj, who held the security portfolio for Hamas's political bureau, and Sami Oudeh, a commander.
In 2015, the US State Department had designated Mushtaha as a "specially designated global terrorist”. Since September 23, the Israeli army has been conducting intensive airstrikes on Lebanon in a dangerous escalation with Hezbollah. Since October 8, 2023, Hezbollah and the Israeli army have been exchanging fire across the Lebanese-Israeli border amid fears of a broader conflict as the war between Hamas and Israel continues in the Gaza Strip.
In the meantime, Yemen's Houthi group said its forces launched an attack at dawn with multiple drones on a vital target in the Jaffa area of Tel Aviv, Israel. Since last November, the Houthi group has been conducting missile and drone attacks on what it said were "Israeli-linked" ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, as well as targets in Israel, to show solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
As the conflict in the Middle East escalates, India and other countries are bracing for a wider trade disruption across the key Red Sea route. The Red Sea crisis started in October last year, with Iran-backed Houthi rebels disrupting trade in the area. Iran earlier launched around 200 rockets in a direct missile attack on Israel, prompting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to warn that Tehran would pay.