Monday 21 / April / 2025
Israeli troops that pulled out of southern Gaza on Sunday did so to prepare for future operations, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said.
Those operations include the planned ground assault on Rafah, he added in a statement from his office.
"The forces are exiting and preparing for their next missions, we saw examples of such missions in the al-Shifa operation, and also of their coming mission in the Rafah area," Gallant said at a meeting with military officials.
Israel's military said early Sunday that it had pulled most of its troops out of southern Gaza, leaving just one brigade in the Hamas-run territory.
Israel has been warned by several allies, including the United States and Germany, against launching an offensive in Rafah due to a worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
More than a million Gaza residents have been displaced to Rafah, one of the last safe places in the strip.
No Israeli embassy is safe, Iranian official warns
An advisor to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed retaliation for the bombing of the country's embassy in Syria, which was been blamed on Israel.
General Yahya Rahim Safavi, a former commander of Iran's elite army forces, warned that Israeli diplomatic missions could become targets for attack.
"The [anti-Israeli] resistance front is ready for all possible retaliation scenarios and no Israeli embassy worldwide is safe from it," Safavi was cited by state broadcaster Al-Alam as saying.
Despite his comments, many analysts in Iran consider an attack on Israeli embassies to be unlikely.
The airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus killed two generals and five officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Israel's military has not claimed responsibility for the strike but says the compound was not a civilian embassy.
