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Netanyahu Vows to Demolish Hamas, as Israel Urges Gazans South

Israeli tanks head towards the Gaza Strip border in southern Israel on Friday, Oct. 13, 2023. (AP)
Israeli tanks head towards the Gaza Strip border in southern Israel on Friday, Oct. 13, 2023. (AP)
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Netanyahu Vows to Demolish Hamas, as Israel Urges Gazans South

Israeli tanks head towards the Gaza Strip border in southern Israel on Friday, Oct. 13, 2023. (AP)
Israeli tanks head towards the Gaza Strip border in southern Israel on Friday, Oct. 13, 2023. (AP)

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Sunday to "demolish Hamas" as his military prepared ground operations in Gaza to root out the militant group, whose deadly rampage through Israeli border towns stunned the nation.

Israel has urged Gazans to evacuate south, which hundreds of thousands have already done in their Hamas-controlled enclave that is home to 2.2 million people, about half in Gaza City.

Inside besieged Gaza, where conditions are deteriorating and deaths from Israeli air strikes rising, civilians said they had nowhere to flee and were not safe anywhere. Hamas has asked them to stay put.

With fears of the conflict spilling over, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued his rapid tour of Middle East states, seeking to prevent escalation and secure the release of 126 hostages Israel says were taken by Hamas back into Gaza.

Arab leaders stressed the need to protect Gaza civilians.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, which has the only viable border crossing into Gaza, said he was in talks to enable aid deliveries and called Israel's action collective punishment.

Renewed clashes on Israel's border with Lebanon on Sunday morning with Hezbollah militants, backed by Israel's regional foe Iran, underscored the dangers of regional spillover.

In a call with his French counterpart, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi warned about further escalation if Israel attacked the Gaza Strip, Iranian state media reported.

Netanyahu convened Israel's expanded emergency cabinet, including former opposition lawmakers, for the first time on Sunday. "Hamas thought we would be demolished. It is we who will demolish Hamas," he said, adding that the show of unity "sends a clear message to the nation, the enemy and the world".

Israel is carrying out the most intense bombardment Gaza has ever seen in response to the killing of 1,300 people when Hamas fighters rampaged through Israeli towns on Oct. 7. They shot men, women, children and soldiers and seized hostages in the worst attack on civilians in the Israel's history.

Israel's military said 279 of its soldiers had died.

Graphic video of the attacks, and reports from medical and emergency services of atrocities in the overrun towns and kibbutzes, deepened Israelis' sense of shock.

Gaza bombardment

Authorities in Gaza said more than 2,300 people had been killed in Israel's retaliatory strikes so far, a quarter of them children, and nearly 10,000 wounded. Hospitals are running short of supplies and struggling to cope with the flow of injured.

Among them was four-year-old Fulla Al-Laham, 14 members of whose family, including her parents and siblings, died in an Israeli air strike.

"May God keep me alive to take care of her," said her grandmother Um Muhammed Al-Laham, who held the little girl's hand as she lay in a hospital with a bandaged arm and on a drip.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said early on Sunday that 300 people had been killed and 800 more injured in Gaza during the last 24 hours.

The Israeli military on Friday told residents of the northern half of the Gaza Strip - which includes Gaza City's more than one million residents - to move south immediately.

"Residents of Gaza City, I call upon you again: Hamas is trying to prevent your evacuation. We will enable it southward. Leave Gaza City and all the surrounding areas for the sake of your personal security," reiterated chief Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari on Sunday.

Some Palestinians who went south said they were heading back north because they were attacked wherever they went.

"I am taking my family back into Gaza. I can't continue to live in a school or outside my home, when no place is safe anyway," said Abu Dawoud, a Gaza accountant.

Hussam Abu Safiya, an intensive care doctor on a children's ward at the Kamal Edwan hospital in the northern Gaza strip, said the order to evacuate was impossible.

"In this ward as you can see, there are children who are attached to ventilators, and now we have been asked to evacuate the hospital, where should we evacuate these children?"

The World Health Organization said Israel's orders for the evacuation of 22 Gaza hospitals were a "death sentence for the sick and injured".

Hamas has said dozens of people were killed in strikes on cars and trucks carrying refugees south on Friday. Reuters could not independently verify this claim.

'Nakba' trauma

Some Gazans have vowed to stay, remembering the "Nakba," or "catastrophe," when many Palestinians were forced from their homes during the 1948 war that accompanied Israel's creation.

Blinken said he had a productive meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on Sunday before heading to Egypt. He will travel to Israel again on Monday.

