Middle East crisis live: Islamic State claims responsibility for Iran attack that killed more than 100 - The Guardian

Islamic State has claimed responsibility on its Telegram platform for two explosions at a ceremony in Iran to commemorate commander Qassem Suleimani, Reuters reported.

At least 84 people were killed and scores injured during the blasts, which struck minutes apart on Wednesday, shaking the city of Kerman, about 820km (510 miles) south-east of the capital, Tehran.

The explosions occurred during a memorial ceremony marking the fourth anniversary of the killing of Suleimani, the head of Iran’s al-Quds force.

Here’s more on Wednesday’s attack on a crowd in southern Iran at a memorial for senior Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Suleimani, for which Islamic State has now claimed responsibility.

At least 84 people died when two blasts ripped through the crowd near Suleimani’s tomb in the city of Kerman, four years after he was killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad.

In a statement posted on its affiliate Telegram channels today, Islamic State said two of its members had detonated their explosive belts in the crowd.

Early today, Iran had said it was bolstering security along its borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the first tangible sign that it suspected that the attack was work of an Islamic State affiliate.

Attention has focused on Islamic State Khorasan Province, a Sunni group operating primarily in Afghanistan that resents the damage done to Islamic State’s cause by Suleimani in Iraq and Syria.

If you’re just joining us, here’s a recap of the latest developments:

• More than 22,438 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began, the majority of them women and children, according to the latest figures from Gaza’s health ministry on Thursday. The figures include 125 Palestinians killed in the past 24 hours. At least 14 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes on the al-Mawasi evacuation zone, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported on Thursday. Al Jazeera reported that the youngest was five years old and most were aged under 10.

• The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it has killed the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) northern Gaza operations chief, Mamdouh Lolo, in an airstrike in northern Gaza. The IDF said the strike was a joint operation with Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet.

• The UN’s top human rights official, Volker Türk, has said he is “very disturbed” by statements by high-level Israeli officials calling for Palestinians in Gaza to be moved to neighbouring Arab countries. His comments came days after Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, called on Palestinians to leave Gaza and make way for Israelis who could “make the desert bloom”.

• The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, has warned Israel it must allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza to avoid starvation and large outbreaks of disease. Speaking during a trip in Kosovo, Cameron also said attacks in Red Sea shipping lanes must stop otherwise international action will be taken.

• Israel has accused the UN of “stalling” the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, the territory which Israel has held under a virtual siege and continual aerial bombardment since 7 October. The Israeli defence ministry body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs said it was equipped to inspect up to 200 trucks a day passing through the Kerem Shalom crossing,but the UN was “not scraping 100”.

• At least 120 Palestinians were detained during an Israeli military raid in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem on Thursday, according to reports. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it detained hundreds of people suspected of militant activities.

• Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has said there must be a “new reality” that would allow Israelis who have evacuated from northern areas of the country to return. He was referring to the repeated exchanges of fire over the UN-drawn blue line that separates Israel and Lebanon.

• Islamic State has claimed responsibility for two explosions at a ceremony in Iran to commemorate commander Qassem Suleimani. More than 95 Iranians were killed and scores more injured in the attack on Wednesday, which came at a memorial ceremony marking the fourth anniversary of the killing of Suleimani, the head of Iran’s al-Quds force.

• The US military has carried out an airstrike in Baghdad against a high-ranking Iraqi militia commander who it blames for attacks against US forces in the country, killing him and another person, a US official said. The strike on Thursday, which hit a vehicle in the capital, targeted a leader of Harakat al-Nujaba, the official said.

• Four Hezbollah fighters were killed overnight in southern Lebanon, the movement announced on Thursday, in what Lebanese state media said were Israeli strikes on the border town of Naqura. The deaths, according to a source close to Hezbollah, included a local leader.

• The US secretary of state Antony Blinken will depart on Thursday for the Middle East, including a stop in Israel, an unnamed senior US official said. Blinken leaves Thursday night “for stops in a number of capitals, including Israel,” the official said. It would be his fourth crisis trip to the Middle East.

The UN’s top human rights official has said he is “very disturbed” by statements by “high-level Israeli officials” calling for Palestinians in Gaza to be moved to neighbouring Arab countries.

