Iran’s military mocks Trump’s claims of ceasefire talks, strikes Gulf states overnight

 

Smoke rises from Kuwait international airport after a drone strike on fuel storage. Photograph: AP

Israel has continued to launch strikes on southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs against what it said were infrastructure belonging to the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

During a wave of airstrikes in Lebanon overnight, the Israeli military said it hit a Hezbollah command centre in Beirut and gas stations owned by the group.

Lebanese authorities say 1,072 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since 2 March, including 121 children.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates 1 million people in Lebanon have been displaced since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on 28 February.

People pray near the grave of a relative at a temporary mass grave, in Tyre in southern Lebanon. Photograph: Hussein Malla/AP

A motorcyclist rides past the rubble of a damaged building in the Al Chiyah area, a southern suburb of Beirut. Photograph: Wael Hamzeh/EPA

A destroyed building, including a branch of Al-Qard Al-Hassan, Hezbollah's financial institution, after an Israeli strike in the Al Chiyah area. Photograph: Wael Hamzeh/EPA

Owner of a cat shelter, Diana Abadi, who was displaced from Beirut's southern suburbs amid escalating hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, feeds her rescued cats in an apartment. Photograph: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters

A displaced Lebanese woman sits beside a child, overseeing his online studies on a mobile phone at a school converted into a shelter in the town of Dekwaneh, north of Beirut. Photograph: Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images

 

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, has accused Benjamin Netanyahu of seeking to “inflict the same level of damage and destruction” on Lebanon as Israeli forces had wrought on Gaza.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks in the two-year war in Gaza, with millions displaced and much of the strip destroyed, leading to accusations of genocide which Israel has denied.

Speaking to the Spanish parliament earlier today, Sanchez said Israel’s expanded military offence against Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon was going down a similar path.

“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,” said Sanchez, who has long been one of the most vocal critics of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Pedro Sanchez addresses the Spanish parliament over the war in the Middle East, as he warned it presented a ‘far worse’ scenario than the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Photograph: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images

 

He added that Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was “equally dictatorial and even more bloodthirsty” than his predecessor and father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in US-Israeli strikes at the start of the current conflict.

The ‌US-Israeli war on Iran “is an absolute disaster”, Sanchez said, adding: “And all for what? To undermine international law, destabilise the Middle East, reignite conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon, and bury Gaza under the rubble of oblivion and indifference.”

 

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