Crown Prince Mohammed said Saudi Arabia was working hard to try to prevent the conflict escalating and wanted to help lift the siege.

The violence in Gaza has been accompanied by the deadliest clashes at Israel's northern border with Lebanon since 2006.

On Sunday, Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters launched a missile at an Israeli border village, killing one person and wounding three others. The Israeli military said it was striking in Lebanon in retaliation.

Netanyahu's national security adviser has warned Hezbollah, not to take action that could lead to Lebanon's "destruction".

Iran has lauded the Hamas attack on Israel but denied any involvement.

"If the crimes of the Zionist regime, including the massacre of people and the siege of Gaza, do not stop, the situation will become more complicated and it will escalate," Iran's Raisi told France's Emmanuel Macron in a call, state media said on Sunday.

Hamas said in a statement on Saturday it and Iran had "agreed to continue cooperation".

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Arab World

Strike on Western Iraq Kills Seven Security Personnel

Members of Iraq's PMF carry the coffin of the PMF operations commander for Al-Anbar, Saad Dawai alongside others during a mass funeral in Baghdad on March 24, 2026. (AFP)
Members of Iraq's PMF carry the coffin of the PMF operations commander for Al-Anbar, Saad Dawai alongside others during a mass funeral in Baghdad on March 24, 2026. (AFP)
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Strike on Western Iraq Kills Seven Security Personnel

Members of Iraq's PMF carry the coffin of the PMF operations commander for Al-Anbar, Saad Dawai alongside others during a mass funeral in Baghdad on March 24, 2026. (AFP)
Members of Iraq's PMF carry the coffin of the PMF operations commander for Al-Anbar, Saad Dawai alongside others during a mass funeral in Baghdad on March 24, 2026. (AFP)

A strike on a base in western Iraq killed seven security personnel, the defense ministry said Wednesday, a day after an attack on the same base targeted the Popular Mobilization Forces.

"This resulted in the death of seven of our heroic fighters and the injury of 13 others," the ministry said of the strike in Anbar province, saying it specifically targeted the base's military healthcare clinic.

Rescue operations were ongoing, it added.

The base hosts Iraqi police, soldiers from the regular army and PMF, a security official told AFP.

It was hit by a deadly strike on Tuesday that the former paramilitaries blamed on the United States.

Iraq said late on Tuesday it would summon the US charge d'affaires and the Iranian ambassador after deadly strikes blamed on their countries, as Iraqi authorities granted the targeted groups the "right to respond".

Iraq has been pulled into the war sparked by US and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, and which has since engulfed much of the region.

Iraq has long been a proxy battleground for the United States and Iran, and has struggled to balance diplomatic ties with both countries.

Since the war began, pro-Iran armed groups have claimed responsibility for attacks on US interests in Iraq and across the region, while strikes have also targeted these groups, including state-linked positions.

In the statement from the prime minister's office, however, Iraq granted former paramilitaries within the official armed forces the right to "respond to military attacks" by drones and aircraft that targeted their headquarters.

Arab World

Spanish PM Says Israel Wants to Inflict on Lebanon ‘Same Destruction’ as in Gaza

A man walks along a street strewn with building debris at the site of an overnight Israeli airstrike that targeted a neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs on March 25, 2026. (AFP)
A man walks along a street strewn with building debris at the site of an overnight Israeli airstrike that targeted a neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs on March 25, 2026. (AFP)
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Spanish PM Says Israel Wants to Inflict on Lebanon ‘Same Destruction’ as in Gaza

A man walks along a street strewn with building debris at the site of an overnight Israeli airstrike that targeted a neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs on March 25, 2026. (AFP)
A man walks along a street strewn with building debris at the site of an overnight Israeli airstrike that targeted a neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs on March 25, 2026. (AFP)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "seeks to inflict the same level of damage and destruction" on Lebanon as Israeli ‌forces had ‌wrought on ‌the Gaza ⁠Strip, Spanish Prime ⁠Minister Pedro Sanchez told lawmakers on Wednesday.

Sanchez, who appeared before the ⁠lower house ‌to ‌explain his government's stance ‌against the ‌US-Israeli war on Iran, added that Iran's new Supreme ‌Leader was more hardline than his predecessor.

"Mojtaba ⁠Khamenei ⁠is an equally dictatorial and even more bloodthirsty tyrant than his father," Sanchez said.

