WASHINGTON: With tensions spiking in the Middle East, US forces in the region are facing increasing threats, as a Navy warship shot down missiles appearing to head toward Israel Thursday and American bases in Iraq and Syria were repeatedly targeted by drone attacks.

BEIRUT: Iran-backed groups blew up a gas pipeline in Syria’s Kurdish-controlled northeast near a US base Thursday, a war monitor said, as regional tensions grew following Israel’s war with Gaza-based militants.
Iran-backed groups “blew up the gas pipeline near the Conoco gas facility,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Observatory’s director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP the blast had gone off close to a US base.

CHICAGO: A former White House envoy to the Middle East has blamed Iran for the upsurge of violence in the region, and warned there can be no peace until Hamas is “uprooted.”

Jason Greenblatt, who served under Donald Trump as the inaugural Special Representative for International Negotiations between January 2017 and October 2019, was unambiguous in laying the blame for the worst outbreak of violence between Israel and neighboring Gaza in more than a decade.

NEW YORK CITY: The permanent observer of the State of Palestine to the UN on Wednesday expressed disbelief that “some still speak of the right to self-defense of a power that seeks the forced transfer and annihilation” of Palestinians.

WASHINGTON: He came to bolster Israel’s fight against Hamas and to offer aid to Palestinians suffering under an Israeli siege, but by flying into Tel Aviv when he did, US President Joe Biden inextricably linked himself to any fight to come.
Biden’s eight-hour visit took place a day after a hospital bombing in Gaza City that killed hundreds of Palestinians quickly became a lightning rod in the Arab world.