US said to back strikes on Iran targets in Iraq, Syria as Gaza truce hopes rise
- Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who have lost more than half a dozen of their members to Israeli strikes since December, are pulling their senior officers out of Syria
- Mediators have presented Hamas with the first concrete proposal for an extended ceasefire, which the militants ‘received positively’ but have not responded to
The planned targets for US strikes in Iraq and Syria in response to the killing of three US soldiers by a drone in Jordan include “Iranian personnel and facilities”, CBS News reported on Thursday, citing American officials.
The United States has assessed that the drone, which also wounded more than 40 people, was made by Iran, four US officials told Reuters. Sources said Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards were pulling senior officers out of Syria.
The CBS report follows days of conjecture about how Washington would retaliate after three US soldiers were killed on Saturday in a strike on their base.
The fatalities were the first US deaths in an escalation of violence across the Middle East since Israel’s war in Gaza began in October.
Even as fighting has intensified this week, diplomatic efforts to achieve a ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave have accelerated.
Qatari and Egyptian mediators presented Hamas, the militant group that runs Gaza, with the first concrete proposal for an extended halt to fighting, agreed on with Israel and the US at talks in Paris last week.
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A Palestinian official close to the negotiations said the text envisages a first phase of 40 days, during which fighting would cease while Hamas freed remaining civilians among the more than 100 hostages it still holds. Further phases would see the handover of Israeli soldiers and bodies of dead hostages.
Such a long pause would be a first since October 7, when Hamas fighters attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages, precipitating an Israeli offensive that has laid waste to much of Gaza.
Health officials in the enclave said on Thursday the confirmed Palestinian death toll had risen above 27,000, with thousands more dead still lying under the rubble.
A Palestinian official said Hamas was unlikely to reject the proposal outright, but would demand guarantees that fighting would not resume, something Israel has not agreed to.
A positive-sounding speech by a Qatari spokesman at Johns Hopkins University in Washington briefly triggered some celebrations in Gaza – and a drop in the price of crude oil. But a Qatari official in Doha told Reuters there was no ceasefire deal yet, and that Hamas had “received the proposal positively” but not responded yet.
And Taher Al-Nono, media adviser to Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, said: “We have received the proposal that was put together in Paris but we haven’t yet given a response to any of the parties”.
“We can’t say that the current stage of negotiation is zero and at the same time we can’t say that we have reached an agreement.”
Celebratory firing into the air and cheering in central and southern Gaza were soon suppressed by an air strike on a house in Gaza’s main southern city, Khan Younis, that wounded 13 people, according to hospital officials.
Israel started a huge ground assault last week to capture Khan Younis, and combat has also surged in northern areas that Israel claimed to have subdued weeks ago.
Appeals to Israel from its main ally, the United States, show little sign of having succeeded in easing the plight of Gaza’s civilians. Washington is stepping up indirect pressure, however.
US President Joe Biden issued an executive order that aims to punish Jewish settlers who attack Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in an surge of violence triggered by the war in Gaza.
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Biden is also under pressure to respond firmly to the killing of US soldiers – which Washington says bears the “footprints” of Kataib Hezbollah, a pro-Iranian militia based in neighbouring Iraq – without igniting a wider war with Iran.
That group said on Wednesday it was suspending military action against US forces to avoid embarrassing Baghdad.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who have lost more than half a dozen of their members to Israeli strikes since December, are pulling their senior officers out of Syria, sources familiar with the matter said. Iranian advisers assist armed groups in both Iraq, where the US has around 2,500 troops, and Syria, where it has 900.
The CBS report quoted US officials as saying weather would be a factor in the timing of the retaliatory US strikes as Washington preferred good visibility to guard against the risk of hitting civilians.
