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Copyright © 2024 CGTN. 京ICP备20000184号
Disinformation report hotline: 010-85061466
Police and soldiers take security measures after unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attacks in Erbil, Iraq on January 16, 2024. Several explosions were reported in the vicinity of the U.S. consulate in Erbil, with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) quickly claiming responsibility, saying it was targeting a 'spy headquarters' and a 'gathering of anti-Iran terrorist groups' in the region with ballistic missiles. /CFP
Teams carry out search and rescue operations after unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attacks in Erbil, Iraq on January 16, 2024. /CFP
A picture shows a view of a damaged building following a missile strike launched by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on the Kurdistan Region's capital of Erbil, on January 16, 2024.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they attacked the spy headquarters of Israel in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region with missile strikes, state media reported late on Monday, while the elite force said they also struck in Syria against the Islamic State.
Iran said the strikes in Iraq destroyed "one of the main espionage headquarters" of Israel in response to what they said were Israeli attacks that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders and members of the Iranian resistance front.
Relations between Iraq and Iran deteriorated sharply following the strikes. Iraq recalled its ambassador from Tehran for consultations and summoned Iran's chargé d'affaires in Baghdad on Tuesday in protest. Iraqi authorities "will take all legal steps" necessary, including "lodging a complaint with the (UN) Security Council", the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The two countries had fought a bloody war in the 1980s but have since established close ties after Saddam Hussein's rule was toppled in 2003. Iran, which supplies one-third of Iraq's electricity, saw its influence expand drastically as Tehran-backed militias grew in its Shiite-majority neighbor. U.S. sway and the presence of its military assets in Iraq, however, has long been a source of volatility between the two neighbors.
A car leaves the district headquarter hospital (DHQ) in Panjgur town of Balochistan province on January 17, 2024 where victims of an Iranian air strike were moved earlier this morning. Pakistan recalled its ambassador from Iran on January 17, and blocked Tehran's envoy from returning to Islamabad after an Iranian air strike killed two children in the west of the country on January 16. /CFP
View of missiles fired by Pakistan Armed Forces to target militant hideouts inside the Iranian border after Iran violated the country's sovereignty and launched a strike in Balochistan, on Thursday, January 18, 2024. "This morning Pakistan undertook a series of highly coordinated and specifically targeted precision military strikes against terrorist hideouts in Siestan-o-Baluchistan province of Iran," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on January 18. /CFP
Pakistanis chant slogans at a demonstration to condemn Iran strike in the Pakistani border area, in Islamabad, Pakistan, Thursday, January 18, 2024. /CFP
Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch speaks during the weekly briefing at Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in Islamabad, Pakistan on January 18, 2024. "Pakistan considers people of Iran as our friends and brothers and we have no interest in escalating any situation," said Baloch. Pakistan on Thursday said that Islamabad has "no interest in escalating any situation" with Tehran after the country's military carried out strikes against 'terrorist hideouts' inside Iran. /CFP
In this handout photograph taken and released by the Pakistan's Press Information Department (PID) on January 19, 2024, Pakistan's Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar (2ndR) chairs a National Security Committee meeting along with armed forces chiefs and other government officials in Islamabad. Pakistan and Iran "agreed to de-escalate" tensions on January 19, Islamabad said. /CFP
Iran sent shockwaves around the region on Tuesday with a missile strike against what it described as hardline Sunni Muslim militants in southwest Pakistan. Two days later, Pakistan in retaliation attacked what it said were separatist militants in Iran - the first air strike by warplanes on Iranian soil since the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Tensions escalated between the two neighbors, with both Iran and Pakistan recalling their ambassadors from the respective capitals. But enmities have soon cooled down. Diplomatic ties were restored following a call between the two countries' foreign ministers, according to a Friday statement by Pakistan's foreign ministry.
Both the heavily-armed neighbors are oftentimes at odds over instability on their frontier. Analysts say Iran's strike in Pakistan was driven by Tehran's efforts to reinforce its internal security rather than its ambitions for the Middle East.
Tuesday's strike was one of Iran's toughest cross-border assaults on the Sunni militant Jaish al-Adl group in Pakistan, which it says has links to Islamic State. Many of Jaish's members previously belonged to a now-defunct militant group known as Jundallah that had pledged allegiance to Islamic State.
For Iran, the trigger for the flare-up was a devastating bombing on January 3 that killed nearly 100 people at a ceremony in the southeastern city of Kerman to commemorate commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone in 2020.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak updates MPs over the Red Sea shipping attacks in the House of Commons in London, January 15, 2024. The Prime Minister told MPs all planned targets had been destroyed in the strikes with no reports of civilian casualties, and also explained why he had not informed Parliament before the military action took place. /CFP
Students from the Sana'a University lift the Palestinian flag and Houthi group emblems, and shout slogans while taking part in a protest staged in solidarity with people in Palestine, and anti-U.S. aerial attacks on sites in Yemen on January 17, 2024 in Sana'a, Yemen. /CFP
This photograph provided by the Indian Navy shows U.S.-owned ship Genco Picardy that came under attack on January 17 from a bomb-carrying drone launched by Yemen's Houthi movement in the Gulf of Aden, January 18, 2024. /CFP
Yemen's Houthi-affiliated boys hold flags of Palestine and the Houthi emblem march during a protest held to condemn the U.S. for redesignating Houthis as a global terrorist group, and against the U.S.-British aerial attacks conducted on Yemen on January 19, 2024, in Sana'a, Yemen. /CFP
The French navy ship, the FS Languedoc (D653), as seen in port on January 20, 2024 in Djibouti, Djibouti. /CFP
Attacks on commercial ships by Yemen's Houthi movement, who say they are acting in protest of Israel's military campaign in Gaza, have imperiled a vital global shipping route through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait that lies between Yemen and Djibouti and connects the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea. The disruption has forced more shipping companies to divert around the Horn of Africa, upending supply chains and increasing costs.
