29/05/2026

FRIDAY | MAY 29, 2026

9

Iran, US continue trading strikes

Hamas armed wing chief killed TEL AVIV: Israel on Wednesday said it had killed the new Hamas armed wing head in Gaza, Mohammed Odeh, after killing his predecessor earlier this month despite an ongoing ceasefire. Since October 2023, Israel has systematically targeted the group’s leaders, both in Gaza and across the region. Odeh is the fourth head of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades that Israel says it has killed since the start of the Gaza war. In a joint statement, the Israeli military and the Shin Bet domestic security agency said Odeh died on Tuesday, saying he had been appointed head of the brigades after the May 15 killing of Ezzedine al-Haddad. In a statement confirming Odeh as its chief of staff, Hamas said he was killed in an Israeli strike. “With great pride, honour, dignity and defiance, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades announce the martyrdom of one of the foremost leaders of the Palestinian resistance,“ it said, adding that he was killed “in a cowardly assassination operation that resulted in the martyrdom of him, his wife and his children”. A Hamas official told AFP that three of Odeh’s children were killed, including two adult men and a girl under 18. Odeh and his family’s funeral took place on Wednesday in Gaza City, with hundreds of mourners in attendance, an AFP journalist reported. An AK-47 rifle was laid on Odeh’s corpse as the crowd carried him to the mosque for prayers. Bassem Abu Odeh, a cousin, told AFP that the deceased and his family “were ready to welcome Eid, but instead the criminal Zionists welcomed and targeted them with missiles”. Odeh had long been the head of the Hamas intelligence service and was one of the group’s most senior surviving figures in the Gaza Strip. On Wednesday, the Israeli army said it “struck two central Hamas terrorists in the northern Gaza Strip,“ with Israeli media reporting it targeted a Hamas brigade commander and a deputy commander. Gaza’s civil defence agency, which operates as a rescue service under Hamas, said 10 individuals were killed and several more were wounded in the strike in central Gaza City. A medical source confirmed five children were among the dead. – AFP EU warns of peace talk ‘trap’ by Russia LIMASSOL: EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas yesterday said Europeans risk walking into a Russian “trap” by getting bogged down over who should represent them in any Ukraine peace talks with Moscow. “It’s a trap that Russia wants us to walk into, that we discuss who talks to them, and they are already picking who is suitable, who is not. Let’s not walk into that trap,“ Kallas told reporters as foreign ministers met in Cyprus to weigh their terms for talking with Moscow. The European debate on re-engaging with Moscow has been getting louder with President Donald Trump’s attention consumed by Iran and Russian President Vladimir Putin appearing on the back foot. Speculation over potential envoys has picked up, with Putin himself suggesting former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, his long-time ally, could fit the bill, an idea roundly rejected in Europe. However, Kyiv’s European backers are first looking to decide what they want to discuss with Putin, along with who could potentially represent them. Some of the ministers present in Cyprus were pushing to designate an envoy, including Austria’s Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinge, who argued that “this is very much what Ukraine expects, that the EU should now get ready”. – AFP

DUBAI: Iran’s Guard yesterday said it targeted a United States airbase after the US military carried out what a Washington official said were strikes targeting an Iranian drone operation near the Strait of Hormuz, hours after President Donald Trump rejected a report he was close to a compromise deal with Tehran. The escalation in hostilities highlighted threats to the tenuous ceasefire between the US and Iran that took effect in April, dampening hopes for a peace deal and sending oil prices surging again. The US official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about military operations, told Reuters the military shot down four Iranian attack drones and struck a ground control station in the port city of Bandar Abbas that was about to launch a fifth drone. “These actions were measured, purely defensive and intended to maintain the ceasefire,” the official said. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it targeted a US base in response to what it described as an early morning US attack near Bandar Abbas airport, Tasnim news agency reported. The Corps said they targeted the US airbase from which the attack on the control station near Bandar Abbas was launched. Kuwait, which hosts a large US base, said it was responding to missile and drone attacks, without saying where the attacks were coming from. The war has killed thousands and sent global energy prices sharply higher since it began on Feb 28 with US and Israeli strikes. Revolutionary

o Trump denies reports of compromise with Tehran

Trump added that he was not yet satisfied on a deal with Iran and the US was not discussing easing sanctions on the country. The White House and Oman’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations was not immediately available for comment. Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, said Trump’s “rhetoric” would not force Iran to back away from its demands to enrich uranium, wield authority over the strait and see sanctions against it lifted. The waterway is covered by international law that guarantees foreign vessels the right to pass through. The US Treasury Department added the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, the Iranian body set up to manage passage through the strait, to a list of sanctioned people and entities seen as posing threats to US national security. – Reuters

Trump has repeatedly said a deal is close at hand. At a Cabinet meeting attended by media on Wednesday, Trump dismissed an Iranian state TV report that it had obtained an unofficial draft of an agreement to restore commercial shipping through the strait to prewar levels within a month, with Iran and Oman jointly managing traffic. Trump said no single country would have control over the waterway, and appeared to threaten Oman, a country with which the US has decades-long military and economic ties. “Nobody’s going to control (the strait). It’s international waters and Oman will behave just like everybody else or we’ll have to blow them up. They understand that, they’ll be fine.”

Israel launches attack on Hezbollah BEIRUT: The Israeli military yesterday said it had begun new strikes on Hezbollah infrastructure around the southern Lebanese city of Tyre after issuing an evacuation warning to its residents. A fireball erupts from a building following an Israeli strike in Tyre, southern Lebanon. – AFPPIC

set for next week. A delegation comprising six Lebanese officers, headed by the army’s director of operations Georges Rizkallah, will participate in the talks. A military source told AFP the delegation would “emphasise the need for a ceasefire, and will present the army’s plan for a state weapons monopoly and the extension of state authority across the country”. The Israeli military had earlier issued evacuation warnings for the southern city of Nabatieh, Tyre and surrounding areas. An AFP correspondent said residents from threatened Tyre areas had converged on parts of the city not covered by the warning. However, authorities said shelters were full and urged people to head to Beirut instead. – AFP

group’s infrastructure. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported two sets of Israeli strikes had taken place on the city and an area to its east, hitting a building and sparking a fire in Tyre. Israel this week vowed to ramp up operations in Lebanon and said it was expanding ground operations there, while Hezbollah said its fighters had clashed with Israel’s forces beyond an Israeli-declared “yellow line” in the south. Israel army chief Lt-Col Eyal Zamir said “we are intensifying our operations in order to strike ever more severe blows to the Hezbollah organisation”. Talks are expected today between Lebanese and Israeli military delegations at the Pentagon, with a new round of direct negotiations aimed at ending the hostilities

Israel the previous day had declared all areas south of Lebanon’s Zahrani River – an area about 40km from the border and including Tyre – as “combat zones” and told residents to evacuate ahead of attacks against Iran-backed Hezbollah. The sweeping warning – the first of its kind since an April 17 ceasefire – came as many Lebanese tried to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. The Israeli military said it was “compelled to take forceful action” against Hezbollah and announced in a later statement on Telegram that it had begun strikes it said targeted the