In a social media post, Volker Türk said 85% of people in Gaza are already internally displaced, and that they “have the right to return to their homes”.

He warned that international law “prohibits forcible transfer of protected persons within or deportation from occupied territory”.

His comments came days after Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, called for Palestinians to leave Gaza and make way for Israelis who could “make the desert bloom”.

“What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” Smotrich told Army Radio on Sunday. “If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be totally different.”

Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, said on Monday that the war presented an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza”.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility on its Telegram platform for two explosions at a ceremony in Iran to commemorate commander Qassem Suleimani, Reuters reported.

At least 84 people were killed and scores injured during the blasts, which struck minutes apart on Wednesday, shaking the city of Kerman, about 820km (510 miles) south-east of the capital, Tehran.

The explosions occurred during a memorial ceremony marking the fourth anniversary of the killing of Suleimani, the head of Iran’s al-Quds force.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, said they have killed the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) northern Gaza operations chief, Mamdouh Lolo, in an airstrike in northern Gaza.

According to the IDF, Lolo was an assistant to the leaders of the militant group in northern Gaza and a “central figure” in the PIJ.

The UK is politically invested in the UN resolution on humanitarian aid passed before Christmas, since the UK claimed its passage would lead to a step change in the amount of aid entering Gaza, despite criticism by the UN and numerous NGOs that the resolution would have little impact in the absence of a ceasefire or the handover of the responsibility for checking aid truck contents from Israel to the UN.

The UK, along with the US, was instrumental in persuading Israel to open the Kerem Shalom crossing to ensure there was a second access point beyond the Rafah crossing with Egypt that had largely been built for pedestrians.

The UN on Wednesday said it and other humanitarian partners “have been unable to deliver urgently needed life-saving humanitarian assistance north of Wadi Gaza for three days due to access delays and denials, as well as active conflict.”

This includes medicines that would have provided vital support to more than 100,000 people for 30 days, as well as eight trucks of food for people who currently face catastrophic and life-threatening food insecurity.

On Wednesday only 105 trucks with food, medicine and other supplies entered the Gaza Strip via Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings, the UN said. There has been no substantive increase in the number of trucks entering Gaza since the UN resolution was passed on 22 December.

Israel insists thorough checks are necessary to ensure the UN trucks are not being used to smuggle weapons to Hamas inside Gaza. Others claim it is a policy of deliberate starvation, and will be cited in the legal claim to be made by South Africa at the international court of justice in The Hague next week that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

There are already signs that some wings of the Israeli government know they need to be more explicit that they are not seeking to starve Palestinians or forcibly deport them, or else risk losing the case.

David Cameron, the UK foreign secretary, has warned about starvation and disease spreading in Gaza if Israel does not allow more aid into the territory.

It is the most dire warning he has given about the humanitarian crisis inside Gaza. Speaking on a visit to Kosovo, he said:

The first thing I am worried about is getting more aid into Gaza. I’m worried about people going hungry in Gaza and that potentially leading to starvation. I’m worried about people getting ill in Gaza and that leading to large-scale disease outbreaks, so we need more trucks with more aid getting into Gaza.

On Wednesday he spoke with the new Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, and said afterwards on X: “More must be done to get humanitarian aid into Gaza – Israel must allow significantly more supplies in to reduce the risk of hunger and disease.”

On his Kosovo visit, he said:

Israel, of course, has a right to combat Hamas and to stop the October 7 event happening again. It was an appalling slaughter – and we support them as they do that. But we must have more aid in Gaza to stop starvation, to stop disease.

Associated Press reports that the state-run Irna news agency in Iran says suicide bombers probably carried out the attack in Kerman, which killed at least 84 people.

Citing an unnamed “informed source”, Irna quoted the official as saying that surveillance footage from the route to the commemoration at the city’s Matryrs cemetery clearly showed a male suicide bomber detonating explosives. The official said the second blast “probably” came from another suicide bomber, though it had not been determined beyond doubt.

