The US says it’s moving an aircraft carrier, vessels and spurts to the eastern Mediterranean and will also give Israel fresh outfit and security.
It follows the Hamas attack on southern Israel, which President Biden called an” unknown and shocking assault”. A US National Security prophet said several US citizens were among the dead.
Israel says further than 700 people have been killed and 100 abducted. In Gaza, further than 400 people have been killed following retaliatory Israeli air strikes, according to Palestinian officers.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said the USS Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier, a bullet sportfisherman and four bullet destroyers were heading to the region. He said fighter spurts would also be transferred.
Farther military aid to Israel would be transferred in the coming days, the White House said, adding that the US was working to insure Israel’s adversaries didn’t try to seek advantage from the situation.
The large deployment reflects American enterprises that the conflict between Israel and Hamas could draw in other corridor of the region.
In particular, the US is eager to help Lebanon’s important Hezbollah movement from joining the conflict. It’s backed by Iran, which also finances and arms Hamas.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi has expressed support for the Hamas attack, saying Israel demanded to be held to regard for venturing the region.
Hamas has said backing from Iran helped it carry out its attack, which involved rockets, drones and zealots on paragliders and saw hundreds of fighters break through Israeli border bastions around the Gaza Strip.
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US hadn’t seen substantiation of direct Iranian involvement, but that Iran had been helping the Gaza- grounded group for times. ” Hamas wouldn’t be Hamas without the support that it’s gotten over numerous times from Iran. We have not yet seen direct substantiation that Iran was behind this particular attack or involved.
But the support over numerous times is clear,” he told US television. At a UN Security Council meeting, Iran denied involvement in the attack on Israel.
Hundreds of people are still reported missing. Among them is 23- time-old American- Israeli Hersh Golberg- Polin, who was at a music jubilee in the desert which was stormed by zealots.
His parents told the Jerusalem Post they entered two dispatches from him reading” I love you” and” I am sorry.” Reports have started to crop of other missing North Americans too, including peace activist Vivian Silver.
A friend of the 75- time-old Canadian told The Canadian Jewish News that Ms Silver had called her family on Saturday morning to say Palestinian zealots were at her door. ” There was screaming and yelling and Vivian was fighting and also the phone went dead,” he said.
Israel’s minister to the US, Michael Herzog, told CBS News that he understood Americans were among the dogfaces and civilians kidnapped in southern Israel but didn’t have details.
The US sends billions of dollars of military aid to Israel, a close ally, each year. Since World War Two, Israel has been the largest overall recipient of US foreign aid. The UN Security Council is due to meet in New York shortly to discuss the violence in Israel and Gaza.
