Iran’s Supreme leader today said ‘we kiss the hands on those who planned the attack’ on Israel amid fears the Islamic nation provided Hamas terrorists with weapons and training for their surprise incursion.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hailed what he called Israel’s ‘irreparable’ military and intelligence defeat after the gunmen rampaged through the towns and slaughtered families and young festivalgoers.
‘We kiss the hands of those who planned the attack on the Zionist regime,’ Khamenei said during his first televised speech since the incursion.
Khamenei, wearing a Palestinian scarf and speaking from a military academy, added: ‘This destructive earthquake (Hamas’s attack) has destroyed some critical structures (in Israel) which will not be repaired easily. The Zionist regime’s own actions are to blame for this disaster.’
But Khamenei insisted Iran, a key long-term ally of Hamas, was not involved in the attack on Israel, which has left 900 Israelis dead and hundreds more injured.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (pictured today at a military base) hailed what he called Israel’s ‘irreparable’ military and intelligence defeat after the gunmen rampaged through the towns and slaughtered families and young festivalgoers
‘We kiss the hands of those who planned the attack on the Zionist regime,’ Khamenei said during his first televised speech since the incursion
Israeli soldiers inspect burnt cars that are abandoned in a carpark near where a festival was held before an attack by Hamas gunmen from Gaza that left at least 260 people dead on Tuesday
This aerial photo show heavily damaged buildings following Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City on Tuesday
Israel has long accused Iran’s clerical rulers of stoking violence by supplying arms to Hamas.
And Western officials last night said Tehran had provided the Hamas terrorists military training and logistical help as well as tens of millions of dollars for weapons ahead of the surprise incursion.
The officials said Hamas had been planning the assault on Israel for at least a year, reports the Washington Post.
They said that while they have no evidence that Tehran authorised or directly coordinated the attack, the incursion reflected Iran’s years-long ambition to surround Israel with paramilitary fighters armed with sophisticated weapons.
‘If you train people on how to use weapons, you expect them to eventually use them,’ said a Western intelligence official.
Backing the Palestinian cause has been a pillar of the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution and a way the Shi’ite-dominated country has fashioned itself as a leader of the Muslim world.
The top U.S. general on Monday warned Iran not to get involved in the crisis, saying he did not want the conflict to the broaden.
At least 900 Israelis have been killed by the terrorists since they launched the surprise attack on Saturday. And in response Israel has pounded the Gaza strip with the fiercest ait strikes in the 75-year history of its conflict, killing 770 Palestinians and wounding 4,000 more.
Israel said earlier on Tuesday it had re-established control over the Gaza border and was planting mines where militants had toppled the barrier during their bloody weekend assault, after another night of relentless Israeli air raids on the enclave.
Uri, 83, talks on the phone after a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip damaged his home when it landed in Ashkelon, southern Israel on Tuesday
A Palestinian youth sits in front of a charred building as a fire rages through its interior, following Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City’s al-Rimal district on Tuesday
Hamas terrorists have taken up to 150 people as hostages
Khamenei said an attack on Gaza would ‘unleash a much heavier torrent of anger’.
‘The occupying regime seeks to portray itself as a victim to escalate its crimes further… this is a misguided calculation… It will result in even greater disaster,’ Khamenei said.
Iran took the lead on Saturday in celebrating the Hamas assault in which at least 1,500 gunmen stormed the border before carrying out a bloody rampage through Israeli communities that left more than 900 dead and saw streets strewn with bodies.
The Israeli army said it was the single deadliest event in the nation’s history, and has responded with a ferocious bombardment of Gaza where officials say at least 770 people have been killed.
It has called up hundreds of thousands of reservists and placed the Gaza Strip, crowded home to 2.3 million people, under a total siege.
Israeli media said the death toll from the Hamas attacks had climbed to 900 people, mostly civilians gunned down in their homes, on the streets or at a dance party, dwarfing the scale of any past attack by Islamists apart from 9/11. Scores of Israelis were taken to Gaza as hostages, with some paraded through the streets.
Nearly 700 Gazans have since been killed in Israeli strikes, according to Gaza officials, while whole districts in Gaza have been flattened.
The United Nations said 180,000 Gazans had been made homeless, many huddling on streets or in schools. Smoke and flames rose into the morning sky, while bombardment of the roads often made it impossible for emergency crews to reach the scene of strikes.
At the morgue in Gaza’s Khan Younis hospital, bodies were laid on the ground on stretchers with their names written on their bellies. Medics called for relatives to pick up bodies quickly because there was no more space for the dead.
There were heavy casualties in a former municipal building struck while being used as an emergency shelter for displaced families.
‘There is an extraordinary number of martyrs, people are still under the rubble, some friends are either martyrs or wounded,’ said a Ala Abu Tair, 35, who had sought shelter there with his family after fleeing Abassan Al-Kabira near the border. ‘No place is safe in Gaza, as you see they hit everywhere.’
In Israel, there has still been no complete official count of the dead and missing from Saturday’s attacks. In the southern town of Be’eri, where more than 100 bodies have been retrieved, volunteers in yellow vests and face masks solemnly carried the dead out of homes on stretchers.
Israeli forces transport military equipment, armored vehicles and artillery to the Gaza border in Israel as Israeli airstrikes continue on Tuesday
A fireball erupts from an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on October 9, 2023
Palestinians watch a fire burn among the rubble of a damaged residential building, in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, in Gaza City, October 10, 2023
A long, wide trail of blood wound along the floor of a house where bodies had been dragged out to the street from a bloodsoaked kitchen strewn with overturned furniture.
‘The thing I want the most is to wake up from this nightmare,’ said Elad Hakim, a survivor from a music festival where Hamas had killed 260 partygoers at dawn. ‘Everything was so amazing, the best party I’ve been to in my life, until it… from paradise to hell, in one second.’
Israel’s next move could be a ground offensive into the Gaza Strip, territory it abandoned in 2005 and has kept under blockade since Hamas took power there in 2007. The total siege it announced on Monday would block even food and fuel from reaching the strip.
Israel was caught so completely off guard by Saturday’s attack that it took more than two days to finally seal off the multi-billion dollar high-tech barrier wall, meant to have been impenetrable.
Military spokesperson Hagari said early on Tuesday there had been no new infiltrations from Gaza since the previous day.
Israeli leaders will now have to decide whether to constrain their retaliation to safeguard the hostages. Hamas spokesperson Abu Ubaida issued the threat on Monday to kill one Israeli captive for every Israeli bombing of a civilian house without warning – and to broadcast the killing.
Saturday’s attacks and Israel’s retaliation tore up the plans of diplomats in the Middle East at a crucial juncture, when Israel was on the verge of reaching an agreement to normalise relations with the richest Arab power, Saudi Arabia.
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