Israel security - Page 17

An explosion in the central Gaza strip on Saturday killed at least six members of Hamas’ military.

An Israeli satellite imaging company on Thursday released images showing what it described as “unusual” movement around the Iranian Fordo nuclear facility, a one-time uranium enrichment plant buried deep underground that was converted to a research center as part of the 2015 nuclear deal.

TEL AVIV – The explosives-laden Iranian drone that infiltrated Israeli airspace in February was a possible retaliation for the Mossad’s theft of Iran’s nuclear weapons archive, a senior Israeli intelligence official told Ynet, adding that the few Iranians who were privy to the existence of the trove attempted to recapture it immediately from Israeli operatives.

TEL AVIV – Tehran is “quaking in its boots” following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s exposé revealing the regime’s nuclear weapons program, a former Pentagon official told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot said Tuesday that Palestinian terror groups had attempted to kidnap soldiers during mass protests on the Gaza border which he said were a front for terrorist activity.

An Israeli satellite company on Monday revealed the damage caused to at least 13 buildings on an allegedly Iranian-controlled military base in northern Syria by an airstrike the previous day.

Defense and political sources told Russia and the United States, following Iran’s threats to react against attacks on their assets in Syria overnight, that if Iran attacks Israel from Syria, either itself or through its proxy Hezbollah, Jerusalem will not hold back and will respond forcefully, targeting Iranian soil.

In two separate incidents, one of which included an attack on Israeli forces, troops opened fire on four Palestinians who tried to enter Israeli territory from the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday evening, killing three of them, the army said.

TEL AVIV – A senior Israeli official said President Donald Trump is now in a better position of minimizing the threat of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East after the leaders of North and South Korea earlier on Friday pledged a “complete denuclearization” of the peninsula.

Austria said Saturday it is probing a 2012 incident in which its UN peacekeepers in the Syrian Golan Heights reportedly let local policemen drive into a fatal ambush.

Thousands of Palestinians converged on the Gaza border with Israel for a fifth round of weekly protests Friday, some throwing stones and burning tires, as a top UN official urged Israel to refrain from using excessive force against them.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday presented an aerial photograph of an alleged Iranian base outside Damascus that he said Tehran was using to bring in and train tens of thousands of fighters for the militias it backs in Syria.

TEL AVIV – Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman warned Thursday that if Iran strikes Tel Aviv, Israel would retaliate by striking Tehran and all Iranian bases in Syria, according to an interview with Saudi news outlet Elaph.

TEL AVIV — Russian plans to possibly supply Bashar Assad’s regime with new air defense systems can only be viewed as defiance of the West and an expression of Moscow’s willingness to aid Iran in solidifying its military infrastructure in Syria.

Farmers in southern Israel upset over the damage being done to their fields by “kite bombs” launched by Palestinian terrorists across the border in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the Hebrew news site Ynet reported on Tuesday.

TEL AVIV – This month of May could be the most dangerous since before the 1967 Six Day War, the former IDF intelligence chief said. 

Israel has asked Moscow not to supply the Syrian military with advanced S-300 missile systems, according to a Russian diplomat. An Israeli government spokesman declined comment on the claim that was made by the Russian diplomat on condition on anonymity.

The vice commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned Israel Friday that its airbases are “within reach” and Iran’s “hands are on the trigger and missiles are ready,” in apparent reaction to Israel’s publication on Tuesday of a map showing five Tehran-controlled bases in Syria, and boasted that Israel will have nowhere to go but the sea.

Hundreds of IDF reservists were called up for service on Thursday morning by accident, the IDF Spokesman’s Office said.

Officials said a large-scale terror attack planned for Independence Day had been averted after security officials arrested a Palestinian at a checkpoint in the northern West Bank on Wednesday with a “powerful explosive device” stashed in his truck.

TEL AVIV — As Israelis here prepare to celebrate the countries 70th anniversary starting at sundown tonight, the Israel Defense Forces is on high alert for the possibility of direct Iranian retaliation for a reported Israeli strike in Syria that targeted an Iran-operated airbase.

The Israeli military on Tuesday evening said it fired tank shells at a Hamas post in the southern Gaza Strip, after gunmen opened fire at Israeli troops operating near the border.

Iranian Army Ground Forces commander Brig.-Gen. Kiumars Heidari has warned that Israel can no longer threaten the Islamic Republic.

The Syrian regime is massing troops and armored vehicles to prepare to retake from Islamic State the Yarmouk area in southern Damascus, according to local sources and media.

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Monday told the army’s top brass to prepare for an Iran-led threat coalescing on Israel’s northern border, which he said includes the Lebanese Armed Forces.

TEL AVIV – All crossings into Israel from the West Bank and Gaza will shut down as a security measure ahead of celebrations marking Israel’s 70th Independence Day, the army said Sunday.

In an interview on Sunday on 103 FM Radio – one day after the US-led attack in Syria and hours after mystery explosions rocked Iranian bases there – former Mossad head Danny Yatom urged that preparations be made for a possible threat from Iran.

Israel went public Sunday with a military laboratory it set up in 2016 to pool anti-tunnel expertise and spearhead efforts to foil the cross-border digs.

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday announced it destroyed a sophisticated Hamas attack tunnel, leading from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory, over the weekend.

Palestinian terror organization Islamic Jihad said Saturday that four of its members were killed in an accidental explosion near the Gaza Strip border with Israel.

TEL AVIV – Israel held top-level security meetings Wednesday to prepare itself for an assault from Iran or Syria in the case that the U.S. conducts airstrikes on the wartorn country in retaliation for the Assad regime’s chemical attack. 

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military says it bombed Hamas military targets in the Gaza Strip, hours after an explosive device detonated near an Israeli army vehicle along the Gaza-Israel border.

JERUSALEM – The Israeli army said it fired at unspecified Hamas “military targets” in Gaza on Wednesday after a Palestinian bomb attack on an army engineering unit working inside the Hamas-ruled territory.

The protests along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel will continue until they achieve their goals and the Palestinians return to all of Palestine, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh vowed on Monday.

JERUSALEM – Israeli fighter jets targeted a Hamas “military target” in northern Gaza on Monday in response to Palestinians infiltrating the border and laying bombs the previous day, the army said.

TEL AVIV – A senior Iranian cleric warned that its terror proxy Hezbollah has powerful new missiles that could “turn Haifa and Tel Aviv into ghost-towns.”