Analysis: The risk of a war nobody wants is great
There is a risk that this weekend's US attacks against Iran-backed groups in Yemen, Syria and Iraq could lead to a wider conflict between the US and Iran that neither Tehran nor Washington really wants to start. Both the BBC's Jeremy Bowen and Michael Hirsh write in Politico.
Bowen writes in his analysis that the Iran-backed militant groups in the area will respond with more attacks against Western targets and that the already heated conflict "continues to heat up".
"I don't think anyone can control the rate at which it happens," he writes.
Michael Hirsh writes that the US has thousands of soldiers in the Middle East and that Iran will likely have difficulty controlling the many militant groups Tehran supports.
“Iran has several proxy groups waiting to attack and the US has plenty of soldiers that the groups can target. The risk of war is greater now than ever," he writes.
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The Israel-Hamas war|The attacks
IDF ran online propaganda account - commander is poked
Israel's army IDF is now swinging and confirming that it is behind the Telegram account "72 Virgins - Uncensored" which spread many pictures and videos of dead Hamas terrorists. This is written by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which reviewed the account in December.
After the review, the IDF launched an internal investigation, and it is now determined that the account was run by a special unit within the military that focuses on psychological warfare. The commander of the unit is now poked.
In the original disclosure, sources told Haaretz that the entity set up the account on October 9, two days after Hamas's terror attacks in Israel, without obtaining approval from higher authorities.
The pictures and videos were usually very graphic and the captions were raw. The enemies of Hamas were called, among other things, "cockroaches" and "rats" and a video clip allegedly showed how a soldier dipped his ammunition in pig fat before he fired. A caption for a video of a dead and bloodied Hamas member read:
“Trash juice!!!! Another dead terrorist!! You have to watch it with the sound on, you will die laughing.”
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Bombs fall on Rafah: "Pressure cooker of despair"
Israel's bombing of the border town of Rafah in Gaza continued last night. According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, 92 people were killed in the overnight attack, some of them children.
Ahmed Bassam al-Jamal tells AFP that he and his family were sleeping when the bombs fell.
- The bedroom collapsed on top of my children. God took one of my children and three of them escaped death, he says.
In recent days, concerns have increased about a possible Israeli ground invasion of hard-pressed Rafah, where more than half of Gaza's population sought refuge from the fighting. A UN representative describes the city as a "pressure cooker of despair" and expresses concern about what lies ahead.
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