Chaos as thousands ordered to evacuate Beirut
Chaos erupted in Lebanon’s after Israel ordered a mass evacuation, urging civilians to “save your lives” and flee.
Source: Roya News English
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed Australian “military assets” have been sent to the Middle East amid an operation to rescue stranded travellers.
“The government is deploying six crisis response teams to the region and we have already deployed military assets as part of contingency planning earlier this week,” Albanese told parliament on Thursday.
“I thank those Australians who are going into a dangerous situation in order to help their fellow Australians caught up in this conflict to get home safely.”
SBS News reports that two military planes were sent — a Royal Australian Air Force C-17A Globemaster heavy transport aircraft and KC-30A Multi-Role Tanker Transport.
It comes as Foreign Minister Penny Wong refused to confirm or deny whether two Australian sailors were on a US submarine that torpedoed an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka on Wednesday.
Nine News is reporting that two Australians were on board the submarine that carried out the attack on Iran’s frigate, IRIS Dena.
Wong was questioned in parliament by Greens senator David Shoebridge.
“The US submarine operations are a matter for the United States,” she said.
“For operational and security reasons, we do not disclose specific information regarding Australian personnel.”
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Iran has vowed revenge for the attack, which killed more than 80 sailors.
Iran’s foreign minister said the US would “bitterly regret” the precedent it had set by sinking a ship in international waters without warning.
Elsewhere, the US-Israeli campaign against Iran has entered its sixth day with even more intensive bombing.
Chaos erupted in Lebanon’s capital Beirut after Israel ordered a mass evacuation, urging civilians to “save your lives” and flee.
The warning encompassed a large area in southern Beirut, reportedly home to anywhere between 300,000 and 700,000 people and a stronghold of Hezbollah.
The Israeli military said it launched targeted attacks in Lebanon at the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group and a “large-scale wave of strikes against infrastructure” in Iran’s capital, without elaborating.
Iran was also accused of launching a drone attack that hit Azerbaijan’s airport.
Azerbaijan said four Iranian drones flew across its border and injured four people in the Nakhchivan exclave, raising concern about further spillover of the conflict in the Middle East.
“We will not tolerate this unprovoked act of terror and aggression against Azerbaijan. Our armed forces have been instructed to prepare and implement appropriate retaliatory measures,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev told a meeting of his Security Council.
“We are ready to demonstrate our strength against any hostile force – and they should not forget this in Iran,” he said.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi denied his country had targeted Nakhchivan.
“We do not attack our neighbouring countries,” he told Azerbaijani outlet AnewZ.
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Meanwhile, a religious leader called for “Trump’s blood”.
Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli said the country was “on the verge of a great test” and called on state television for “the shedding of Zionist blood, the shedding of Trump’s blood”.
“Fight the oppressive America, his blood is on my shoulders,” he said in a rare call for violence from an ayatollah, one of the highest ranks within the clergy of Shiite Islam.
The US and Israel launched the war on Saturday, targeting Iran’s leadership, missile arsenal and nuclear program while suggesting that toppling the government is a goal.
But the exact aims and timelines have repeatedly shifted, signalling an open-ended conflict.
President Donald Trump praised the US military on Wednesday (local time) for “doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly”.
Fellow Republicans in the US Senate stood with Trump on Iran as they voted down a resolution seeking to halt the war.
The conflict has already killed more than 1000 people in Iran, more than 70 in Lebanon and about a dozen in Israel, according to officials in those countries.
It has disrupted the supply of the world’s oil and gas, snarled international shipping and stranded hundreds of thousands of travellers in the Middle East.
Neighbouring countries braced for potential dangers on Thursday, a day after Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard threatened “the complete destruction of the region’s military and economic infrastructure”.
Qatar’s Interior Ministry said authorities were evacuating residents near the US Embassy in Doha as a temporary precaution, without providing further details.
Fighter jets could be heard overhead in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai.
And a new attack off the coast of Kuwait appeared to expand the area where commercial shipping was in danger.
An explosion rocked the area early on Thursday, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre run by the British military.
It said a tanker apparently came under attack, but the agency did not offer a cause. Iran, in the past, has attacked ships by attaching limpet mines to them.
Prior attacks since fighting began on Saturday have happened in the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which about a fifth of the world’s oil is shipped.
Oil prices have soared as Iranian attacks have disrupted traffic through the strait, and global stock markets have been hammered over worries that the spike in oil prices may grind down the world economy.
-with AAP
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