The United States carried out strikes Thursday against two facilities used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and “affiliated groups” in eastern Syria, US Defense Minister Lloyd Austin announced.
The Pentagon announced the two operations after President Joe Biden sent a message to Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warning against any attack on US troops that threatens to widen the war. ongoing between Israel and Hamas. “A direct message has been sent. I will not go any further,” confirmed White House spokesperson John Kirby.
“These self-defense and precision strikes are a response to a series of ongoing, and mostly failed, attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militias” since October 17 , Lloyd Austin said in a statement. According to the Pentagon, a US citizen died of a heart attack while taking cover during one of the attacks, and 21 others were lightly injured but have since returned to work.
Humanitarian “breaks”
The leaders of the European Union called, Thursday, October 26, for “breaks” in the conflict between Israel and Palestinian Hamas in order to facilitate access to humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza, besieged and where “no one “is safe,” says the UN.
In six days, 74 aid trucks arrived, from neighboring Egypt, in the Palestinian territory of 362 km2, subject to “a complete siege” which deprives its 2.4 million inhabitants of water, food and electricity, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Thursday evening. That is much less than the 500 trucks a day which arrived, before the conflict, in Gaza, already subject to an Israeli blockade since Hamas came to power in 2007. “Humanitarian partners cannot safely access populations in need and to the warehouses where the aid is stored,” added OCHA.
Rocket injures six in Egyptian border town
Six people were injured when a rocket fell overnight from Thursday to Friday on Taba, an Egyptian town bordering Israel, media and witnesses report. Witnesses told AFP that this rocket fell on an annex of a hospital in this town on the Red Sea, located at the northeastern tip of Sinai and where there is a border post to Israel. Images broadcast on local media or social networks show a damaged building and several vehicles blown up in the surrounding area.
Families of hostages raise their voices against the government
The families of hostages held in the Gaza Strip warned Thursday evening in Tel Aviv that they had reached “the end of their patience” and demanded to be received by the government in the evening. According to the Israeli army, the families of 224 hostages were contacted to be informed that their loved ones were being held by Hamas.
“For twenty days the government has been silent, we do everything ourselves,” lamented Eyal Sheni, the father of Roni Sheni, a 19-year-old soldier who has been held hostage or disappeared. Hamas’ military wing “estimated” Thursday that “nearly 50” Israeli hostages have been killed by Israeli strikes since the start of the war, figures which cannot be confirmed by AFP.
Israel displays Hamas weapons, supplied according to it by Pyongyang and Tehran
The Israeli army on Thursday exposed to journalists weapons used by Hamas commandos against Israel on October 7, some of which, it said, were supplied by North Korea and Iran.
During a visit to a military location that cannot be revealed, the army showed the press an arsenal of a few dozen weapons which, it added, were seized at the scene of the attacks committed by the men of the Palestinian Islamist movement: mines, rocket launchers, shells and even homemade drones.
France: 54 tonnes of humanitarian aid intended for Gaza will leave on Saturday
A special flight will depart on Saturday, October 28, for Egypt to transport 54 tons of emergency humanitarian aid for the benefit of civilian populations in the Gaza Strip, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Thursday. This shipment, which will be handed over to the Egyptian Red Crescent, includes emergency medical kits, medicines, hospital equipment, emergency ventilators, solar lamps, generators and tents.
Nearly 30 tonnes of food supplements and drinking water tablets will also be delivered. “France reiterates its call for a humanitarian truce, so that aid can respond in a sustainable manner to the needs of the civilian populations in Gaza,” states the press release from the Quai d’Orsay.