Israel continues assault on Hamas targets
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had destroyed “hundreds” of Hamas sites as strikes continued across the Gaza Strip into Friday, October 20.
The IDF said that "tunnel shafts, munitions warehouses and dozens of operational headquarters” were hit.
The IDF also said it killed a member the Hamas “naval” force that had been part of the October 7 attack on Israel. Credit: Israel Defense Forces via Storyful
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An Israeli emergency responder said that they recovered the mutilated bodies of a family killed during the Hamas terror attacks that had been bound together and brutally tortured
Yossi Landau, the head of Zaka, Israel's volunteer emergency response organization as the head of operations for the country's southern region, described the sadistic scene he found after entering a home at Kibbutz Be'eri.
Landau said he saw a father, mother, and two children, aged six and seven, on their knees with their hands tied behind their backs.
"The bodies were tortured," before describing various acts of shocking mutilation. He said he believes the family members would have been forced to watch the horrors being inflicted on their loved ones.
"Fingers being... Fingers being," he said while fighting back tears. "All this happened, and by the end they all had a bullet."
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Landau said the militants then ate a meal that the family had prepared for a Jewish holiday.
"They ate this meal while torturing these children," he said.
In an interview with CNN, Landau described the terrible scene he witnessed at Kibbutz Be'eri – an epicenter of the October 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel, where more than 100 men, women, and children were killed.
Landau said other atrocities he witnessed included a naked and bound teenage girl who had been beheaded, 20 people who had been burned alive, and a mutilated pregnant mother.
The gruesome task of identifying Israel's dead and the circumstances they were killed has fallen to military forensic teams at an army base in central Israel.
They have uncovered evidence of torture and rape among the victims of last week's Hamas terrorist attacks on communities surrounding the Gaza Strip.
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Police Arrest Pro-Palestine Demonstrators in Israel's Umm al-Fahm
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They appear to have no remorse over the war crimes committed against Israelis that led to the conflict.
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Fears grow West Bank will become another front in Israel’s war as violence surges
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Palestinian death toll in West Bank surges as Israel pursues militants following Hamas rampage
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Israel-Gaza war live: IDF air strikes ‘kill 50 Palestinians’ ahead of imminent ground invasion
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Israel strikes militant compound under West Bank mosque, military says
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Israel said the compound beneath al-Ansar Mosque, in Jenin refugee camp, belonged to operatives from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad who were responsible for attacks in recent months.
"Intel was recently received which indicated that the terrorists, (who) were neutralized, were organizing an imminent terror attack," the military said in a statement.
The military released images that it said showed an entrance to a bunker under the mosque. It also released a diagram that it said showed where militants had stored weapons there.
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How Israel plans to avoid a Russia-style tank massacre in Gaza
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Israel has suggested that the long-term aim of its military campaign in Gaza is to sever all links with the territory.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said that once Hamas had been defeated, Israel would end its "responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip".
Before the conflict, Israel supplied Gaza with most of its energy needs and monitored imports into the territory.
The statement comes as Israel continues its strikes on Gaza and aid remains blocked on the border with Egypt.
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In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, Nir Barkat, Israel's Minister of Economy, warned that Iran's Ayatollahs will be 'wiped off the face of the earth' should Hezbollah, their proxy terror group in Lebanon, attack Israel.
His incendiary comments raise the grave spectre of a rapidly escalating regional conflict and come ahead of an expected Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip to 'annihilate' Hamas.
Tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers are in position on the borders of the territory, where Hamas – which is also backed by Iran – is holding around 200 hostages seized in the violent assault on southern Israel on October 7.
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It would not surprise me if the US finds itself at war with Iran too. Iranian operatives have already been attacking US forces in the Middle East, and Iran's Islamic religious bigots are clearly a hostile power that supports several terrorist groups in the region.
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Iran boasts of now being the self-proclaimed leader of jihad on behalf of all Muslims. It gloats that it is feeding the Russian war machine by exporting its own drones.
Tehran proudly supplied and funded Hamas’ savage murder of Jewish children in Israel.
It eggs on its other pawn, Hezbollah, to launch a reputed 100,000 Iranian-supplied missiles into Israel.
