15-10-23, 17:47
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#17
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Join Date: Feb 2011
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re: 2 US Hostages Freed/Aid Trucks in Gaza/UK & US Nationals May Use Rafah Crossing
Israel Strikes Lebanon After Hezbollah Attacks Israel
Second US Carrier Group Deployed to Prevent Escalation
Netanyahu Restores Water Supply to Gaza
BBC 15 OCT 2023
Israel Strikes Lebanon After Hezbollah Attacks-2nd US Carrier Group Sent to Prevent Escalation
USS Eisenhower sent to region to deter anyone ‘seeking to escalate’ war after Hamas attack
The United States has deployed a second aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean “to deter hostile actions against Israel or any efforts toward widening this war”, as residents of Gaza City fled south to escape an expected Israeli ground attack in response to a murderous rampage by Hamas last weekend that left at least 1,300 people dead.
The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said late on Saturday that the presence of the USS Eisenhower and its affiliated warships in the eastern Mediterranean signalled Washington’s “ironclad commitment to Israel’s security and our resolve to deter any state or non-state actor seeking to escalate this war”.
The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, warned against a new front on the Israel-Lebanon frontier and added: “We can’t rule out that Iran would choose to get directly engaged some way. We have to prepare for every possible contingency.”
Iran is a long-time backer of Hamas and also Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has exchanged fire with Israel over the past few days. “That is a risk and that’s a risk that we have been mindful of since the start,” he told CBS news.
“It’s why the president moves so rapidly and decisively to get an aircraft carrier into the eastern Mediterranean … a very clear message to any state or any actor that would seek to exploit this situation.”
The Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, was quoted by the semi-official Fars news agency on Sunday as saying “the hands of all parties in the region are on the trigger” if Israel does not end its “aggressions”.
The Palestinian health ministry said 2,670 people had been killed and more than 9,600 wounded in Gaza, surpassing in one week the numbers killed by Israeli bombardments over a period of six weeks in 2014.
“The situation is unprecedented. I’m not even going to call it a humanitarian crisis. It’s one of humanitarian collapse,” said an international aid worker based in Gaza, who said they wanted to sound the alarm but asked not to be named.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) reiterated calls for civilians to move south of the Gaza River, demanding the displacement of an estimated 1.1m people. The Israeli military said hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had headed south so far, and that a third road had been identified as a “safe route” on Sunday.
Some who had fled south of the Gaza River described such poor conditions that they knew others who had gone back to Gaza City.
Israeli artillery shelled Lebanon on Sunday after Lebanese Hezbollah fighters launched a missile at an Israeli northern border village killing at least one person and wounding three others, the militant group and Israeli medics said.
The Israeli military said it was striking in Lebanon in retaliation and it declared a zone within 4km (2 miles) of the Lebanese border off-limits to public access. Hezbollah said in a statement the attack was in retaliation to Israeli shelling. The possibility of a new front in Lebanon brings back bitter memories of a vicious month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006 that ended in a stalemate and a tense detente between the two sides
Update
Shelling on south Lebanon border kills one journalist and injures six
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