Sanchez warned that the Middle East war presented a "far worse" scenario than the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"This is not the same scenario as the illegal war in Iraq. We are facing something far worse. Much worse. With a potential impact that is far broader and far deeper," he added.

Arab World

Syria on Alert to Protect its Borders with Iraq, Wary of Intervening in Lebanon

Syria's (L) and Iraq's national flags are pictured near the Iraqi-Syrian border, in Al-Qaim, western Iraq on January 23, 2026. (AFP)
Syria's (L) and Iraq's national flags are pictured near the Iraqi-Syrian border, in Al-Qaim, western Iraq on January 23, 2026. (AFP)
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Syria on Alert to Protect its Borders with Iraq, Wary of Intervening in Lebanon

Syria's (L) and Iraq's national flags are pictured near the Iraqi-Syrian border, in Al-Qaim, western Iraq on January 23, 2026. (AFP)
Syria's (L) and Iraq's national flags are pictured near the Iraqi-Syrian border, in Al-Qaim, western Iraq on January 23, 2026. (AFP)

The Syrian armed forces said they were on full alert in wake of a rocket attack from Iraq against a Syrian military base in the Hasakeh province.

The army stressed that it will perform its duties in defending Syrian territories and deterring any attack.

Iraq arrested four people in connection with an earlier rocket attack launched against a military base in neighboring Syria, officials said late Tuesday.

Monday's attack targeted a northeastern Syrian military base in Hasakeh that had until recently hosted US forces with an international anti-ISIS coalition.

These are the first arrests announced in Iraq related to the Middle East conflict that broke out on February 28.

Monday’s attack took place hour after the bust of an Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) cell in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province.

A Syrian security source told local radio that investigations are ongoing with the detainees to determine what they were planning. He revealed that they were collecting information and smuggling weapons in the area.

Assistant defense minister for the eastern region Sipan Hamo held Iraqi authorities fully and directly responsible for the attack on Hasakeh.

In a post on the X platform, he called on Baghdad to take the necessary measures to prevent a similar attack from taking place in the future.

The attack reflects the Iraqi authorities’ “inability” to impose control over their territories and failure “to prevent them from being used to launch attacks that threaten Syria’s security and safety,” he added.

Border with Lebanon

On the Syrian-Lebanese border, sources close to the Damascus government spoke of signs of an internal Lebanese escalation that is a “source of alarm for Syria.”

The sources told Asharq Al-Awsat: “It will be difficult for Syria to steer clear of any possible internal unrest in Lebanon. It will work on preventing any threat to Syria’s security.”

Hezbollah leaders had warned Lebanese authorities in recent days that the Iran-backed party would adopt a different approach towards them when the war is over.

Hezbollah has been critical of the government for banning its military operations, calling for its disarmament, calling for negotiations with Israel and recently for expelling the Iranian ambassador to Beirut.

Syrian Defense Ministry sources told Asharq Al-Awsat said Damascus was weighing three options. The first favors waiting for the end of the war before acting in Syria’s interests; the second believes in striking Hezbollah during the war because it is hostile to the Syrian people and its illegal weapons are tied to Iran and so, their presence is a threat to Lebanon and Syria; the third calls for coordination with Arab and regional parties, led by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Türkiye, before any intervention can happen.

The unrest along the borders with Lebanon and Iraq will prompt Damascus to increase its coordination with those countries to prevent the smuggling of weapons and drugs and dry up the sources of support for Hezbollah and Iran-backed militias.

Military expert Abdul Jabbar al-Oqaidi told Asharq Al-Awsat that the possibility of Syria joining the conflict through intervening in Lebanon “is a very great challenge” and will have dire consequences for the security of the region and Syria that Iran can exploit.

Perhaps Iran is trying to lure Syria into the conflict “given that Tehran has been impatiently waiting for a moment to unleash its fury on the new Syria that expelled its forces, which marked the beginning of the end of the Iranian expansionist project in the region,” he added.

Al-Oqaidi said, however, it would be wise for Syria to stay out of the war. It should limit its role to securing borders and security coordination with the relevant parties.

He predicted that Syria would stay on the side and avoid becoming involved in a conflict that does not benefit it.

The Iranian and Zionist projects only have ill intentions towards the region and Syria, he warned.

The Defense Ministry sources noted the Lebanese government’s recent decision to ban Hezbollah’s military and security operations, saying it was a positive sign.

The Syrian state will “strike with force any attempt by the party to cross the border. At the same time, it is avoiding escalation and assuring Lebanese parties,” they added, underlining the importance of stability in Syria and Lebanon and the need to avert sectarian wars.