Iran's Khamenei says missile attack on Israel 'legal and legitimate'
Thousands of people gathered at Tehran’s Grand Mosque for the sermon
Beirut, Lebanon: Iran's supreme leader vowed in a rare address on Friday that his allies around the region would keep fighting Israel, as he defended his country's missile strike on his country's arch-foe.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's address in Tehran was the first since Iran launched its second ever attack on Israel, and also the first since exchanges of fire pitting Hezbollah fighters against Israeli troops escalated into full-blown war in Lebanon.
Nearly a year after Palestinian militant group Hamas launched the deadliest attack on Israel in its history on October 7, Israel announced it was shifting its focus to securing its border with Lebanon.
Israel says its objective is to allow 60,000 Israelis displaced by a year of cross-border rocket attacks launched by Hezbollah to return to their homes.
Israel's attacks on Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon have killed more than 1,000 people since September 23, according to the Lebanese health ministry, and forced hundreds of thousands more to flee their homes in a country already mired in economic crisis.
They have also killed a host of Hezbollah commanders, an Iranian general and, in their biggest blow to the group in decades, assassinated its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
Speaking to a crowd of thousands in Farsi-speaking Iran, he said in Arabic: "The resistance in the region will not back down with these martyrdoms, and will win."
The address comes as Israel weighs retaliation for Hezbollah backer Iran's missile attack which Tehran said was revenge for the killing of Nasrallah and other top figures.
The escalation has left people in Lebanon fearful that there will be no swift end to the violence engulfing their country.
Border crossing closed
On Friday, Lebanon said an Israeli strike cut off the main international road to Syria, after Israel said Hezbollah was transporting weapons through the tiny Mediterranean country's principal land border crossing.
The strike, which Israel has not commented on, comes after 310,000 people, mostly Syrians, have in recent days fled the war pitting Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon for relative safety in neighbouring Syria.
Israel targets potential Hezbollah successor
It follows an intense night of bombardment of Hezbollah's main bastion in the southern suburbs of Beirut, with a US news website saying Israel targeted the militant group's potential successor just a week after it killed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The escalating assaults by Israel come as it weighs retaliation for Hezbollah backer Iran's missile attack.
The air raids reportedly targeted Hezbollah official Hashim Safi Al Din, considered Nasrallah’s likely successor to former chief Hassan Nasrallah, while he was in an underground bunker. It remains unclear if he was killed in the strike.
Israel announced this week that its troops had started "ground raids" into parts of southern Lebanon, a stronghold of Hezbollah, after days of heavy bombardment of areas across the country where the group holds sway.
The bombing has killed more than 1,000 people, according to Lebanon's health ministry, and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes in a country already mired in economic and political crisis.
Israel, at war in Gaza since Hamas's October 7 attack, says it shifted its focus to secure its northern border and ensure the safe return of more than 60,000 people displaced by Hezbollah attacks over the past year.
On the Gaza front, the Israeli military said a strike three months ago killed three senior Hamas leaders, including Rahwi Mushtaha, the head of the militant movement's government in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
In Lebanon, the Israeli military said it hit "targets belonging to Hezbollah's intelligence headquarters in Beirut".
Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported three air strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, with a source close to Hezbollah telling AFP the target was an evacuated building that housed the group's media relations office.
Israel told Lebanese people to evacuate more than 20 villages and the city of Nabatiyeh.
"For your own safety, you must evacuate your homes immediately and head north of the Awali River. Save your lives," army spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X.
Central Beirut strike
Hezbollah said it fought off a bid by Israeli troops to advance at Fatima's Gate on the border.
It also said it set off two explosive devices against advancing Israeli forces as it kept up its cross-border rocket fire.
The military said an overnight strike killed 15 Hezbollah fighters in Bint Jbeil, an area heavily damaged during Israel's last war with the militant group in 2006.
Later the Lebanese army said one of its soldiers was killed when "the Israeli enemy targeted an army post in the Bint Jbeil area" - the third death among its troops in the current escalation - prompting retaliatory fire.
A Lebanese military official said it was the army's first response to Israeli fire since last October.
Israel earlier carried out a deadly air raid in downtown Beirut, hitting an emergency services rescue facility run by Hezbollah, killing seven workers, the service said.
Hassan Ammar, 82, who had been staying in the high-rise building whose walls were partly blown out by the strike after he fled south Lebanon, said: "We are peaceful civilians in our homes."
Israel has yet to comment on the strike, but said it had hit about 200 Hezbollah targets "in Lebanese territory".
According to Lebanon's Health Minister Firass Abiad, more than 40 rescuers and firefighters have been killed by Israeli fire in three days.
Iran missile attack
The latest strikes came after Hezbollah-backer Iran launched its second direct missile attack on Israel, prompting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to warn that Tehran would pay.
As Israel weighs retaliation for the Iranian missile strike, President Joe Biden said the United States was "fully supportive" of the ally but ruled out supporting a strike on Iran's nuclear sites.
Iran, which arms and funds Lebanon's Hezbollah, said it would step up its response if Israel counterattacked.
Khamenei's rare Friday sermon - a first in almost five years - comes three days before the one-year anniversary of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, triggered by the Iran-backed Palestinian group's October 7 attack.
The supreme leader will lead Muslims in prayer at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla mosque in central Tehran, his official website said.
The prayer will follow "a commemoration ceremony" at 10:30 am (0700 GMT) for Hassan Nasrallah, the slain leader of Tehran-backed Lebanese armed movement Hezbollah.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards, who answer to Khamenei, said Tuesday's barrages of some 200 missiles were in retaliation for Israel's killing of Nasrallah alongside Guards commander Abbas Nilforoushan in a late September strike on Beirut, and of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.
Khamenei last led Friday prayers in January 2020 after Iran fired missiles at a US army base in Iraq, in response to a strike that killed revered Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani.
Israel's ground operations and strikes follow the killing in a massive bombing in south Beirut of Hezbollah's chief Hassan Nasrallah and other commanders.
Israel intercepted most of the 200 missiles launched by Iran. In the Israel-occupied West Bank, a Palestinian was killed by shrapnel.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned that "those who attack the state of Israel, pay a heavy price", while Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned of a "stronger" response.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards said its missiles were fired in retaliation for Nasrallah's killing alongside that of a general in the Guards' Quds force, as well as for the killing in July of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
A day after its military said it was launching ground operations in south Lebanon, Israel on Wednesday reported the first death of a soldier in the Israel-Hezbollah war, a toll that later rose to eight dead.
The Israeli military said it had deployed a second division to support the fighting.
Lebanon's health ministry said 46 people were killed and 85 others injured by Israeli strikes over the previous 24 hours.
'Sickening cycle'
The impact of the war was also felt in Syria, where the Syrian Observatory for Human Right monitor said an Israeli strike in Damascus killed four people, including Hassan Jaafar Al Qasir, Nasrallah's son-in-law.
Iranian media said a Revolutionary Guards military "adviser" in Syria, Majid Divani, succumbed Thursday to wounds sustained in an Israeli strike on Damascus earlier this week.
UN chief Antonio Guterres called for an end to the "sickening cycle of escalation" in the Middle East and the G7 group of wealthy nations said a diplomatic solution was "still possible".
Months of similar calls and mediation efforts have so far failed to bring a Gaza truce.
Hezbollah began strikes on Israeli troops a day after Hamas staged its October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Israel's retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 41,788 people, the majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.