US and allies prepare to defend Israel

Israel is already in a “multi-front war” with Iran and its proxies, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting on Sunday, as the US and allies prepared to defend Israel from an expected counterstrike and prevent an even more destructive regional conflict.

Tensions have soared after nearly 10 months of war in Gaza, and the killing last week of a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and Hamas’ top political leader in Iran.

Iran and its allies have blamed Israel and threatened retaliation. Hamas says it has begun discussions on choosing a new leader.

Mr Netanyahu said Israel was ready for any scenario.

Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, was making a rare trip to Iran as part of diplomatic efforts, and the Pentagon has moved significant assets to the region.

“We want the escalation to end,” Mr Safadi said.

“We are doing everything possible to make sure that this situation does not boil over,” White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer said.

In Israel, some prepared bomb shelters and recalled Iran’s unprecedented direct military assault in April after a suspected Israeli strike that killed two Iranian generals.

Israel said almost all the drones and ballistic and cruise missiles were intercepted.

Meanwhile Israeli air strikes have killed 18 people in Gaza, including four who were sheltering at a tent camp housing displaced people inside a hospital complex, while a stabbing attack carried out by a Palestinian killed two people in a Tel Aviv suburb.

A woman in her 70s and an 80-year-old man were killed in the stabbing attack, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service and a nearby hospital, and two other men were injured.

Police said the attack was carried out by a Palestinian militant, who was “neutralised”, and a search was launched for other potential suspects. They later ruled out the possibility that anyone else was involved.

In Gaza, an Israeli strike earlier on Sunday hit a tent camp housing displaced people in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, killing four people, including one woman, and injuring others, health officials said. They did not say whether those killed were civilians or fighters.

An Associated Press journalist filmed men rushing to the scene to help the wounded and retrieve bodies, while trying to extinguish the fire.

The Israeli military said it targeted a Palestinian militant in the strike, which it said caused secondary explosions, “indicating the presence of weaponry in the area”.

The hospital in Deir al-Balah is the main medical facility operating in central Gaza, and thousands of people have taken shelter there after fleeing their homes in the war-ravaged territory.

A separate strike on a home near Deir al-Balah killed a girl and her parents, according to the hospital.

Another strike flattened a house in northern Gaza, killing at least eight people, including three children, their parents and their grandmother, according to the ministry, and another three people were killed in a strike on a vehicle in Gaza City.

The Gaza health ministry said at least 25 people were killed and 19 others injured when Israel struck two schools in Gaza City. AP video showed at least one child among the dead.

Israel’s military, which regularly accuses Palestinian militants of sheltering in civilian areas, said it struck a Hamas command centre.

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 people hostage in their surprise attack into southern Israel last October.

Israel’s massive offensive launched in Gaza has killed at least 39,550 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.

Heavy air strikes and ground operations have caused widespread destruction and displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, often multiple times.

Hezbollah has regularly traded fire with Israel along the Lebanon border since the start of the war, in what the militant group says is aimed at relieving pressure on its fellow Iran-backed ally, Hamas. The continuous strikes and counter-strikes have grown in severity in recent months, raising fears of an even more destructive regional war.

More than 590 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Most have been killed during Israeli raids and violent protests.

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.