Israel-Hamas war: US failed to stop attack in Jordan after possible mix-up over drone identity
A report into the death of US soldiers in Jordan has shed shocking new details as Iran braces for response. Follow updates.
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A preliminary report into the deadly drone attack that killed three US troops and injured more than 40 troops has found US forces may have mistaken the enemy drone as one of their own.
The Pentagon identified those killed in the attack as Sergeant William Jerome Rivers, 46, Specialist Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, and Specialist Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23.
As the enemy drone was flying in at a low altitude, a US drone was returning to the small installation known as Tower 22, according to a preliminary report cited by two officials, who were not authorised to comment and insisted on anonymity.
As a result, there was no effort to shoot down the enemy drone that hit the outpost. One of the trailers where troops sleep sustained the brunt of the strike, while surrounding trailers got limited damage from the blast and flying debris.
The preliminary conclusion was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Aside from the soldiers killed, the Pentagon said more than 40 troops were wounded in the attack, most with cuts, bruises, brain injuries and similar wounds.
Meanwhile, eight were medically evacuated, including three who were going to Landstuhl Regional Medical Centre in Germany. The other five, who suffered minor brain injuries, were expected to return to duty.
Ms Sanders’ parents paid tribute to their daughter, saying she had been eager for a chance to see the world.
“She was loved. She didn’t have any enemies. All the time you saw her smiling,” her father, Shawn Sanders, said.
The casualties — the first US military deaths in an attack in the region since the Israel-Hamas war began — have raised fears of an escalating conflict, as fighting rages in Gaza.
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ISRAEL STRIKES HOSTAGE DEAL, TURNS SIGHTS TO LEBANON
The Middle East remained in turmoil as calls mounted for a “devastating retaliation” for the deaths of American soldiers and Israel sought to secure the release of hostages in Gaza before turning its attention to Lebanon.
Negotiators from Israel, the US, Egypt and Qatar agreed on a “framework” for the release of the remaining captives being held in Gaza.
Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the “good progress” was made and that they hoped to get Hamas “to a place where they engage positively and constructively in the process”.
The deal, being presented to Hamas, would see the hostages released in phases coinciding with pauses in fighting to allow aid into Gaza.
Israel would have to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the hostages that remain in Gaza, thought to number more than 100.
Channel 12 reported that Israel agreed to a 45-day pause in fighting in exchange for 35 hostages in the first phase.
It comes as the United States vowed a “very consequential response” to a drone attack that killed three American troops.
PARAMEDICS LOSE CONTACT WITH CREW RESCUING GIRL
The Palestinian Red Crescent society say they have lost contact with their team who were trying to rescue a six-year-old trapped in her family’s car after the vehicle was attacked by Israeli forces in Gaza City.
Six of the girl’s family members were killed in the attack and she was the sole survivor in the car, according to the PRCS.
“Hind remained for hours pleading for our teams to reach her and evacuate her from the area surrounded by Israeli tanks.”
The PRCS said after hours of coordination, its rescuers arrived in the area where the girl was. “Since then, we lost contact with the team, and as of now, we are uncertain if our teams successfully reached the girl,” it said.
💔This is a picture of the 6 years old girl Hind who remained trapped inside a vehicle fired upon by the occupation forces, resulting in the martyrdom of everyone inside (6 individuals). Hind remained for hours pleading for our teams to reach her and evacuate her from the area… pic.twitter.com/V3VC1GlhGg
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) January 29, 2024
EUROVISION HOST CALLS ON ISRAEL TO BE REMOVED
More than 1000 musical artists from the Eurovision host country Sweden have signed an open letter calling for Israel to be excluded from this year’s edition of the song contest over its “brutal warfare in Gaza”.
Published in Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, the open letter says that by allowing Israel to participate, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) “is exhibiting a remarkable double standard that undermines the organisation’s credibility”.
The letter, published late on Monday, reads: “The fact that countries that place themselves above humanitarian law are welcomed to participate in international cultural events trivialises violations of international law and makes the suffering of the victims invisible.”
Signatories include internationally successful artists such as the singers Robyn and Fever Ray, the folk duo First Aid Kit, and former Swedish Eurovision contestants such as Eric Saade and Malena Ernman, the mezzo-soprano opera singer who is also the mother of the climate activist Greta Thunberg.
The letter comes after a similar petition signed by about 1400 artists from Finland and Iceland who also called for Israel to be excluded from the song contest, which will be held in Malmö from 7 to 11 May.
