JERUSALEM/BEIRUT: Iran fired a salvo of ballistic missiles at the Zionist entity on Tuesday in retaliation for the Zionist entity’s campaign against Tehran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon. Alarms sounded across the Zionist entity and explosions could be heard in Jerusalem and the Jordan River valley after Zionists piled into bomb shelters. Reporters on state television lay flat on the ground during live broadcasts.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Iran had launched tens of missiles at the Zionist entity, and that if the Zionist entity retaliated Tehran’s response would be “more crushing and ruinous”. A senior Iranian official later told Reuters that the order to launch missiles at the Zionist entity was made by the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei remains in a secure location, the senior official added. The Zionist army said the Zionist entity’s airspace was closed following the Iranian attack.

Iraq and Jordan closed their airspace too. Reuters journalists saw missiles intercepted in the airspace of neighboring Jordan. Zionist army radio said nearly 200 missiles had been launched into the Zionist entity from Iran. Earlier, the military had announced that any ballistic missile strike from Iran was expected to be widespread and told the public to shelter in safe rooms in the event of an attack. At least four people were shot dead Tuesday in a suspected attack in Tel Aviv, police said, adding that the two assailants had been “neutralized”.

Iran has vowed to retaliate following attacks that killed the top leadership of its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon. The firing of missiles came after the Zionist entity said its troops had launched ground raids into Lebanon, though it described the forays as limited. The Zionist campaign in Lebanon is the biggest escalation of regional warfare since fighting erupted in Gaza a year ago.

In Washington, US President Joe Biden said the United States was prepared to help the Zionist entity defend itself from Iranian missile attacks. “We discussed how the United States is prepared to help (the Zionist entity) defend against these attacks, and protect American personnel in the region,” Biden said on X about a meeting held with Vice President Kamala Harris and the White House national security team earlier in the day. The Pentagon said the United States was boosting its forces in the Middle East by a “few thousand” troops.

The Iranian missile launches came after Zionist ground troops launched raids into Lebanon and its warplanes bombed from the skies. Though so far characterized by the Zionist entity as limited, the first ground campaign into

Lebanon for 18 years would pit Zionist soldiers against Hezbollah, Iran’s best-armed proxy force in the Middle East. It marks the biggest escalation of regional warfare since fighting erupted in Gaza a year ago, and follows weeks of intense airstrikes that have decapitated Hezbollah by killing most of its top leaders. More than a thousand Lebanese have been killed and a million have fled their homes.

Iran had vowed to retaliate against the Zionist entity, raising fears that war could spill across borders throughout the region, despite efforts by the United States, the Zionist entity’s closest and most powerful ally, to contain it. In the latest announced killing of a senior Hezbollah figure, the Zionist entity earlier said it had assassinated Muhammad Jaafar Qasir, describing him as a commander in charge of weapons transfers from Iran and its affiliates.

The rapid escalation that has engulfed Lebanon into war has killed hundreds. Near the city of Sidon along the Mediterranean south of Beirut, mourners wept over coffins containing black-shrouded bodies of people killed in Zionist strikes. “The building got struck down and I couldn’t protect my daughter or anyone else. Thank God, my son and I got out, but I lost my daughter and wife, I lost my home, I have become homeless. What do you want me to say? My whole life changed in a second,” said resident Abdulhamid Ramadan.

Many Lebanese said they were ready to resist Zionist forces. “Not just Hezbollah, all of Lebanon will fight this time. All of Lebanon is determined to fight (the Zionist entity) for the massacres it committed in Gaza and Lebanon,” said Abu Alaa, a Sidon resident. In Beirut, the Zionist entity struck a high-rise building in the central Jnah area and one in the capital’s southern suburbs that briefly closed the road to Beirut airport.

A Zionist security official said troops in southern Lebanon had begun limited raids into Lebanon overnight that only went a short distance over the border, adding that no direct clashes with Hezbollah fighters were reported. The military said similar such raids had in fact been taking place in recent months. But in a clear sign that the war could expand further, the military said it was calling up four additional reserve brigades for operational missions on the northern border.

Hezbollah, which suffered heavy losses in a spate of attacks last month, said it targeted a Zionist intelligence base near Tel Aviv and other military facilities on Tuesday, as air raid sirens sounded and blasts rang out in the coastal city. The group “launched salvoes of Fadi 4 rockets at the Glilot base of the military intelligence’s unit 8200 and the Mossad headquarters located on the outskirts of Tel Aviv,” it said in a statement. Lebanon’s official National News Agency said a Zionist air strike on Ain al-Helweh Palestinian refugee camp killed six people, and Zionist shelling of border communities killed 10.

Elsewhere, Syria’s state television said anchor Safaa Ahmad was killed “in the (Zionist) aggression” on Damascus, and official news agency SANA reported three civilians killed. Lebanon’s Health Minister Firass Abiad said more than 1,000 people have been killed since Sept 17. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the UN humanitarian agency appealed for more than $400 million in aid for the displaced, estimating there could be as many as one million.

Hamas appealed for “global solidarity with Gaza and Lebanon” in rallies planned for the Gaza war’s first anniversary on Monday. Zionist airstrikes killed at least 37 people in Gaza on Tuesday, local medics said and fighting ramped up. Palestinian health officials said at least 13 people, including women and children, were killed in two Zionist strikes on two houses in Nuseirat, one of the enclave’s eight historic refugee camps. Another strike on Al-Shejaia School sheltering displaced Palestinian families in the Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City killed at least seven people, medics added.

Later on Tuesday, two separate Zionist attacks killed five Palestinians in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip and in the Zeitoun suburb of Gaza City, medics said. In Khan Younis, in the south of the enclave, six Palestinians were killed in a Zionist air strike on a tent housing displaced people, medics said. Hours later, a Zionist airstrike on a car in western Khan Younis, killed six Palestinians, medics said. Footage circulated on social media showed a mangled, burnt-out vehicle.

The armed wings of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and other smaller militant factions said in separate statements that their fighters attacked Zionist forces operating in several areas of Gaza with anti-tank rockets, mortar fire and explosive devices. “The eyes of the world now are on Lebanon while the occupation continues its killing in Gaza. We are afraid the war is going to go on for more months at least,” said Samir Mohammed, 46, a father of five from Gaza City. “It is all unclear now as (the Zionist entity) unleashes its force undeterred in Gaza, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and God knows where else in the future,” he told Reuters. – Agencies