The United States' forces have conducted six rounds of strikes targeting Houthi military sites in Yemen in an attempt to stop the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.
Following the launch of a U.S.-led naval mission in the region in late December, European Union member states on Tuesday gave initial backing to a similar mission to protect ships from Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.
Italy, Spain and France stood out last week by not taking part in U.S. and British strikes against the Houthis in Yemen and not signing a statement put out by 10 countries justifying the attacks. The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark signed on to the statement.
The divergence highlights divisions in the West over how to deal with the Iranian-aligned Houthis.
Relatives of Ahed Mahmoud Mohammed, a Palestinian woman in her early 20s, mourn at her family's home in Dura south of Hebron, at the start of her funeral on January 16, 2024, a day after she was killed when Israeli forces stromed the West Bank village. /CFP
Smoke billows over the southern Lebanese village of El-Khiam near the border with Israel on January 18, 2024. /CFP
Palestinian Muslims perform the Friday noon prayer on a street blocked by Israeli security forces in the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ras al-Amud, on January 19, 2024 as age restrictions have been imposed to access the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. /CFP
This photograph taken on January 19, 2024 in the occupied West Bank shows a damaged ambulance in a refugee camp in Tulkarm, where the Israeli army carried out overnight raids. /CFP
Emergency services work at a building hit by an air strike in Damascus, Syria, January 20, 2024. Syrian and Iranian state media outlets say an Israeli strike on Damascus killed four Iranian advisers. /CFP
Against the backdrop of escalating cross-border tensions with Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, Israel's army chief said on Wednesday the likelihood of all-out conflict breaking out on the country's northern border with Lebanon has become "much higher."
Lebanese officials told Reuters Hezbollah has rebuffed Washington's initial ideas for cooling tit-for-tat fighting with neighboring Israel, such as pulling its fighters further from the border, but remains open to U.S. diplomacy to avoid a ruinous war.
Since October, violence has also surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where three Palestinians were killed on January 15 in separate clashes with the Israeli army, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Amid widening tensions across the Middle East, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on Saturday four of its "military advisers" had been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Damascus.
Bodies of some Palestinians killed in the Israeli attacks are buried in the garden of a school affiliated to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) at the Bureij refugee camp after Israeli forces withdrew from the area in Deir Al Balah, Gaza on January 18, 2024. /CFP
Displaced Palestinians using eSIM cards attempt to get a signal on January 19, 2024, in order to contact their relatives on a hill in Rafah, on the southern Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt, amid continuing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. Power cuts have become a fact of life in war-torn Gaza. But thanks to embedded SIM cards, Palestinians can still access the internet and stay in touch with loved ones abroad. /CFP
Israeli army self-propelled artillery Howitzers roll in southern Israel along the border with the Gaza Strip on January 19, 2024. /CFP
An Israeli army self-propelled artillery Howitzer fires a shell from southern Israel toward the Gaza Strip amid continuing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, on January 19, 2024 /CFP
A picture taken from the position of southern Israel along the border with the Gaza Strip on January 19, 2024, shows damaged or levelled buildings in the Gaza Strip. /CFP
Relatives and friends of hostages sit on a street outside the private residence of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Caesarea, Israel, January 20, 2024, in support of a father of an Israel hostage held in Gaza who has begun a hunger strike to protest the government's lack of visible progress on a new hostage deal. /CFP
The Gaza health ministry said on Friday the death toll from more than three months of conflict reached 24,762. More than 1.7 million people - around 75 percent of Gaza's population - are estimated to be displaced, many forced to move repeatedly, according to UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) figures. Many have sought refuge in tents that do little to protect them from the elements and disease.
Israel has launched a major new advance in Khan Younis this week to capture the city, which it says is now the primary base of the Hamas fighters.
Israel's onslaught on Gaza was triggered by Hamas attacks in which around 1,200 people were killed and 253 taken hostage, of whom about half are still in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
In one of countless protests in Israel since October 7 to push for action to secure the release of the hostages, some 200 women marched in Tel Aviv on Friday, including one pulled along in a cage. They chanted "Their time is running out, bring them back".
Israeli cabinet minister and former military chief Gadi Eizenkot said a deal would be needed for the hostages to be released alive.
Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades, a Gaza-based militant group allied to Hamas, said on Friday an Israeli soldier it was holding captive had been killed in an Israeli air strike, according to a video released by the group to media outlets.
(With input from agencies)