A handout picture provided by the office of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Nov. 2, 2024, shows him waving to the crowd during a meeting with Iranian students in Tehran. (Credit: AFP Photo/HO/Khamenei.ir)
Iran's supreme leader on Saturday vowed retaliation for attacks by Israel and its U.S. ally, as a pro-Iran coalition in Iraq claimed a drone strike on Israel's resort of Eilat.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq is among pro-Iran groups drawn into more than a year of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Days before the presidential election in Israel's main military supplier, the United States, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Iran's response would cover attacks on both the Islamic Republic and its allies.
Israel's military said it intercepted three drones over the Red Sea, after late Friday reporting seven drones launched from "several fronts." The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed responsibility for four drone strikes on Eilat.
Since late September Israel has been engaged in full-scale war against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon while fighting continues against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which triggered the Gaza war by attacking Israel on Oct. 7 last year.
On Saturday Israel again carried out deadly air strikes on north Gaza, where the U.N. calls conditions "apocalyptic," and Hezbollah intensified rocket fire near Israel's commercial hub of Tel Aviv.
"The enemies, both the USA and the Zionist regime, should know that they will definitely receive a tooth-breaking response," Khamenei said, referring to Iran-aligned groups including those in Yemen and Syria.
On Oct. 26, Israel bombed military sites in Iran, killing four servicemen, in response to an Oct. 1 barrage of about 200 missiles that Tehran called a reprisal for Israel's assassinations of Hamas Political Bureau leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian brigadier general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Abbas Nilforoushan in Lebanon.
Israel has warned Iran against responding to the Oct. 26 attack.
B-52 bombers
Analysts say Israel inflicted severe damage on Iranian air defenses and missile capacities and could yet launch more wide-scale action against the Islamic Republic.
Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have repeatedly attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea, are transforming themselves into a "powerful military organization" due to "unprecedented" military support from outside sources, particularly Iran and Hezbollah, said a newly published U.N. report.
Ahead of the U.S. election on Tuesday, officials in the United States have been pushing for a resolution of the Lebanon war.
On Friday the Pentagon announced the deployment of ballistic missile defense destroyers, long-range B-52 bombers and other resources to the Middle East, serving as a warning to Iran.
The capabilities would begin arriving "in coming months," a Pentagon spokesman said.
U.S. naval forces and heavy B-2 bombers have struck Houthi rebel targets in Yemen in response to the attacks by the rebels, who say they act in support of Palestinians.
Since Oct. 6 Israeli forces have carried out a major air and ground assault on north Gaza, centered on the Jabalia area, vowing to stop attempts by Hamas militants from regrouping.
"The situation unfolding in north Gaza is apocalyptic," said a joint statement by U.N. agency heads.
"The area has been under siege for almost a month, denied basic aid and life-saving supplies while bombardment and other attacks continue," they said.
"The entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence."
In the Gaza City area, medics administered polio vaccines to children. The World Health Organization had said the necessary second round would begin in the territory's north on Saturday, after Israeli bombing halted the drive.
Witnesses said Israeli warplanes twice hit Beit Lahia, adjacent to Jabalia, overnight.
Deaths in Gaza
Israel's military on Saturday said dozens of militants were killed around Jabalia "in aerial and ground activity."
Troops were also operating in central Gaza and Rafah in the territory's far south, it added.
Medics and Gaza's civil defense rescuers on Saturday reported three people killed in a strike on Nuseirat, in central Gaza, a day after several people were killed in an Israeli strike.
After nearly a year of tit-for-tat exchanges over Israel's northern border, which Hezbollah said were in support of Hamas, Israel on Sept. 23 escalated its bombing campaign across Lebanon and later sent in ground troops.
Hezbollah has since fired more deeply into Israel, even targeting the Israeli Prime Minister's house.
A strike in Israel's Sharon area north of Tel Aviv wounded 19 people, four of them moderately, police said on Saturday, after the army reported three projectiles fired from Lebanon into central Israel.
Hezbollah said it had again launched rockets at Israel's Glilot intelligence base near Tel Aviv, and also claimed rocket fire against "military industries" in the Haifa area.
AFP images from Tira, a town northeast of Tel Aviv, showed the upper wall blown out in what appeared to be a residential building.
Several cars below were crushed.
According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, at least 2,897 people were killed and 13,150 others wounded since Oct. 8, 2023. Since the war escalated, Israeli strikes have killed at least 1,911 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures.
Israel's military says 37 soldiers have been killed in Lebanon since it began ground operations, and Israeli figures show at least 63 people have been killed on the Israeli side of the border over the past year.
Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed 43,314 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the territory's health ministry which the UN considers reliable.