JERUSALEM – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday said Israel’s air attack on Iran was “precise and powerful”, and achieved all its objectives.

“We promised we would respond to the Iranian attack and on Saturday we struck. The attack in Iran was precise and powerful, achieving all of its objectives,” Netanyahu said in a speech marking the Hebrew calendar anniversary of the Hamas attack on 7 October last year. 

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei yesterday said Israel’s attack on the Islamic republic “should neither be exaggerated nor minimised”.
“The evil perpetrated by the Zionist regime (Israel) two nights ago must not be exaggerated or minimised,” he said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

Without elaborating, he describing the deadly attack as a “miscalculation”.
On Saturday, Israel carried out air strikes against military sites in Iran in response to Tehran’s missile attack on 1 October, a retaliation for the killing of Iran-backed militant leaders and a Revolutionary Guards commander.
At least four Iranian soldiers were killed in the attack, which Iran said caused “limited damage” to a few radar systems.
The Israeli military has warned Tehran against responding.
Iranian officials and media have since downplayed the Israeli strikes, highlighting Iran’s defensive capabilities, but issued no vows of a direct response.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian paid tribute to the killed soldiers, hailing their efforts in “defending their land without fear.”

Meanwhile, a truck driver rammed his vehicle into a crowd of people at a bus stop in central Israel yesterday, injuring at least 24 people before he was “shot and neutralised”, police said.

Preliminary police findings showed the driver also hit a bus that had stopped at the same location to drop off passengers, the police said in a statement.
At least 24 people were injured in the incident, police said, without clarifying whether it was an attack.
The force, however, said civilians at the site of the incident “shot the truck driver, and neutralised him”.
Earlier yesterday, the Magen David Adom emergency service said the incident occurred at Aharon Yariv Boulevard in Ramat HaSharon, north of the commercial hub Tel Aviv. Of those injured, at least 16 people had been transported to nearby hospitals, MDA said in a statement.

Officers and ambulances rushed to the scene, where Israeli television channels showed police cordoning off the area, as medics helped the injured and a helicopter hovered above.
The incident came as Israel holds ceremonies to mark the Hebrew calendar anniversary of the Hamas attack on 7 October last year that sparked the ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon.  – Nampa/AFP