ISRAEL STRIKES HOSTAGE DEAL
The Middle East remained in turmoil as calls mounted for a “devastating retaliation” for the deaths of American soldiers and Israel sought to secure the release of hostages in Gaza before turning its attention to Lebanon.
Negotiators from Israel, the US, Egypt and Qatar agreed on a “framework” for the release of the remaining captives being held in Gaza.
Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the “good progress” was made and that they hoped to get Hamas “to a place where they engage positively and constructively in the process”.
The deal, being presented to Hamas, would see the hostages released in phases coinciding with pauses in fighting to allow aid into Gaza.
Israel would have to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the hostages that remain in Gaza, thought to number more than 100.
Channel 12 reported that Israel agreed to a 45-day pause in fighting in exchange for 35 hostages in the first phase.
It comes as the United States vowed a “very consequential response” to a drone attack that killed three American troops.
ISRAEL TROOPS GO TO LEBANON BORDER ‘SOON’
Israeli troops will “very soon go into action” near the country’s northern border with Lebanon, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said, as tensions surge amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Gallant told troops near the border with the besieged Gaza Strip that others were being deployed to Israel’s north.
“They will very soon go into action … so the forces in the north are reinforced,” Gallant said, according to video released by his office.
He added that reservists would be gradually released “to prepare and come ready” for future operations.
Since the outbreak of war between Hamas and Israel on October 7, the Lebanese-Israeli border has seen near-daily exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, a Hamas ally.
Israel’s army chief Herzi Halevi said earlier this month that the likelihood of war on the northern border has become “much higher”.
“I don’t know when the war in the north is, I can tell you that the likelihood of it happening in the coming months is much higher than it was in the past,” Halevi said.
BIDEN UNDER PRESSURE TO CONFRONT IRAN
President Joe Biden faced mounting political pressure to retaliate against Iran for a deadly drone strike on US troops, posing a major challenge for the Democrat in an election year.
Striking Iran would dramatically escalate the risk of the wider war Biden says he’s trying to avoid — not to mention the possibility of more US caskets coming home in the months before polls open.
Republican senator Tom Cotton said Biden left US troops “sitting ducks”.
“The only answer to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East,” he added.
“Anything less will confirm Joe Biden as a coward unworthy of being commander-in-chief.”
Mike Rogers, a Republican who leads the US military oversight committee, said it was “long past time” the president acted against “the terrorist Iranian regime and their extremist proxies accountable for the attacks they’ve carried out.”
‘WE SHALL RESPOND’: US VOWS REVENGE
A drone attack on a base in Jordan killed three American troops and wounded more than 30, with US President Joe Biden blaming Iran-backed militants and vowing to hold the perpetrators to account.
It is the first time American military personnel have been killed by hostile fire in the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, and the incident will further raise tensions in the region and feed fears of a broader conflict directly involving Iran.
“Three US service members were killed — and many wounded — during an unmanned aerial drone attack on our forces stationed in northeast Jordan near the Syria border,” Mr Biden said in a statement.
“While we are still gathering the facts of this attack, we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq,” he said.
At least 34 military personnel are being evaluated for possible traumatic brain injuries following the deadly drone attack. Two other officials told Reuters that some of the injured US forces were being medically evacuated from the base for treatment.
IRAN DENIES DRONE STRIKE
Iran denied US and British accusations that it supported militant groups behind the attack, Tehran’s official IRNA news agency reported.
“These claims are made with specific political goals to reverse the realities of the region,” IRNA quoted foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani as saying
Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that Israeli military and intelligence officials concluded that a significant number of weapons used by Hamas in the October 7 attack and the war in Gaza came from the Israeli military itself.
The latest round of the Israel-Hamas conflict began when the Palestinian militant group carried out a shock attack on October 7 that resulted in about 1140 deaths, mostly civilians, according to official figures.
Following the attack, the United States rushed military aid to Israel, which has carried out a relentless military offensive that has killed at least 26,422 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Those deaths have sparked widespread anger in the Middle East and provided an impetus for violence against both American and Israeli interests in the region.
ISRAELI GOVERNMENT MINISTERS CALL FOR RESETTLEMENT
Israeli government ministers joined a rally in Jerusalem Calling for the resettlement of Gaza by Israelis and an expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank.
