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UNITED NATIONS, United States: Iran on Saturday called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in protest at the killing of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli air strike in Lebanon, according to a letter to the Council sent to AFP.
In the letter, Iran’s UN envoy Amir Saeid Iravani called on the Council to “take immediate and decisive action to stop Israel’s ongoing aggression and prevent... from dragging the region into full-scale war.”
BEIRUT, Lebanon: Twelve pro-Iranian fighters have been killed in air strikes of unknown origin in eastern Syria, a war monitor said Sunday, adding that a large number of people were wounded.
“Twelve pro-Iranian fighters were killed in air strikes of unknown origin targeting their positions in the city of Deir Ezzor and to the east of the city, as well as the Boukamal region, near the border with Iraq,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The strikes were not immediately claimed by any entity, according to the monitor.
Five of the strikes had targeted military positions near Deir Ezzor airport, it added.
Iran has been providing military aid to Syria since the civil war there began in 2011, while Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes targeting pro-Iranian groups in eastern Syria. The United States has also targeted such groups in the country’s east.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence there.
Israel has launched an intense bombing campaign against Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon in recent days, intensifying fears of a regional war.
The Israeli army has also repeatedly targeted the movement’s arms supply routes on the Syrian-Lebanese border, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
WASHINGTON: The US Department of State on Saturday ordered some employees at its embassy in Beirut and their eligible family members to the leave Lebanon amid escalating tensions in the Middle East following the killing of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah by Israel.
“US Embassy Beirut personnel are restricted from personal travel without advance permission,” the State Department said in a statement. “Additional travel restrictions may be imposed on US personnel under Chief of Mission security responsibility, with little to no notice due to increased security issues or threats.”
The advisory covered eligible family members as well as non-essential employees.
The State Department also urged Americans in the country to leave, warning the currently limited options to depart might become unavailable if the security situation worsened.
“The US embassy strongly encourages US citizens in Southern Lebanon, near the borders with Syria, and or in refugee settlements to depart those areas immediately,” it said.
DUBAI: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been taken to a secure location inside Iran amid heightened security, sources told Reuters, a day after Israel killed the head of Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah in a strike on Beirut. The move to safeguard Iran’s top decision-maker is the latest show of nervousness by the Iranian authorities as Israel launched a series of devastating attacks on Hezbollah, Iran’s best armed and most well-equipped ally in the region.
Reuters reported this month that Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps, the ideological guardians of the Islamic Republic, had ordered all of members to stop using any type of communication devices after thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah blew up.
Lebanon and Hezbollah say Israel was behind the pager and walkie-talkie attacks. Israel neither denied nor confirmed involvement.
The two regional officials briefed by Tehran and who told Reuters that Khamenei had been moved to a safe location also said Iran was in contact with Hezbollah and other regional proxy groups to determine the next step after Nasrallah’s killing.
The sources declined to be identified further due to the sensitivity of the matter. As well as killing Nasrallah, Friday’s strikes by Israel on Beirut killed Revolutionary Guards’ deputy commander Abbas Nilforoushan, Iranian media reported on Saturday. Other Revolutionary Guard’s commanders have also been killed since the Gaza War erupted last year and violence flared elsewhere.
Khamenei issued a statement later on Saturday, following Israel’s announcement that Nasrallah had been killed, saying: “The fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront.”
“The blood of the martyr shall not go unavenged,” he said in a separate statement, in which he announced five days of mourning to mark Nasrallah’s death.
Nasrallah’s death is a major blow to Iran, removing an influential ally who helped build Hezbollah into the linchpin of Tehran’s constellation of allied groups in the Arab world. Iran’s network of regional allies, known as the ‘Axis of Resistance’, stretch from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hamas in Gaza, Iran-backed militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. Hamas has been fighting a war with Israel for almost a year, since its fighters stormed into Israel on Oct. 7. The Houthis, meanwhile, have launched missiles at Israel and at ships sailing in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea along the Yemeni coast.
Hezbollah has been engaged in exchanges of fire across the Lebanese border throughout the Gaza War and has repeatedly said it would not stop until there was a ceasefire in Gaza.
After the pager and walkie-talkies strikes, one Iranian security official told Reuters that a large-scale operation was underway by the Revolutionary Guards to inspect all communications devices. He said most of these devices were either homemade or imported from China and Russia.
The official said Iran was concerned about infiltration by Israeli agents, including Iranians on Israel’s payroll and a thorough investigation of personnel has already begun, targeting mid and high-ranking members of the Revolutionary Guards.
In another statement on Saturday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the United States had played a role in Nasrallah’s killing as a supplier of weapons to Israel.
“The Americans cannot deny their complicity with the Zionists,” he said in the statement carried by state media.
ANKARA: Turkiye’s foreign minister said on Saturday that Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was an important figure for Lebanon and the region and would be hard to replace after he was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut a day earlier.
Speaking to state broadcaster TRT Haber in New York, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan also said Turkiye believed Israel would not stop in Lebanon and would spread the war in Gaza to the wider region.
He said the “helplesness” of the United States and other Western countries was allowing the violence to continue.
BAGHDAD: Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani condemned on Saturday the Israeli killing of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah as a “crime.”
The Friday attack on Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold that killed the Iran-backed group’s leader was a “shameful attack” and “a crime that shows the Zionist entity has crossed all the red lines,” Sudani said in a statement, calling Nasrallah “a martyr on the path of the righteous.”