It constantly provokes the U.S.—mostly by veiled threats to unleash anti-American terrorists in the Middle East and perhaps inside America itself.
But above all, Iran is giddy over the appeasing Biden administration.
Biden resurrected the unhinged Obama administration’s plan of empowering a “Shiite crescent” including Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas.
This American idea of a radical bloc would supposedly birth “creative tension” and thus on autopilot balance the dominance of our friends in Israel and Persian Gulf regimes with our new Iranian clients. Yet the logical result of such madness was the massacre we saw Oct. 7 in Israel.
Biden put pro-Iranian envoy Robert Malley—now under FBI investigation—in charge of begging Iran to restart the disastrous Iran nuclear deal.
The anemic Biden administration reportedly has replied only four times to some 83 Iranian attacks on Americans.
Biden lifted economic sanctions, allowing Iran to garner tens of billions of dollars in new oil sales—to be routed to all of Israel’s terrorist enemies.
He sought to pay ransom to Iran to get back five American hostages—at a cost of $1.2 billion per captive and a green light for Tehran to take more.
The Biden administration restored in aggregate $1 billion in aid to the West Bank and Gaza, despite the long history of radical Palestinian terrorism.
This mollification of Iran also led its appendages Hamas and Hezbollah to believe that if any of them started a war against Israel, then Iran would guarantee their victory, the U.S. would do nothing—and likely force Israel to do the same nothing.
Yet a delusional Iran still is not fully aware how its loud bragging about, and support for, its client Hamas’ barbaric killing of Jewish civilians put it into an unprecedented, dangerous predicament.
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I am not convinced that Biden is intelligent enough to competently deal with Iran, but Israel is right in declaring that the mullahs in Iran are the head of the snake and need to be destroyed if peace is to eventually return. It should be done sooner than later before Iran goes nuclear.
Iranian-backed militants targeted US forces stationed at Baghdad International Airport (BIAP) and al Harir Air Base on October 20, marking the third consecutive day of attacks against US forces in the Middle East.[34] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq - an umbrella group of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias - targeted US forces stationed at Al Harir Air Base in Iraqi Kurdistan on October 20 in a drone attack.[35] It claimed to have launched two drones targeting the air base and reported that both drones “hit their target.”[36] This is the fourth attack claimed by the Islamic Resistance of Iraq during the last three days.[37] Militants from the Islamic Resistance in Iraq targeted Al Harir Air Base and Ain al Asad in Iraq and the al Tanf Garrison and Conoco Mission Support Site in Syria on October 18 and 19.[38]
Unidentified militants targeted US forces stationed at BIAP in a rocket attack on October 20.[39] Iraqi Security forces found the rocket launch site in Jihad neighborhood, which is adjacent to the airport.[40] The counter-rocket artillery mortar (C-RAM) system at BIAP engaged two rockets, destroying one.[41] This is the first attack on BIAP since October 7. No group has claimed the attack on BIAP at the time of publication.
Iranian-backed militias have conducted eight attacks over the past three days across the Middle East in a multi-theater escalation against the United States and Israel. Iranian-backed Iraqi militias threatened to conduct attacks on US forces in the region if the United States intervened in the Israel-Hamas war, as CTP-ISW previously reported.[42] Iranian-backed Iraqi groups are currently behaving as though the United States has crossed this red line. Armed Forces General Staff Chief Major General Mohammad Bagheri warned on October 19 that continued Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip could force “other actors,” including “resistance groups,” to engage in the conflict, echoing previous regime rhetoric about the possibility of a conflict expanding.[43]
Iranian-backed Iraqi militias have threatened to continue attacks on US forces in the Middle East. Tura News, affiliated with Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah, circulated a warning of additional attacks on US forces in Iraq “in the next few days.”[44] Iranian-backed Badr Organization released a promotional video repeating the group’s threat to attack the United States if it intervenes in the Israel-Hamas war.[45]
Ashab al Kahf released a statement on October 20 threatening to conduct improvised explosive device (IED) attacks on US forces.[46] Ashab al Kahf is a member of the Islamic Resistance of Iraq which claimed the one-way drone attack on US forces stationed at Ain al Asad Air Base on October 18.[47] Ashab al Kahf claimed 3 IED attacks targeting US logistics convoys in Iraq between July and August 2023.[48]
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