Key events
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the crisis in the Middle East. I’m Tom Ambrose.
The US military has announced that it will deploy additional fighter jets and navy warships to the Middle East, the Pentagon said on Friday, as Washington braces for Iran and its regional allies to make good on a promise to respond to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
After the back-to-back assassinations of Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday and top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut the evening before, international diplomats have scrambled to head off a fully-fledged regional war. Rising tensions have spurred a growing list of major airlines into cancelling flights to Tel Aviv and Beirut, including Lufthansa, Delta and Air India.
It comes as, on Friday, France urged its citizens to leave Iran and Cyprus and said it had expanded plans to support a large-scale evacuation from the region if the war expands. The island nation helped tens of thousands of people leave during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
More on that soon, first here’s a summary of the other main headlines:
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Mourners gathered in Doha on Friday to hold funeral prayers for slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as Iran and its regional allies vowed to retaliate against Israel. With the bodies of Haniyeh and his bodyguard in coffins draped with Palestinian flags, men knelt and prayed while senior leaders of Hamas’ Qatar-based political office paid their respects to Haniyeh’s family.
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Israel’s foreign ministry summoned the deputy Turkish ambassador for a reprimand on Friday after Turkey’s embassy in Tel Aviv lowered its flag to half mast in response to the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. “The State of Israel will not tolerate expressions of mourning for a murderer like Ismail Haniyeh,” foreign minister Israel Katz said in a statement.
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Amid fears of wider Middle East conflict, Poland has advised its citizens against travelling to Lebanon, Israel and Iran, according to updated guidance published on Friday. “In connection with a growing number of Polish tourists visiting Lebanon, Israel and Iran, we want to repeat that we have long advised against any kind of travel to this region,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on the social media platform X.
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The leader of Hezbollah has said that the Lebanese group’s conflict with Israel has entered “a new phase” after the back-to-back assassinations of a senior commander and Hamas’s political chief that risk plunging the Middle East into a regional war. In a televised address broadcast to about 1,000 mourners at the Beirut funeral of Hezbollah’s second-in-command, Fuad Shukur, Hassan Nasrallah vowed that the powerful Shia militia would seek revenge.
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US president Joe Biden said on Thursday the killing of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas’ leader Ismail Haniyeh was not helpful for a ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza. Biden said he had a direct conversation with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier on Thursday, Reuters reported. He made the comments at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, where a plane carrying detainees released by Russia landed late on Thursday.