JERUSSALAM- Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday accused Iran-backed Hezbollah of trying to assassinate him, with the Middle East already on edge after Israel had vowed retaliation for an Iranian missile barrage.
An official in Gaza said an Israeli strike in north Gaza had killed at least 73 people late Saturday, with many more feared trapped under the rubble. Israel said it had hit a “Hamas terror target”.
Netanyahu’s office said a drone was launched towards his residence in the central town of Caesarea but he and his wife were not home and there were no injuries.
“The attempt by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah to assassinate me and my wife today was a grave mistake,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
“Anyone who tries to harm Israel’s citizens will pay a heavy price,” he said in comments directed at Tehran and “its proxies”, which include Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a group Israel has been at war with since late September.
The Lebanese group, armed and financed by Iran, did not acknowledge the attack, but late on Saturday Iran’s United Nations mission said “this action was taken” by Hezbollah.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said a drone “hit a building in Caesarea, while trying to hit the prime minister”.
Caesarea is about 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of the Haifa city area, which Hezbollah has regularly targeted. Ofek Mor, a 20-year-old Caesarea resident, said he felt “unsafe like I’ve never felt before in Israel”.
– Hamas ‘a reality’ –
While fighting a two-front war, in Lebanon and in Gaza, Israel has also vowed to respond to Iran’s October 1 missile barrage with a “deadly, precise and surprising” attack, according to Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Iran said it had fired 200 missiles at its arch-foe in response to the killing of an Iranian general and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
Gaza’s civil defence agency on Saturday said that a sweeping Israeli military operation had killed more than 400 people in two weeks in the territory’s north.
Hours later, it reported another Israeli air strike had killed at least 73 Palestinians in a residential area in Beit Lahia.
“There are still martyrs under the rubble,” Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency, told AFP.
Israel’s military said the toll figures given by Gaza authorities “do not align” with the information it possessed.
Hamas ally Hezbollah has vowed to intensify attacks on Israel, and on Saturday it launched rocket barrages at Israel’s north, where rescuers said one man was killed by shrapnel.
Hamas, Hezbollah and allied Iran-backed groups in the region have vowed to keep fighting after Israeli troops on Wednesday killed the Palestinian movement’s leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, more than a year into the war triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
“Hamas is a reality in Palestine that no one can ignore, no one can destroy,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told state TV on Saturday after meeting a Hamas representative in Istanbul. -AFP