“The role of brave leadership is to make brave decisions. It’s time to return home, to [former Jewish settlements in Gaza] Gush Katif and Northern Samaria, it’s time to encourage immigration and it’s time to win,” National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir told the crowd at the rally, using the biblical name for the northern West Bank.
Gvir said the only way to another attack by Hamas was for Israel to control the Palestinian territories.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel would not have security without further settlement construction.
Communications minister Shlomo Karhi said “God had given Gaza to the Jewish people and that there would never be a Palestinian state.”
JOURNALISTS’ GROUP THREATENS LEGAL ACTION
According to CNN, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has threatened to take legal action against Israel if journalists working in Gaza are targeted by the Israeli Defence Force.
In an open letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the IFJ said 10 per cent of journalists working in Gaza had been killed during the ongoing conflict.
“Such has been the mortality rate among news gatherers – around three times that of health workers, for example – that it is impossible to believe that this is a matter of chance,” the letter said.
A non-profit press freedom group called the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that 83 journalists and media workers had been killed since October 7. Of those, 76 were Palestinians, four Israeli and three Lebanese.
The open letter called on Israel to publish specific policies and procedures to ensure military would protect journalists.
IRAN EXECUTES FOUR MEN CHARGED WITH SPYING FOR ISRAEL
Iran executed four men at dawn on Monday after they were convicted of collaborating with the country’s arch-foe Israel on a plan to sabotage an Iranian defence site, according to the judiciary.
The four defendants, identified as Mohammad Faramarzi, Mohsen Mazloum, Wafa Azarbar, Pejman Fatehi, were arrested in July 2022 and accused of plotting to carry out an operation against a Ministry of Defense centre in the central province of Isfahan, according to the judiciary’s Mizan Online website.
“The death sentence of four members of a group affiliated with the Zionist spy organisation, who were arrested … for plotting a bombing operation in Isfahan, was carried out this morning,” Mizan Online reported.
According to Iran, the men had been recruited by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, “about a year and a half before the operation”.
They were sent to African countries for “training courses in the military centres” where Mossad officers were present, the judiciary added.
The men were sentenced to death in September 2023.
In August 2023, Iran claimed to have foiled a “very complex” Mossad-initiated project to “sabotage” its ballistic missile industry. A few months earlier, in February, Tehran accused Israel of being responsible for a drone attack on a military site in Isfahan.
The two countries have been engaged in a shadow war for decades, with Iran regularly accusing Israel and its ally the United States of inciting unrest
BODIES BURIED IN HOSPITAL COURTYARDS
The Palestine Red Crescent Society says it has had to bury three people in the courtyard of the al-Amal Hospital in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
In a post on X, the medical group said that this was due to the “difficulty of transporting them to an official cemetery due to the ongoing blockade imposed on the hospital”.
The al-Amal Hospital has been under siege for days as Israeli ground operations in southern Gaza advance. Israeli tanks are stationed outside the hospital, the Wafa news agency reports.
The bodies of 35 people killed by Israeli air attacks were also buried in a mass grave inside the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis as they were unable to be transported elsewhere, according to Wafa.
🚨Today, PRCS teams are burying the bodies of three martyrs among the displaced in the besieged courtyard of Al-Amal Hospital in #KhanYunis.
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) January 28, 2024
ðŸ“This is due to the difficulty of transporting them to an official cemetery due to the ongoing blockade imposed on the hospital. 🔴Two of… pic.twitter.com/rPkxPIGNQ7
TRUMP SAYS ATTACK ON US FORCES RESULT OF ‘BIDEN’S WEAKNESS’
The former US president and current presidential candidate has hit out at his likely opponent in the general elections in November over the attack that killed three American service members.
“This brazen attack on the United States is yet another horrific and tragic consequence of Joe Biden’s weakness and surrender,”Donald Trump wrote in a social media post. He added that today’s incident, Hamas’s October 7 attack and the Russian invasion of Ukraine would not have happened if he had still been in power. “Instead, we are on the brink of World War 3,” Trump wrote.
GREENS WANT GAZA FUNDING PAUSE OVERTURNED
The Greens are demanding Labor reverse its decision to suspend funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, after the government announced it would temporarily pause its financial support.
“The Labor government’s blatant hypocrisy is on full display – suspending funding to UNRWA, while Palestinians are being killed, starved and displaced, but not so much as a slap on the wrist for Israel which is on a genocidal mission,” Greens Deputy Leader Mehreen Faruqi SAID.
