Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari is pictured in October 2023. Hagari mentioned on Saturday that Iran had launched drones towards Israel.
Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP through Getty Images
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Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP through Getty Images
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari is pictured in October 2023. Hagari mentioned on Saturday that Iran had launched drones towards Israel.
Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP through Getty Images
In a main escalation of battle within the Middle East, Israeli officials mentioned late Saturday night time that Iran had launched a drone attack towards Israel.
The drones would would take hours to reach in Israeli airspace, Israeli navy spokesman Daniel Hagari mentioned. He warned Israelis to remain in secure rooms for 10 minutes if sirens of their areas go off.
The launch comes 4 days after Iran’s chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed retaliation for an April 1 strike on an Iranian consulate within the Syrian capital of Damascus. Iran mentioned the strike had killed seven members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, together with two generals, and it blamed Israel for the attack.
By Saturday, as anticipation grew over a doable retaliation, Israeli officials warned residents residing in communities close to Gaza and the Lebanon border to restrict the dimensions of gatherings and to work indoors or inside attain of a shelter. Schools throughout Israel have been closed by way of Monday. Officials mentioned Israel would take any measures essential to defend its residents.
“Iran is a terrorist state — the world is seeing this now more than ever,” Israel’s protection minister Yoav Gallant mentioned Saturday, hours earlier than the launch. “We are determined to defend our citizens against this terrorism, and we know how to respond to it.”
In anticipation of a doable attack, President Biden had cut short a trip to Delaware in an effort to return to the White House Saturday. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel. And Iran will not succeed,” Biden mentioned Friday.
The strike and retaliation characterize an escalation that many officials worldwide had expressed fear about ever for the reason that outbreak of struggle between Israel and the Gaza-based militant group Hamas on Oct. 7, the day Hamas led an attack on Israel that left some 1,200 folks useless.
In the six months since, Israel has bombarded Gaza and performed a devastating floor invasion that has left a lot of the territory in ruins and greater than 33,000 Palestinians useless, in accordance with Palestinian well being officials.
This is a breaking information story and shall be up to date.
Additional reporting by NPR’s Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv and NPR’s Jane Arraf in Amman.