Attack on central Israel wounds 11 people as Iranian leader promises punishing response

JERUSALEM (AP) — Eleven people were injured in an attack on a city in central Israel early Saturday, with Iran’s Supreme Leader vowing last week to deliver a punitive response to Israel’s attack.

The pre-dawn attack on Tira, which followed air raid sirens in central Israel, was one of several barrages fired from Lebanon early in the day. Many of the projectiles were intercepted by Israeli air defenses, while others landed in unpopulated areas.

The Magen David Adom emergency service said 11 people were injured by shrapnel and glass fragments in a direct attack on a building in Tira, a predominantly Israeli Arab city. Three were in moderate condition, while the others suffered milder injuries.

Images showed significant damage to the roof and top floor of the three-storey building and the cars below.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group has claimed responsibility for firing rockets at the Israeli army’s Unit 8200 base in Glilot on the outskirts of Tel Aviv and attacking Israel’s central Palmachim air base with explosive drones, saying they “scored precise hits on targets.”

The Israeli military has not confirmed that either base was targeted or hit.

Hezbollah said the rocket attack on Glilot on Saturday morning was in retaliation for the “massacres” carried out by Israel. It was likely that the claim was related to the attack on Tira, about twenty kilometers from Glilot.

Tamar Abdel Hai, a resident of Tira, said the attack was frightening. “I appeal to all leaders in the Arab world and leaders in Israel and to anyone who can help end this war. It is enough,” he said.

Hezbollah also said its fighters fired salvos of rockets at northern Israeli towns, including Dalton, Yesud HaMa’ala and Bar Yohai.

The early attacks on Saturday could only be a harbinger of a more serious attack on Israel.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, on Saturday threatened Israel and the US with a punitive response to attacks on Iran and its allies following the October 26 Israeli airstrikes on Iranian military bases and other locations.

“The enemies, whether it is the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will certainly receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran, the Iranian nation and the resistance front,” Khamenei said in a video released by Iranian state media .

A further attack by Iran, which has already launched two direct attacks on Israel this year, could push the wider Middle East closer to a wider conflict. Israel is already fighting the Iranian-backed militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The fight against Hezbollah has weakened the group, but has also taken a heavy toll on southern Lebanon and other parts of the country.

On Friday, Israel launched dozens of intense airstrikes on Lebanon’s northeastern farming villages, killing at least 52 people and wounding dozens more, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.

Since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah broke out in 2023, more than 2,897 people have been killed and 13,150 injured in Lebanon, according to an update from the Ministry of Health early Friday. United Nations agencies estimate that Israel’s ground invasion and bombing of Lebanon has displaced 1.4 million people.

Residents of Israel’s northern communities near Lebanon, some 60,000 people, have also been displaced for more than a year.

Israel has also stepped up its offensive against remaining Hamas fighters in Gaza, raising concerns about humanitarian conditions for civilians still there. The World Health Organization has said it plans to finally resume its polio vaccination campaign on Saturday, but only in Gaza City, as towns further north remain inaccessible as Israel tightens the siege.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians since October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took about 250 hostages to Gaza. Health officials in Hamas-run Gaza do not distinguish between civilians and fighters, but say more than half of the enclave’s deaths are women and children.

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Associated Press journalists Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Natalie Melzer in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Shlomo Mor in Tira, Israel, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war