Iran’s leader says ‘we kiss the hands of those who planned the attack’ on Israel as Western fears Islamic nation provided Hamas with weapons and training for surprise incursion grow

Iran’s supreme leader said today ‘we kiss the hands of those who planned the attack’ on Israel amid fears the Islamic nation was providing Hamas terrorists with weapons and training for their surprise incursion.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hailed what he called Israel’s “irreparable” military and intelligence loss after gunmen attacked towns and massacred families and festival youth.

“We kiss the hands of those who planned the attack on the Zionist regime,” Khamenei said during his first televised address since the incursion.

Khamenei, wearing a Palestinian scarf and speaking from a military academy, added: “This devastating earthquake (Hamas attack) has destroyed several critical structures (in Israel) which will not be easily repaired. The actions of the Zionist regime itself are to blame for this disaster.’

But Khamenei insisted Iran, a key long-term ally of Hamas, was not involved in the attack on Israel, which has left 900 Israelis dead and hundreds wounded.

Israel has long accused Iran’s clerical rulers of fomenting violence by supplying weapons to Hamas.

And Western officials last night said Tehran had provided Hamas terrorists with military training and logistical assistance, as well as tens of millions of dollars in weapons before the surprise incursion.

Officials said Hamas had been planning the attack on Israel for at least a year Washington Post.

They said that while they have no evidence that Tehran directly authorized or coordinated the attack, the incursion reflected Iran’s long-standing ambition to surround Israel with paramilitary fighters armed with sophisticated weapons.

“If you train people how to use weapons, you expect them to eventually use them,” said one Western intelligence official.

Supporting the Palestinian cause has been a mainstay of the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution and a way the Shiite-dominated country has fashioned itself as a leader of the Muslim world.

The top US general on Monday warned Iran not to get involved in the crisis, saying he did not want the conflict to escalate.

At least 900 Israelis have been killed by the terrorists since they launched the surprise attack on Saturday. And in response, Israel has hit the Gaza Strip with the worst airstrikes in the 75-year history of its conflict, killing 770 Palestinians and injuring 4,000 others.

Israel said earlier on Tuesday it had re-established control over the Gaza border and was laying mines where militants tore down the barrier during their bloody weekend assault, after another night of relentless Israeli airstrikes on the enclave.

Khamenei said an attack on Gaza would “unleash a much heavier stream of anger.”

“The occupying regime seeks to portray itself as a victim to further escalate its crimes… this is a miscalculation… It will result in even greater catastrophe,” Khamenei said.

Iran took the lead on Saturday in celebrating the Hamas attack, in which at least 1,500 gunmen stormed the border before going on a bloody rampage through Israeli communities that left more than 900 dead and streets lined with bodies.

The Israeli military said it was the single deadliest incident in the country’s history and has responded with a ferocious bombardment of Gaza, where officials say at least 770 people have been killed.

It has called in hundreds of thousands of reservists and placed the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million people, under a total siege.

Israeli media said the death toll from the Hamas attacks had risen to 900 people, mostly civilians killed in their homes, on the street or at a dance party, dwarfing the scale of any previous attack by the Islamists except 9/11. . Dozens of Israelis were taken hostage in Gaza, with some paraded through the streets.

Nearly 700 Gazans have since been killed in Israeli attacks, according to Gaza officials, while entire districts in Gaza have been leveled.

The United Nations said 180,000 Gazans had been made homeless, many of them huddled on the streets or in schools. Smoke and flames billowed into the morning sky, while street bombing often made it impossible for emergency crews to reach the scene of the strikes.

At the morgue in Gaza’s Khan Younis Hospital, bodies lay on the ground on stretchers with their names written on their bellies. The doctors appealed to the relatives to take the bodies quickly, because there was no more room for the dead.

There were serious casualties in a former municipal building that was hit while it was being used as an emergency shelter for displaced families.

“There is an incredible number of martyrs, people are still under the rubble, some friends are either martyred or injured,” said one Ala Abu Tair, 35, who had sought refuge there with his family after fleeing Abassan Al- Kabira near the border. . “No place is safe in Gaza, as you see they hit everywhere.”

In Israel, there is still no official tally of the dead and missing from Saturday’s attacks. In the southern city of Be’er, where more than 100 bodies have been exhumed, volunteers wearing yellow vests and face masks solemnly carried the dead out of homes on stretchers.

A long, wide trail of blood wound across the floor of a house where bodies had been dragged into the street from a blood-soaked kitchen strewn with overturned furniture.

“The thing I want most is to wake up from this nightmare,” said Elad Hakim, a survivor of a music festival where Hamas killed 260 partygoers at dawn. “Everything was so amazing, the best party of my life, to… from heaven to hell in a second.”

Israel’s next move could be a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, territory it abandoned in 2005 and has kept under blockade since Hamas took power there in 2007. The complete siege it announced on Monday would block and food and fuel to reach the belt.

Israel was caught so completely by surprise by Saturday’s attack that it took more than two days to finally close the multibillion-dollar high-tech barrier that would have been impenetrable.

Military spokesman Hagari said early Tuesday that there had been no new infiltrations from Gaza since the previous day.

Israeli leaders will now have to decide whether to limit their retaliation to protect the hostages. Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida threatened on Monday to kill an Israeli prisoner for any Israeli bombing of a civilian home without warning – and to broadcast the killing.

Saturday’s attacks and Israel’s retaliation upended the plans of diplomats in the Middle East at a crucial time, when Israel was on the verge of reaching a deal to normalize relations with the richest Arab power, Saudi Arabia.