The official also gave new distances for how far apart the blasts happened, describing them as occurring 1.5km (about a mile) and 2.7km (1.68 miles) away from the crypt of Qassem Suleimani. The official said the bombers probably chose the locations because they were outside the security perimeter for the commemoration.

On the day some eyewitness accounts implied that exploding gas canisters had been the source of the blast, but the scene on the ground was confused due to large crowds.

An earlier death toll of 103 was twice revised lower after officials realised that some names had been repeated on a list of victims and due to the severity of wounds suffered by some of the dead, health authorities said. Many of the wounded were in critical condition, however, so the death toll could rise.

AP reports that no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires from Lebanon and Israel.

Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant has said there must be a “new reality” that would allow Israelis who have evacuated from northern areas of the country to return. He was referring to the repeated exchanges of fire over the UN-drawn blue line that separates Israel and Lebanon.

“We will not tolerate the threats posed by the Iranian proxy, Hezbollah, and we will ensure the security of our citizens,” he was quoted in a ministry statement as saying, Reuters reports.

Israel evacuated multiple communities for security reasons in the north of the country after the surprise Hamas attack inside southern Israel on 7 October.

Gaza’s health ministry reports that 125 Palestinians were killed and 318 wounded in the past 24 hours by Israeli military action inside the Gaza Strip. The number raises the overall death toll to 22,438, with at least 57,614, with the ministry adding the majority of them are women and children.

The Hamas-led health ministry has previously said the figures are likely and undercount, as there remain Palestinians missing who are presumed to be under the rubble of buildings destroyed during Israeli airstrikes on the tightly congested territory.

An estimated 85% of Gaza’s population have been displaced from their homes, and many are living in makeshift shelters in the south of the Gaza Strip. The government media office in Gaza has accused Israel of repeatedly forcing Palestinian residents to flee their homes and move to areas that Israel has then subsequently bombed.

Attacks in Red Sea shipping lanes have to stop otherwise international action will be taken, British foreign secretary David Cameron warned Yemen’s Houthis on Thursday.

“This is illegal. It’s not to do with Gaza, it’s not to do with Israel. This is about the freedom of navigation. This is about the ability of ships to carry their cargo,” Reuters reports he told the media during a trip to Kosovo.

“The world economy, every economy, will suffer if ships keep coming under attack in this illegal and unacceptable way. And these attacks need to stop or actions will be taken.”

When asked, Cameron declined to specify what action the UK would take.

Crowds gathered in Beirut in Lebanon for the funeral of senior Hamas figure Saleh al-Arouri, who was killed on Tuesday in what has been widely attributed to an Israeli strike.

The US military has carried out a strike in Baghdad against an Iraqi militia leader it blames for attacks against U.S. forces in the country, killing him and another person, a US official told Reuters on Thursday.

The US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the strike hit a vehicle in Baghdad. It targeted a leader of Harakat al Nujaba, the official said, without naming the person.

Police sources and eyewitnesses had said a drone had fired at least two rockets at a building in eastern Baghdad used by the Iraqi militia group.

“We will retaliate and make the Americans regret carrying out this aggression,” Reuters reports a local Iraqi militia commander said.

The US has 900 troops deployed in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq which it claims are there to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State militants.

In recent days the US has also attacked Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, after the Yemeni’s forces carried out attacks on shipping near the Red Sea which they claimed had links to Israel.

Tensions across the region are increasing, with violence in recent days in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, northern Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, the Red Sea and Iraq.

Israeli forces searched houses in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem on Thursday, detaining hundreds of people suspected of militant activities, its military said.

According to residents, Israeli forces detained at least 120 people and demolished three houses, including one belonging to a member of the Tulkarem Brigades, an armed militant group linked to the Palestinian faction Fatah.

“IDF forces continue to operate, alongside other Israeli security forces, in a broad divisional operation to suppress terrorism in the Nour al-Shams refugee camp in Menashe,” Reuters reports the military said in a statement.

Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that the official spokesperson for the president of the Palestinian Authority condemned Israel’s operation. It reported the spokesperson said the operations will not achieve security and stability and will push matters to an uncontrollable situation.

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Middle East crisis live: Islamic State claims responsibility for Iran attack that killed more than 100 - The Guardian
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