President Joe Biden claimed on Saturday, without evidence, that Iran launched an attack “against military facilities in Israel.”
Israel intercepted 99% of the drones and missiles fired by Iran, but it was not clear that the targets were only military.
One Israel Defense Forces (IDF) base suffered minor damage in the attack, but an Arab Israeli child was critically injured as a result of shrapnel from a cruise missile that was intercepted over southern Israel.
Biden said in his statement posted on the White House website:
Earlier today, Iran—and its proxies operating out of Yemen, Syria and Iraq—launched an unprecedented air attack against military facilities in Israel. I condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms.
At my direction, to support the defense of Israel, the U.S. military moved aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region over the course of the past week. Thanks to these deployments and the extraordinary skill of our servicemembers, we helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles.
I’ve just spoken with Prime Minister Netanyahu to reaffirm America’s ironclad commitment to the security of Israel. I told him that Israel demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks – sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel.
According to Israel’s Army Radio, a seven-year-old Bedouin Arab Muslim girl was severely wounded by shrapnel in Arad, Israel. (Separately, the IDF gave her age as ten years old.)
Surreal footage of the Iranian attack over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif pic.twitter.com/NuSvF25HLX
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) April 13, 2024
Iran’s attack on Israel came one day after Biden warned Tehran against doing so, Breitbart News reported Saturday.
The outlet continued:
“Don’t,” Biden had told reporters after he was asked Thursday what his message to Iran was, after it had threatened to attack Israel in response to a suspected recent Israeli strike against seven members of the Iranian military, including two generals in Syria.
“We are devoted to the defense of Israel,” he added. “We will support Israel. We will defend — help defend Israel, and Iran will not succeed.”
Breitbart News reported Saturday that Iran had launched drones against Israel, supposedly in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike on April 1 that killed seven senior Iranian military officials.
“Iran has been using its terrorist proxies to attack Israel for decades, and accelerated those attacks after the Hamas invasion of October 7,” the article said.
Video footage shows the drones careening towards Israel as sirens blared throughout the night:
On Sunday at local time, officials with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they intercepted most of the dozens of drones and cruise missiles launched by Iran, Breitbart News reported.
This post has been updated.
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