Region

TEHRAN — A bombing attack in southern Iran claimed by the Daesh group has killed 91 people, state media said Saturday, raising an earlier toll after two victims had succumbed to wounds.

The two blasts in Kerman on Wednesday hit crowds at a memorial ceremony near the tomb of Qasem Soleimani, a top Revolutionary Guard general killed in a US drone strike in Iraq in January 2020.

“The death toll from the terrorist incident reached 91 after two people, including a child, hospitalised in intensive care, succumbed to their injuries,” official news agency IRNA quoted a local health official as saying.

The attack is the deadliest in Iran since 1978, when arson killed more than 370 people trapped in a cinema in Abadan, in the country’s southwest, according to AFP archives.

Daesh group extremists on Thursday claimed responsibility for the blasts. A statement said two of Daesh members had “activated their explosive belts” in the middle of “a large gathering of apostates, near the grave of their leader”.

The Iranian intelligence ministry said on Friday that “one of the suicide bombers” was “of Tajik nationality”, while the identity of the second attacker has not yet been established.

At least 11 suspects have been arrested across six Iranian provinces over the attack, the ministry said.

The funerals of the victims took place on Saturday in Kerman with the participation of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Gen. Hossein Salami, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Soleimani was head of the Guards’ foreign operations arm, the Quds Force, before his death. He is celebrated in his country for his role in the fight against Daesh in neighbouring Iraq as well as in Syria.

WASHINGTON — The United States on Wednesday denounced controversial comments by two Israeli ministers who said Palestinians should be encouraged to emigrate from Gaza and for Zionist settlers to return to the besieged territory.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington "rejects recent statements from Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza".

"This rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible," added Miller, who reiterated the "clear, consistent, and unequivocal" US position that "Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land, with Hamas no longer in control of its future and with no terror groups able to threaten Israel".

Ben Gvir, Israel's firebrand national security minister, had called on Monday for promoting "a solution to encourage the emigration of Gaza's residents".

Israel unilaterally withdrew the last of its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, ending a presence inside Gaza that began in 1967 but maintaining near complete control over the territory's borders.

The government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not officially suggested it has any plans to evict Gazans or to send Zionist settlers back to the territory since the current war broke out on October 7.

But Ben Gvir argued that the departure of Palestinians and re-establishment of Israeli settlements “is a correct, just, moral and humane solution”.

“This is an opportunity to develop a project to encourage Gaza’s residents to emigrate to countries around the world,” he told a meeting of his ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit, or “Jewish Power”, party.

His comments came the day after Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Smotrich also called for the return of settlers to Gaza, equally saying Israel should “encourage” the territory’s approximately 2.4 million Palestinians to leave.

With heavy combat raging on, 85 per cent of people in the besieged Gaza Strip have been internally displaced, according to the United Nations.

BEIRUT — A large hole is gaping in a three-storey building and debris litters the street amid charred cars in south Beirut where a strike blamed on Israel killed the deputy leader of Hamas.

The day after loud blasts ripped through the district from the drone attack that killed Saleh Al Aruri, armed men of Hizbollah were standing guard in the mainly Shiite Muslim area that is their stronghold.

Local residents said they were surprised to learn that their busy street in the Lebanese capital housed the secretive Hamas bureau in a non-descript building next to a pharmacy and a sweets shop.

Israel has not claimed the deadly attack but Hamas, the group behind the October 7 sudden attack and Lebanese officials have no doubt it was Israel who killed Aruri and six Hamas operatives.

Beirut's southern suburbs have long been a stronghold of the Iran-backed Hizbollah armed group, but it is also an overcrowded residential area packed with civilians, shops and restaurants.

"No one knew that there was a Hamas office here," said Ahmed, 40, who works in the nearby sweets shop. "I heard three explosions, at first I thought it was thunder," he told AFP in disbelief.

Shopkeepers were sweeping glass shards off the road near the impact site on Hadi Nasrallah street, named after Hizbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah's late son, who was killed in fighting with Israel in 1997.

The Lebanese army cordoned off the perimeter and Hizbollah militants dressed in black civilian clothing kept watch nearby.

"Three Israeli drone strikes targeted the building," said a Hizbollah official who requested anonymity citing security concerns.

Rescuers affiliated with Hizbollah rummaged through the remains of cars damaged or charred by the strikes, in an empty lot facing the building.

“I was at the dentist’s, a few metres away,” said resident Mohammad Burji, 46, who lambasted Israel for striking “in the middle of a residential area”.

Beirut’s southern suburbs have “been caught in the past in a war of annihilation, just like Gaza”, he said, referring to heavy bombing during the 2006 war between Hizbollah and Israel.

Aruri, one of Hamas’s main military strategists, was the first senior official of the movement killed during the Gaza war, in the first strike on the Lebanese capital since hostilities began.

Israel has accused him of masterminding numerous attacks.

After spending nearly two decades in Israeli prisons, Aruri was freed in 2010 on the condition he went into exile.

Local police captain Ali Farran said residents who have lived through the 2006 war “are now expecting the worst”, adding that the predominantly Shiite Muslim area is home to 800,000 people.

Several exiled Hamas leaders have found refuge in Lebanon, under the protection of their ally Hizbollah.

‘Serious assault’ 

On Tuesday, Hizbollah warned that Aruri’s killing in their stronghold was “a serious assault on Lebanon” that “will not go unanswered or unpunished”.

Nasrallah was expected to give a highly anticipated television address later Wednesday.

Amid the Gaza war, Israel and Hizbollah have traded near-daily cross border fire.

More than 160 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, most of them Hizbollah members but also more than 20 civilians including three journalists, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, at least five civilians and nine soldiers have been killed, according to figures from the military.

BEIRUT — UN peacekeeping forces in on Lebanon warned on Wednesday that increased hostilities could prove "devastating", a day after a presumed Israeli strike killed Hamas's deputy leader in a Hizbollah stronghold in Beirut.

"We are deeply concerned at any potential for escalation that could have devastating consequences for people on both sides," said UNIFIL deputy spokeswoman Kandice Ardiel.

"We continue to implore all parties cease their fire, and any interlocutors with influence to urge restraint."

The strike on Tuesday killed Saleh Al Aruri, deputy head of Hamas, in Beirut's southern suburbs, two Lebanese security officials told AFP, blaming Israel.

Hamas, at war with Israel in Gaza for almost three months, confirmed Aruri's death, which Lebanese state media said came in an Israeli drone strike that also killed six others.

Hamas said Aruri would be buried on Thursday in Beirut's Shatila Palestinian refugee camp.

The attack marked an escalation in the nearly three-month-old war.

Hizbollah has been exchanging near-daily border fire with Israel since the Hamas-Israel war broke out on October 7.

More than 160 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, most of them Hizbollah members but also more than 20 civilians including three journalists, according to an AFP tally.

Aruri, one of Hamas’s principal military strategists, was the first senior official of the movement killed during the war.

The strike was also the first on the Lebanese capital since hostilities began.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hizbollah group, a Hamas ally, warned that the killing “will not go unanswered or unpunished”.

The group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah was set to give a much-awaited televised speech on Wednesday.