“The Labor government must immediately reverse its terrible decision to suspend aid funding.
“Suspending lifesaving funding to the largest relief provider in Gaza is nothing short of catastrophic. It is a despicable and heartless act from Australia and other countries who have completely failed to condemn Israel for its war crimes for 114 days but jumped immediately to further collectively punish 2 million people in siege.
“People in Gaza are desperately dependent on UNRWA for their very survival, but Minister Wong has chosen to look away while Israel continues to bomb people to death with full cover from Western governments”.
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, appealed to the 10 donor countries that have withdrawn funding from UNRWA to reconsider, with the organisation employing more than 13,000 staff in Gaza and educating 30,000 children.
Meanwhile, Japan has suspended its funding to UNRWA over Israel’s alleged claim that some staff helped in the October 7 attack. Several staff have been fired since, although Israel is yet to detail the exact claims.
“At the same time, Japan will continue to make persistent and active diplomatic efforts to improve the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and to calm down the situation as soon as possible by providing support to other international organisations,” a foreign ministry statement said.
ISRAEL ARRESTS, CHARGES FOUR SETTLERS
Israel Police has announced that it opened an investigation following reports on an assault on two truck drivers delivering aid supplies to Gaza, near Tlalim Junction in the Negev, southern Israel.
According to the announcement, the assault suspects are four settlers, in their twenties and thirties, from Yakir, Amichai and Shilo settlements.
The two drivers said that they were tear-gassed, and rocks were thrown at their trucks, damaging the tires.
The suspects were caught in a vehicle near Beit Kama Junction in the north of the Negev. The police officers, from the Segev Shalom police station, searched the vehicle and found a pocket knife and tear gas.
The four will be brought on Monday in front of a judge in the Magistrate’s Court in Beer Sheva.
HAMAS TUNNELS ‘INTACT’ AFTER 114 DAYS OF WAR
After 114 days of fighting, as much as 80 per cent of Hamas’s tunnel system underneath Gaza could still remain intact, hampering Israel’s central war aims, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Citing Israeli and US officials, The WSJ noted that it was difficult to assess how much of the tunnel network has been destroyed by Israeli troops so far, but estimated that 20 per cent to 40 per cent of it has been damaged, with some bombed or flooded.
A senior Israeli military official told the WSJ that the IDF was focused on eliminating “nodes” within the tunnels where Hamas operatives are hiding, instead of demolishing entire networks
“It’s a very hard mission. It’s done slowly, very carefully. It’s urban warfare unseen globally,” the official said.
BRITISH WARSHIP UNDER ATTACK IN RED SEA
In the latest attack by Iran-backed rebels in the Red Sea, a British warship was forced to shoot down a Houthi drone attack after coming under fire.
The British Royal Navy destroyer HMS Diamond defended itself with Sea Viper missiles as the militants continued their relentless campaign of attacks, The Sun reports.
The UK Ministry of Defence said they had “successfully repelled” the Houthi attack drones fired at HMS Diamond. The same warship was hit just weeks ago in what UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said was a deliberate attack by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
UN URGES DONORS NOT TO WITHDRAWAL GAZA FUNDING
Several key donor countries to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees have said they would halt funding following Israeli charges that some UNRWA staff took part in Hamas’s October 7 attack.
The agency has fired several staff over Israel’s accusations and promised a thorough investigation into the claims, which were not specified, while Israel has vowed to stop the agency’s work in Gaza after the war.
The Head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, vowed to hold “accountable, including through criminal prosecution”, any agency employee found to have been involved in “acts of terror”.
UN chief Antonio Guterres pledged to conduct an “urgent and comprehensive independent review of UNRWA”, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
The United States said Friday it had suspended funding for the UN agency, followed by several other countries since then including Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Finland.
But Mr Guterres appealed to the 10 donor countries that have withdrawn funding from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees to reconsider, saying the agency and Palestinians in desperate need should not be penalised due to the alleged acts of a dozen staff.
Mr Guterres said nine UNRWA staff had already been dismissed for alleged involvement in Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October and any UN employee involved in acts of terror would be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution.
He said the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), the highest investigative body in the UN system, had already been asked to mount an inquiry.
Israel’s foreign ministry has vowed that UNRWA will play no role in Gaza when the conflict ends. UNRWA has 13,000 staff in Gaza and educates 30,000 children.
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