⚡️Hamas and Islamic Jihad announced missile launches towards Tel Aviv

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❗️Key statements of the Russian President Vladimir Putin on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict:

▪️The conflict is complex and sensitive; it is necessary to refrain from harsh statements and avoid civilian losses.

▪️It is necessary to avoid expanding the conflict.

▪️It is necessary to deal not with the military side of the matter but with diplomacy, returning to negotiations.

▪️Russia could make its contribution to the Palestinian-Israeli settlement, but now the conflict is so acute that we don’t see anything like it.

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🇮🇱🪖 Scott Ritter: Israeli assault on Gaza is doomed to fail

Here's what Scott Ritter, military analyst and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, told Sputnik:

💬 "Urban combat is extraordinarily difficult. It is made even more so when a defender can settle in amongst the rubble of a destroyed city. Ask the Germans at Stalingrad. Ask the French, British, Indians and Poles who fought at Monte Casino. Ask either the Ukrainians or Russians about Mariupol and Bakhmut.

Digging a competent enemy out of the rubble of a destroyed city, especially when they have prepared and organized for such a battle, is deadly work. The Israeli troops who have been assembled outside of Gaza are not ready for this fight. They are not trained or equipped for this fight. They are not psychologically prepared for this fight."

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🇵🇸🇮🇱 Latest updates on Palestinian-Israeli conflict:

▪️Hamas and Islamic Jihad announced missile launches towards Tel Aviv

▪️The Israeli army fires glowing bombs into the sky on the Lebanese border after reports of gliders carrying Lebanese militants entering Israel

▪️A 'security incident' was reported near the nuclear center in the Israeli Dimona without further development

▪️Pentagon Chrief Lloyd Austin announced that the US will be providing more Iron Dome interceptors to Israel

▪️The key goal of Israel’s ongoing military operation is to prevent all possible scenarios of terrorist attacks against the country, Foreign ministry spokesman Lior Ben Dor told Sputnik

▪️Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former minister of defense Benny Gantz agreed to form an emergency unity government in Israel

▪️Iraqi prime minister asks Putin to initiate a ceasefire between Palestine and Israel

▪️Putin: Russia's stance on Palestine and Israel is well known to parties in favor of the implementation of UN decisions and the creation of a Palestinian state.

▪️Gaza Strip energy authority says only power plant stopped working due to lack of fuel

▪️More than 1,200 Israelis and 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, thousands have been injured and tens of thousands of others displaced

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🇮🇱🪖Foreign mercenaries, who were sent by Western allies to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, are currently leaving Ukraine and heading to Israel to participate in the IDF operation in the Gaza Strip, Ukrainian media report.

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🇺🇸 The White House is preparing to make a supplemental funding request to provide additional security assistance to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, American media reported citing US officials.

The report also said the supplemental request will include additional funding to bolster US border security.

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🇱🇧🇮🇱 Hezbollah posted a video of an ATGM operator eliminating two Israeli soldiers 0:20

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🇺🇸 US House Republicans are nominating Congressman Steve Scalise to serve as the next House speaker, after the lower chamber of Congress ousted Kevin McCarthy from the role last week, an American newspaper reported on Wednesday.

House Republicans nominated Scalise during a closed meeting in a vote of 113-99, the report said, citing multiple lawmakers familiar with the matter. Scalise currently serves as House Majority Leader.

The House of Representatives will now vote to elect a speaker, which they must do before conducting regular legislative business. House Democrats are set to put their support behind Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

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According to multiple American officials, US intelligence suggests that key Iranian leaders were caught off guard by the Hamas attack in Israel, raising doubts about Iran's direct involvement in planning the assault.

The Iranian officials unaware of the attack are typically involved with Iran's Quds Force, which supports proxy forces, US officials say.

While the United States and its allies believe Iran's long-standing support for Hamas makes it complicit in the attack, US intelligence officials, like DNI Deputy Director Morgan Muir, have conveyed there is no direct link between Iran and the Hamas operation.

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❗️ The Israeli Cabinet of Ministers announces the formation of an emergency government and a “military council,” media reports

❗️ A UN Security Council meeting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will be held on Friday, a Security Council source told Sputnik

Fact check: Hamas 'beheading babies' story based on weak evidence

Amid the fresh escalation of Middle East violence, a story by Israeli reporter Nicole Zedeck, in which she reported that Israeli soldiers claimed they found babies with heads severed by Hamas militants, was seized upon by the Western mainstream media despite a lack of official confirmation.

Sputnik fact-checked the media hype around the swirling Hamas "beheadings" story, and found it to be based on weak evidence.

Check out the full Sputnik's investigation

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❗️ The United States and Western countries put pressure on Mahmoud Abbas to condemn the Hamas operation, but he refused, after which they threatened to stop aid to Palestine, a source in the autonomy administration told Sputnik

🇵🇸🇮🇱 The infiltration of thousands of Palestinian fighters into Israel from Gaza seems to have at least temporarily caught Israel’s military and intelligence services totally off guard. As Israel recovers, questions have swirled about exactly what Tel Aviv may have known ahead of time.

Sputnik asked senior Israeli intelligence experts to weigh in.

Check out the full interview

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❗️ Mahmoud Abbas will meet with Antony Blinken in Amman on Friday, a source in the Palestinian administration told Sputnik

❗️ Air defense systems have destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Belgorod region, the Russian Defense Ministry said

A private residential house caught fire because of the drone's wreckage, the region's governor added.

❗️Two people were injured when a downed drone crashed into a house near Belgorod, two more people may be under the rubble, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said

The Hamas attack into southern Israel became possible due to an array of intelligence lapses, along with operational and logistical weaknesses of the military, a US report has claimed, citing senior Israeli security officials.

▪️ Firstly, intelligence officers had failed to duly track key communication channels resorted to by Palestinian attackers.

▪️ Secondly, there had been an overreliance by the Israeli military on border surveillance equipment, which the attackers had no trouble shutting down.

▪️ Thirdly, Israeli commanders had been amassed at the time of the attack at one border base. After it was overrun, communication had been cut off with the rest of the Israeli armed forces.

▪️ Willingness to “take at face value” statements by Gazan military leaders made in wiretapped telephone conversations, that they were not preparing an attack. Israeli intelligence is reportedly now determining whether these calls were real or staged.

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❗️ Kim Jong-un congratulated Putin on the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the DPRK and the Russia, which are “developing in the direction of eternal prosperity,” Korean Central News Agency reported

Israel’s defense industry: can Tel Aviv survive without American weapons?

The escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has underlined Tel Aviv’s potentially precarious security situation, with Washington’s focus on the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine sparking questions about whether the US can afford to back two allies at once. In this light, it’s worth taking a closer look at Israel’s domestic defense sector.

What prompted the birth of Israel’s defense industry? Does Israel actually need American arms?

Find out here

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❗️Two people died when a drone crashed near Belgorod; a child may remain under the rubble of a house, the governor said.

The governor added that one victim is in a coma, the second is in serious condition.