At least two Iranian aircraft diverted to other destinations after Israel attacked airports in Syria according to reports.
On the sixth day of its war with Hamas and against the backdrop of concerns that the conflict might widen, Israel carried out attacks on two airports in Syria Thursday. That forced Iranian aircraft to land elsewhere, according to Haaretz. Meanwhile, Hamas has called for armed confrontations against Israelis outside of Gaza tomorrow.
Israeli airstrikes on Thursday hit the airports of the Syrian capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo, damaging their runways and putting them out of service, according to The Associated Press.
“State news agency SANA quoted an unnamed military official as saying that no one was hurt in the attacks,” AP reported. “The Israeli military declined to comment.”
While Israel routinely carries out strikes inside Syria, often aimed at interrupting Iranian arms shipments, these were the first since the Hamas invasion on Saturday.
The airport attacks forced at least two Iranian aircraft to land elsewhere, Haaretz reported.
One entered Syrian airspace and turned back to Tehran, the publication reported. It belongs to “Mahan Air,” an airline accused by the U.S. of providing illicit lethal aid to Syria. It is “designated under counterterrorism authorities for support to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), as well as under a counter-proliferation authority that targets weapons of mass destruction proliferators and their supporters,” according to the U.S. Treasury Department.
Another Iranian plane turned around mid-air and landed shortly after the attack on Syrian airport in Baghdad, according to Haaretz.
“This is an Iranian government plane used by the Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian for his official travels.”
Abdullahian was just starting “his periodic trip to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon,” the official Iranian Fars News Agency reported on Twitter. “Amir Abdullahian left for Baghdad to discuss the current developments in Palestine and the Gaza Strip.”
Hamas meanwhile “renewed the call for a general mobilization tomorrow on ‘Friday of the Al-Aqsa Flood,'” based on the name it is using for the bloody operation it launched last week.
The four-point plan calls for Palestinians to march toward the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, “demonstrate, mobilize and clash with the Zionist enemy” in the West Bank, return from wherever they are to Palestine. “Our Arab and Islamic nation, peoples, organizations, mosques, political movements and civil society, to go out on the Friday of the Al-Aqsa flood, and to highlight all forms of support, endorsement and solidarity with our resisting people in Gaza and all of Palestine, and to affirm that the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip will not remain alone and we will not allow the implementation of a war.”
In addition, Mohammed Hamada, Hamas spokesman for the city of Jerusalem, called “on the masses of our great Palestinian people, our heroic resistors, and everyone who can carry a stone, a knife, and a weapon, to mobilize urgently and confront the occupation army and its herds of settlers who are raiding and attacking our villages throughout the occupied West Bank.”
Israel too is bringing its people back home to fight. For this first time in 41 years, El Al, the Israeli national airline, will fly on Saturday, the Jewish sabbath, two bring reservists back to Israel, The Times of Israel reported.
“An interceptor was launched a short time ago in the northern region due to detection in the skies of the country,” IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Twitter. “An examination shows that it is not a hostile aircraft and it is a false interception.”
That comes a day after citizens in northern Israel were forced to seek shelter for several hours after a false alarm about an attack from the north. You can read more about that in our story here.
While the north remains tense, Israel continued to pound targets inside Gaza while Hamas launched rocket attacks on southern and central Israel.
So far, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) said it has dropped about 6,000 bombs against Hamas targets. That number is absolutely massive considering those sorties have occurred over just five days.
Overnight Thursday, the IDF conducted what it says was “a wave of strikes targeting the Nukhba elite forces of the Hamas terrorist organization,” by “striking operational command centers used by operatives who infiltrated the communities surrounding Gaza last Saturday.”
“The Nukhba elite forces consist of terrorists selected by senior Hamas operatives, designated to carry out terrorist attacks such as ambushes, raids, assaults, infiltration through terror tunnels, as well as anti-tank missile, rocket, and sniper fire,” the IDF claimed. “The Nukhba elite forces were one of the leading forces that infiltrated the State of Israel in order to carry out murderous acts of terror against its civilians.”
IDF aircraft also “struck Muhammad Abu Shamla, a senior Hamas naval operative in the Rafah Brigade. Abu Shamla’s residence was used to store naval weapons designated for terror against the State of Israel.”
Hamas denied Israel was striking its elite forces, saying instead that Israel was hitting civilian targets.
“There is no truth to the occupation’s allegations of targeting the elite forces of the Al-Qassam Brigades, and our valiant resistance continues to confront the Zionist war of genocide ably,” Hamas said Thursday on its Telegram channel. “It has no basis in fact, and that what is being targeted are residential squares and neighborhoods, razing them and leveling them to the ground, and targeting civil institutions, mosques, homes and residential buildings, which are being demolished on the heads of their residents, children and women, without warning.”
There have been 1,417 Palestinians killed and another 6,268 wounded, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz said that his country will continue its shutoff of water and fuel supplies to Gaza until the scores of hostages taken by Hamas are returned.
“Humanitarian aid to Gaza?,” he said in a Tweet on Thursday. “No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarian for humanitarian. And no one will preach us morals.”
Hamas says it fired scores of rockets and missiles at a number of Israeli cities, including Ashdod, Ashkelon, Erez and Sderot in southern Israel, as well as Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem.
The IDF says that more than 1,200 Israelis have been killed and more than 3,000 wounded since Hamas launched its invasion Saturday. Israel has been hit by more than 5,000 rockets fired from Gaza in that time, the IDF added.
U.S. Central Command announced that A-10 Thunderbolt II attack jets have arrived in the region. The jets are part of a boosted U.S. military presence in the region that includes the Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group.
The macabre debate over how Israeli babies were killed Saturday in a kibbutz near Kfar Aza in southern Israel continued Thursday, with The Jerusalem Post saying it confirmed that some were beheaded.
“The Jerusalem Post can now confirm based on verified photos of the bodies that the reports of babies being burnt and decapitated in Hamas’s assault on Kfar Aza are correct,” the publication reported Thursday. “May their memory be a blessing.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, visiting Israel, offered his take on the condition of victims after Israeli officials showed him images of the aftermath of some of the attacks.
“A baby riddled with bullets, soldiers beheaded, young people burned alive… It’s depravity in the worst imaginable way.”
Yesterday we told you that President Joe Biden made a similar claim that was later walked back by the White House, which said neither Biden nor U.S. officials had independently seen the images and were reacting to statements made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s press office.
The IDF posted video of its 13 Sheitat special operations forces unit responding to the initial Hamas attacks.
“Launched by helicopters in a short time upon the arrival of the reports of the infiltration at the Gaza border on Saturday morning,” they “joined the fighting forces in the field for a joint effort.”
Reacting to the ongoing bloodshed, Jordan’s King Abdullah again called for a two-state solution, with an independent Palestine established with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Along with Egypt, Jordan is one of two Arab nations to have signed a peace treaty with Israel. Sharing a border along the West Bank, Jordan has a large percentage of Palestinian citizens and the peace deal with Israel is widely unpopular. Despite that, Abdullah has walked a fine line and is considered a key ally in Washington and one of the first people in the region consulted when trouble erupts.
This is a developing story. We will update it when there is more news to report about the Israel-Hamas war.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com
