GAZA: Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Monday claimed responsibility for a bombing in Tel Aviv, calling it a “suicide operation” and threatening more attacks in the Zionist entity as the Gaza war drags on. Zionist police earlier said the late Sunday blast in the Zionist entity’s commercial hub was a “terror attack” that prompted heightened alert.

The force had reported that one person — who Zionist media said was the suspected assailant — was killed, and another wounded. The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which are both fighting against Zionist forces in the Gaza Strip, said in a joint statement that they “carried out the suicide operation that took place Sunday evening in the city of Tel Aviv”.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad threatened to carry out more such attacks in the Zionist entity “as long as the occupation’s massacres, the displacement of civilians and the policy of assassinations continue”. The police said Sunday’s attack involved “a powerful explosive”. “As a result of the explosion, a passerby was moderately injured,” the police said, adding that authorities had ordered “an increase in alert levels and extensive searches throughout the greater Tel Aviv area”.

The blast occurred shortly after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv to push for a ceasefire in Gaza after more than 10 months of war. Diplomats say a Gaza truce could help to avert a feared wider war. The Zionist military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 40,139 people, according to the territory’s health ministry, mostly women and children.

In southern Gaza, a medical source told AFP three people were killed in Abassan village and witnesses reported Zionist air strikes near the Islamic University in Khan Yunis. A medical source told AFP a baby girl was killed and several women wounded in air strikes west of Khan Yunis. The fighting has devastated Gaza. A video posted to social media by a UN official showed a convoy passing scenes of utter destruction with almost every building reduced to rubble and the few still standing badly damaged.

Violence raged on in Gaza and along the Zionist-Lebanon border where Zionist forces and Hamas’ Iran-backed ally Hezbollah have traded near-daily fire throughout the war. On Monday, a Zionist soldier and two Hezbollah fighters were killed in cross-border clashes, the Zionist military and the Lebanese group said.

Hezbollah had said earlier it launched a “simultaneous air attack” with “explosive-laden drones” on two Zionist military positions — the Yaara barracks near the border, and a base near the coastal town of Acre, around 15 km from the frontier. Hezbollah said that it responded to a Zionist “attack

and assassination” in south Lebanon’s Tyre area. On Saturday, the Zionist military had said its aircraft “eliminated” a Hezbollah operative in the Tyre area, describing him as a “commander” in the group’s elite Radwan force.

Early Monday, Hezbollah said its fighters targeted a group of Zionist soldiers “infiltrating” near the border and confronted them “with rocket weapons and artillery, forcing them to return”. Hezbollah also claimed attacks on other Zionist positions on Monday. Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported Zionist shelling and raids on several southern areas and said “enemy warplanes” flying at low altitude broke the sound barrier twice over Beirut and its suburbs.

A British diplomat based in Ireland resigned over arms sales to the Zionist entity with his email circulated online saying the UK’s foreign office “may be complicit in war crimes”, it emerged Monday. Images of his resignation email sent to colleagues were posted online, with Mark Smith, who was based in the British embassy in Dublin, writing there was “no justification for the UK’s continued arms sales to (the Zionist entity)”.

Smith, who describes himself as an expert in arms sales policy, was a second secretary dealing with “counter terror”. Issuing a follow-up statement, Smith said he had “written to the foreign secretary informing him of my resignation and urging him to urgently review the UK approach to the situation in Gaza”, according to the BBC on Monday.

“Each day we witness clear and unquestionable examples of war crimes and breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza perpetrated by the (Zionist entity),” Smith wrote in the resignation email. He said concerns regarding the legality of arms sales that he raised “at every level” of the foreign office were “disregarded”, and accused the UK government of failing to have a “robust and transparent” arms exports licensing regime.

Blinken on Monday urged the Zionist entity and Hamas not to derail negotiations that he said may be a “last opportunity” to secure a Gaza truce and hostage release deal. Blinken, on his ninth visit to the Middle East since Hamas’ Oct 7 attack, said he was back in the Zionist entity “to get this agreement to the line and ultimately over the line”.

“This is a decisive moment – probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a ceasefire and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security,” Blinken said as he met Zionist resident Isaac Herzog in Tel Aviv. The US secretary of state later met Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, and is due to travel on Tuesday to Egypt where ceasefire talks are expected to resume this week.

Months of on-off negotiations with US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have failed to produce an agreement. Ahead of talks in Qatar last week, Hamas called on mediators to implement a framework outlined in late May by US President Joe Biden, rather than hold more negotiations. Biden said on Sunday that a ceasefire was “still possible” and that the United States was “not giving up”. – Agencies