Iran’s response to Israeli attack awaited as Tehran says it is ‘entitled’ to defend itself – live

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has warned that the situation in northern Gaza is “catastrophic” amid “intensive” operations unfolding around and within healthcare facilities.

Posting to X on Saturday, he said “a critical shortage of medical supplies, compounded by severely limited access, are depriving people of life saving care” in the north of the Palestinian territory.

His comments came after Israeli forces withdrew from Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza earlier on Saturday, a day after storming it. The siege “came at a heavy cost”, Tedros said.

The WHO chief said 44 male hospital staff had been detained, leaving only female staff, the hospital director and one male doctor to care for nearly 200 patients “in desperate need of medical attention”.

“Reports of the hospital facilities and medical supplies being damaged or destroyed during the siege are deplorable,” Tedros wrote.

The whole health system in Gaza has been under attack for over a year. WHO cannot stress loudly enough that hospitals must be shielded from conflict at all times. Any attack of healthcare facilities is a violation of international humanitarian law.

Lauren Gambino

The US vice-president and Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, took a handful of questions from reporters in Michigan about the situation in the Middle East.

Harris said she had a “lengthy and important” conversation with the president, Joe Biden, and members of the US national security team earlier on Saturday, following Israel’s pre-dawn strikes on Iran.

“We maintain the importance of supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, Harris said. “And we are also very adamant that we must see de-escalation in the region going forward and that will be our focus.”

Underscoring her dual roles as vice president and candidate, Harris was briefed on the situation before stepping on the stage in Houston for a rally with Beyoncé on Friday night. Harris told reporters:

This war must end. We must get the hostages out and work toward a two-state solution.

Asked about the views of the US’s Arab allies, Harris said there was a “consensus among leaders in the region, and certainly it is the strong perspective of the United States that there must be the de-escalation and not an escalation.”

She stressed the US would always defend Israel against an attack by Iran.

Iran’s mission to the UN said Israeli warplanes attacked several Iranian military and radar sites from Iraqi airspace, and blamed the US for what it called its “complicity”.

Iran’s military has announced the deaths of two additional soldiers following Israel’s attacks on the country, bringing the total death toll to four.

All four men served in the country’s military air defence, it said.

Simon Tisdall

For years, Israel and Iran have waged a “shadow war”, attacking each other indirectly using proxy forces, assassinations, informants, spies and hybrid, non-military covert means.

Now this undeclared, largely silent war is undisguisedly out in the open. It’s become a shooting war, it’s noisy, it’s escalating, and there’s no end in sight.

This is not to say Israel’s large-scale, three-wave air assault on Tehran and other targets inside Iran early on Saturday morning means the two enemies are now engaged in all-out conflict.

This is not yet the full-scale, region-wide conflagration so many in the Middle East fear. That may be coming, but it’s still in the future.

What Israel’s attack – retaliation for Iran’s 181-missile barrage earlier this month – does mean is that another psychological barrier has been passed.

Before the 7 October massacres of Israelis by Iran’s ally Hamas, it was hard to imagine face-to-face military confrontation on each other’s soil. It seemed too risky. Now it is being normalised.

Read the full analysis: Iran-Israel’s shadow war is out in the open and will only escalate unless causes are addressed

Hezbollah has condemned Israel’s attack against Iran, calling it a “dangerous escalation in the region”.

The US “bears full responsibility for the massacres, tragedies and pain” caused by Israel, the group said.

The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, is “deeply alarmed” by the escalation in the Middle East following attacks overnight by the Israel Defense Forces on Iran, according to a statement from his spokesperson.

“All acts of escalation are condemnable and must stop,” Guterres said in the statement, adding:

The secretary-general urgently reiterates his appeal to all parties to cease all military actions, including in Gaza and Lebanon, exert maximum efforts to prevent an all-out regional war and return to the path of diplomacy.

Joe Biden, the US president, has said he hopes the Israeli strikes on Iran overnight were “the end”.

Biden also said it appeared that Israel had only struck military targets in its attack on Iran.

Iran has said three sites were hit and that “limited damage” was caused.

Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli attacks killed 19 people in the country on Friday, bringing the total death toll to 2,653 since October 2023.

It’s just after 6.30pm in Tehran and 6pm in Tel Aviv. Here’s a roundup of the latest developments:

• Two soldiers were killed in Saturday morning’s Israeli airstrikes on Iran, according to the official news agency IRNA. The attacks, carried out in retaliation to the missile barrage launched by Iran on 1 October, were heard over several hours in Tehran, the capital, and at nearby military bases.

• The UK and US are among the nations to have warned against further escalation alongside the EU. Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan have all condemned the attacks.

• Iran’s foreign ministry has defended its right to “defend itself against external aggressive acts”. The ministry called the Israeli attack a violation of international law, adding that Tehran “recognises its responsibilities towards regional peace and security”.

• The internal debate on how Iran should respond turns on whether to treat Israel’s actions as too grave to be ignored, or to elect not to launch reprisals on the basis of advice coming from the region and from the US.

• Hezbollah has fired rockets at Israeli soldiers on the outskirts of Lebanon village Aita al-Shaab, and has also launched drones against an Israeli air base south of Tel Aviv. The “aerial attack with drones” against the Tel Nof base was the first claim of its kind in one year.

• Hezbollah also fired rockets at five residential areas in northern Israel on Saturday, including the outskirts of Krayot near Haifa. Elsewhere the Israeli military has said that it killed a Hamas militant during a raid in the West Bank on Saturday.

• Israeli forces have withdrawn from a hospital complex in northern Gaza one day after storming it. Medics said at least 44 of the 70-member team at the Kamal Adwan hospital in Jabalia had been detained by the army, with 14 later released.