Joe Biden is set to meet his national security team on Monday to discuss “developments in the Middle East”, the White House has said, as the US deploys extra fighter jets and warships to the region amid growing fears of an Iranian attack on Israel.
Regional tensions have increased after the assassination last week of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran a day after an Israeli strike in Beirut killed Fuad Shukur, a senior military commander from the Lebanese group Hezbollah. Both groups are backed by Iran, which has sworn revenge.
The US president will also speak to Jordan’s King Abdullah II, the White House said, as the US launches a fresh round of diplomacy aimed at cooling tensions.
“The overall goal is to turn the temperature down in the region, deter and defend against those attacks, and avoid regional conflict,” Jonathan Finer, the White House’s deputy national security adviser, said on CBS’ Face the Nation program. The US and Israel are preparing for every possibility, Finer added.
But fears are mounting that Israel’s war against Palestinian militants in Gaza, which began after the 7 October Hamas attack, could escalate into a wider Middle East conflict.
During a conversation between US secretary of state Antony Blinken and Iraqi prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani on Sunday, al-Sudani told the US diplomat that preventing the spread of the conflict was tied to stopping Israeli “aggression” in the Gaza Strip, Iraqi state media said.
Both Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen have said they launched attacks on Israel and elsewhere in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, where almost 40,000 people have been killed and tens of thousands more injured in Israeli attacks since 7 October, when Hamas militants killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and took 250 hostage.
Israeli attacks in Gaza continued on Sunday with deadly strikes on two schools in Gaza City and a hospital.
At least 30 people sheltering at Hassan Salama and al-Nasser schools, which housed families displaced by the fighting, were killed, including children, and dozens more were wounded, Gaza’s civil emergency service said. Israel confirmed the strikes and claimed it had been targeting Hamas command centres in the schools.
An earlier Israeli attack on the courtyard of al-Aqsa hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah killed at least five people and wounded at least another 18 as the tents of displaced people were set on fire, medical officials said. In total 44 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on Sunday, according to Gaza health officials.
The attacks came a day after an Israeli strike on another school turned shelter in Gaza City killed at least 16 people and wounded another 21, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
In Israel, a Palestinian stabbed two people to death in a city near Tel Aviv. The attacker, from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was “neutralised” by police and taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Jordanian foreign minister Ayman Safadi meanwhile made a rare trip to Tehran in a last-ditch attempt to restrain Iran at the weekend but the effort appeared destined to fail. In a meeting with Safadi, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the assassination of Haniyeh was a “major mistake by the Zionist regime [Israel] that will not go unanswered”, Iranian state TV reported.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting on Sunday that Israel was already engaged in a “multi-front war” with Iran and its proxies and was ready for any scenario while defence minister Yoav Gallant said: “If they dare to attack us, they will pay a heavy price.”
In a call with Gallant the Pentagon said US defence secretary Lloyd Austin had reiterated Washington’s support for Israel’s security and “right to self-defence against threats from Iran, Lebanese Hizballah (Hezbollah), Houthis, and other Iranian-backed terrorist groups.”
Saudi Arabia, Italy and France on Sunday became the latest of several countries calling on their citizens to leave Lebanon amid the soaring tensions.
“In a highly volatile security context”, the foreign ministry in Paris “urgently asked” its nationals to avoid travelling to Lebanon and suggested those already in the country leave “as soon as possible”.
President Emmanuel Macron also spoke with King Abdullah, with the two leaders agreeing that a regional military escalation must be avoided “at all costs”, according to the French presidency.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah, which has traded near-daily fire with Israeli forces since the Gaza war broke out, announced the deaths of two of its fighters without specifying where. The Lebanese health ministry said an Israeli strike on the southern border village of Hula killed two people.
Lebanon’s official National news agency had reported Israeli strikes on various areas of south Lebanon, after Hezbollah said it had fired a fresh barrage of rockets at northern Israel. The Israeli military said most of the 30 projectiles launched from Lebanon were intercepted.
Sirens sounded again early Monday in northern Israel’s Upper Galilee region after “numerous suspicious aerial targets were identified crossing from Lebanon”, the Israeli military said. The attack triggered a fire and an officer and a soldier were “moderately injured”, it said on Telegram.
Several western airlines have suspended flights to Lebanon and other airports in the region including Tel Aviv.
Qatar Airways said its Doha-Beirut route would “operate exclusively during daylight hours” at least until Monday.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report