The head of Britain’s MI6 foreign spy agency Richard Moore says he believes Iran is still planning to retaliate for the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, which took place in Tehran in late July and which Iran blames on Israel.
“I suspect they will try and we won’t be able to let our guard down for the type of activity that the Iranians might try and prosecute in that direction,” Moore says at an FT event when asked about whether Iran would retaliate.
Israel has neither claimed nor denied responsibility for the Tehran blast that killed the terror leader.
The IDF says it carried out an airstrike against a group of Hamas operatives at a command room embedded within a former school in Gaza City.
According to the military, Hamas was using the Amr Ibn al-Aas School in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood to plan and carry out attacks against troops and Israel.
Palestinian media report several casualties in the strike.
To mitigate harm to civilians in the strike, the IDF says it carried out “many steps,” including using precision munitions, aerial surveillance, and other intelligence.
“The Hamas terror organization systematically violates international law, brutally exploiting civilian institutions and the population as a human shield for terror activity,” the military adds.
CIA Director William Burns, the chief US negotiator trying to help secure a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages by Hamas, says a more detailed proposal on the proposal will be made in the coming days but will require both sides to make some tough decisions.
“We will make this more detailed proposal, I hope in the next several days, and then we’ll see,” Burns says at a Financial Times event in London, alongside his British counterpart, MI6 Chief Richard Moore.
“I cannot tell you how close we are right now,” Burns says.
He says that while 90 percent of the text has been agreed between the warring sides, “the last 10% is the last 10% for a reason, because it’s the hardest part to do.”
Burns says ending the conflict will require “some hard choices and some political compromises” from both Israel and Hamas.
Israeli fighter jets struck Hezbollah infrastructure and a rocket launcher in southern Lebanon’s Qabrikha a short while ago, the IDF says.
The military says the launcher had been used to fire rockets at Israel previously.
It publishes footage of the strikes.
CIA Director William Burns and MI6 Chief Richard Moore say their agencies had “exploited our intelligence channels to push hard for restraint and de-escalation.”
In an opinion piece for The Financial Times, the two spymasters say a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war “could end the suffering and appalling loss of life of Palestinian civilians and bring home the hostages after 11 months of hellish confinement.”
Burns has been heavily involved in efforts to broker an end to the fighting, traveling to Egypt in August for high-level talks aimed at bringing about a hostage deal and at least a temporary halt to the conflict.
So far there has been no agreement, though United States officials insist a deal is close. US President Joe Biden said recently that “just a couple more issues” remain unresolved. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, has said reports of a breakthrough are “exactly inaccurate” and Hamas has been similarly dismissive.
IDF: Some 30 rockets fired in barrage from Lebanon toward Meron, no casualties
1 comment:
Bombs are not the only means of retaliation, only a fool would think that.
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