Iran warns Israel against retaliation for missile attack

By Elwely Elwelly, Maya Gebeily and AbdelHadi Ramahi

DUBAI/BEIRUT (Reuters) -The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned Israel on Thursday against attacking the Islamic Republic in retaliation for a missile barrage, as the Israeli military stepped up its offensive in Lebanon against Tehran-backed Hezbollah.

Fears of a wider Middle East conflict have grown as Israel plans its response to the Oct. 1 missile attack carried out by Iran after Israeli airstrikes on Iranian-allied militants.

"We tell you (Israel) that if you commit any aggression against any point we will painfully attack the same point of yours," Hossein Salami said in a televised speech, adding that Iran can penetrate Israel's defences.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday about Israel's operations in Lebanon and Gaza, aiming to avert a regional war.

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, on a Middle East tour, met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo, with Sisi reiterating Egypt's call to avoid an expansion of the conflict, the Egyptian presidency said.

However Israel shows no signs of easing its military campaigns against Hezbollah in Lebanon after assassinating several of its leaders, and Hamas in Gaza and it has vowed to punish Iran for its Oct. 1 attack.

In the north of the enclave on Thursday, Israeli strikes killed 19 Palestinians including children at a school in the Jabalia camp that is sheltering displaced people, Gaza health ministry official Medhat Abbas told Reuters.

Dozens were also injured in the strike, he said.

Israel's military said dozens of militants were at the site and it conducted a precise strike on a meeting point for Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group inside the compound.

Israel struck Syria's port city of Latakia early on Thursday, Syrian state media reported, and the United States said it carried out strikes on Wednesday in areas of Yemen controlled by Iran-aligned Houthis.

Qatar, which has mediated in numerous failed ceasefire talks, said there had been no engagement with any parties for the last three to four weeks on the Gaza war.

Israeli airstrikes killed 11 Palestinians in Gaza City on Thursday, medics said, while Israeli forces sent tanks into Jabalia in the north, where Palestinians and United Nations officials expressed alarm over shortages of food and medicine.

On its northern front in Lebanon, Israel has said it will not stop fighting a now weakened Hezbollah before it can safely return its citizens to their homes near the Lebanese border and said any ceasefire negotiations will be held "under fire".

EVACUATION ORDERS

Hezbollah member of parliament Hassan Fadlallah said the armed group would keep fighting, but he reiterated its leaders are carefully coordinating with Lebanon's speaker of parliament in efforts to reach a ceasefire. Israeli soldiers have not managed to control any villages in south Lebanon, he added.

Israel says its ground operation has so far killed dozens of Hezbollah fighters and that its troops have seized thousands of weapons and destroyed the group's bunkers and tunnel bellow southern Lebanon's villages.

The Israeli military said on Thursday that over the past 24 hours it had killed 45 Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, including a battalion commander, and seized many weapons.

Israeli operations in Lebanon have killed at least 2,350 people over the last year, according to the health ministry, and more than 1.2 million people have been displaced. The death toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but includes hundreds of women and children.

Around 50 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in the same period, according to Israel.

The Israeli military on Thursday issued evacuation warnings for residents of the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon focusing on three buildings in Tamnine town, and Saraain El Tahta and Sefri villages where it said Hezbollah maintained facilities.

"For your safety and the safety of your family, you must evacuate this building and the surrounding buildings immediately and stay at least 500 meters away from them," military spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted on X.

The mayor of a major town in south Lebanon was among 16 people killed on Wednesday when an Israeli airstrike destroyed its municipal headquarters in the biggest attack on an official Lebanese state building since the Israeli air campaign began.

Israel and Hezbollah have been fighting since the militant group began firing missiles at its arch-foe a year ago in support of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza and the conflict has sharply escalated in recent weeks.

Abdelnaser, a man displaced from Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold which Israel has repeatedly bombed, was on the waterfront early on Thursday morning. He recalled Lebanon's long list of tragedies over the years.

"War has become normal for us. We know that every 10 years Lebanon gets built, and every 10 years it gets destroyed again," he said.

(Reporting by Laila Bassam and Timour Azhar in Beirut, Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Stephen Coates, Philippa Fletcher and Ros Russell)