United Nations:

Israel’s military offensive on Gaza, which has lasted for more than six months, has turned the Palestinian territory into a “humanitarian hell”, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said on Thursday, warning that one wrong move could lead to The Middle East is plunged into wider war.

World powers have been watching nervously since Israel vowed to retaliate against Iran for an unprecedented weekend attack on its old enemy, amid growing concerns that an escalation of tit-for-tat attacks could push the region into a wider conflict.

Israel’s top allies and military suppliers, the United States and Britain, announced sweeping sanctions over Iran’s military drone program, as governments continued to call for restraint.

In a series of threats between the two foes, Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdullahian warned that Tehran would make Israel “regret” any attack on the Islamic republic.

While the world’s attention is focused on tensions with Iran, Israel continues its offensive in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The Israeli army said it bombed dozens of targets in the territory on Thursday, while Qatar said efforts to mediate a truce had stalled.

United Nations Secretary-General Guterres said: “The Middle East is on the edge of a precipice.”

“One miscalculation, one miscommunication, one mistake could lead to unimaginable consequences – a full-scale regional conflict that would be devastating for all parties involved.”

The United Nations chief reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and called on Israel to do more to allow aid into the area.

“In Gaza, six and a half months of Israeli military operations have created a humanitarian hellscape,” Guterres told the UN Security Council.

His remarks came hours before the Security Council is expected to vote on Palestine’s bid for full United Nations membership.

However, the proposal is expected to fail due to objections from the veto-wielding United States.

Western sanctions

Over the weekend, Iran launched its first-ever attack directly targeting its regional foe, but Israel, with the support of its allies, intercepted most of the 300 missiles and drones without casualties.

The attack was in retaliation for an April 1 airstrike widely blamed on Israel that leveled the Iranian consulate in Damascus and killed seven Revolutionary Guards personnel, including two generals.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas, whose attacks on Oct. 7 triggered the war in Gaza, stressing that Israel “reserves the right to defend itself” against Iran.

The United States has made clear that it will not join any Israeli attack on Iran and instead imposes sanctions on individuals and entities involved in the production of drones deployed in Iranian attacks.

“We are holding Iran accountable,” U.S. President Joe Biden said as he announced new measures after the European Union said it would also sanction Iran’s drone program.

Israel has not yet revealed how or when it will retaliate against Iran.

But ABC News quoted three unnamed Israeli sources as saying that Israel “prepared for retaliatory attacks against Iran on at least two nights in the past week, but later aborted them.”

Sources told ABC that a range of possible responses being considered by Israel include attacks or cyberattacks on Iranian proxies in the region.

A top Iranian general warned Israel on Thursday not to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Ahmed Khatalab, the head of Iran’s Nuclear Protection and Security Forces, said that if this did happen, “the regime’s nuclear facilities would be targeted and operated by advanced weapons.”

However, Tehran has also sought to calm tensions through indirect diplomatic channels with its other main rival, the United States.

Amir-Abdullahian said Iran was “trying to clearly tell the United States” that it “is not seeking to expand tensions in the region.”

Focus shifts from Gaza

Israel faces growing global opposition in a relentless war that has reduced large swaths of Gaza to rubble and its 2.4 million people under siege, with most water, food, medicine and other vital supplies blocked.

Roxane Farmanfarmaian, a Middle East and North Africa expert at the University of Cambridge, told AFP that Iran’s attacks on Israel “succeeded in diverting attention, especially from the media, from the famine in Gaza and the war in Gaza.”

The war broke out after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on October 7 that killed 1,170 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli data.

The militants also took about 250 hostages. Israel estimates that 129 people remain in Gaza, 34 of whom are presumed dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 33,970 people in Gaza, mostly women and children. according to the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory.

Gaza Civil Defense said on Thursday that 11 more bodies had been found overnight in the southern city of Khan Younis.

The far southern city of Rafah, which Israel had asked Palestinians in northern Gaza to move to early in the war but has since vowed to invade, was also bombed.

The overnight Israeli attack killed at least 10 people, where a displaced family had taken refuge in Rafah, relatives and neighbors told AFP as they searched for the bodies of the victims.

“We found the remains of children and women, we found arms and feet,” said neighbor Abdeljabbar al-Arja.

“This is terrible, this is not normal,” he said. “The whole world is complicit.”

The Quds Force, the armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, said it fired “a barrage of rockets” at the Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Sderot near the Gaza border.

The Israeli military said sirens were heard near Gaza on Thursday night.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)