Shawdesh Desk:

Israel bombed military targets in Iran on Saturday, killing at least two soldiers, fulfilling a vow to avenge a missile barrage and stirring fears of a full-scale Middle East war.

Confirming the strikes after explosions and anti-aircraft fire echoed around Tehran, the Israel military said it had hit Iranian missile factories and military facilities in several regions.

Iran confirmed an Israeli attack had targeted military sites in Tehran province around the capital and other parts of the country, saying the raids caused ‘limited  damage’ but killed two soldiers.

‘Iran has the right and the duty to defend itself against foreign acts of aggression,’ the foreign ministry said, citing Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese movement backed by Iran, said it had fired rockets at Israeli soldiers near the village of Aita al-Shaab in southern Lebanon, and launched drones against Israel’s Tel Nof air base.

Tel Nof is south of Tel Aviv and, if confirmed, the drone mission would be the militia’s first attempt to hit it in this round of fighting.

At roughly the same time as Israel struck targets in Iran, the Syrian state news agency SANA said an Israeli air attack targeted military positions in central and southern Syria.

Citing an unnamed military source, the agency said the attack at around 2:00 am (2300 GMT) had targeted positions in central and southern Syria.

The attack prompted Syria to activate its air defences, SANA said, as Israel announced it was launching ‘precision strikes’ in neighbouring Iran.

Iran and Syria are allies in the so-called ‘axis of resistance’ that also includes Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

‘Our anti-aircraft defence is confronting hostile targets in the skies around Damascus,’ state news agency SANA reported on Telegram.

SANA had previously reported the ‘sounds of explosions’ in the vicinity of the Syrian capital.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose network of pro-Iran factions, claimed responsibility before dawn Saturday for a drone attack against a ‘military target’ in northern Israel.

On Friday, two people died from shrapnel wounds after a Hezbollah rocket barrage into Israel’s north, Israeli officials said.

In late September Israel turned its focus to Lebanon hitting, Hezbollah targets and leaders and then sending in ground troops.

Israel says the aim is to make the north of its country safe for tens of thousands of displaced civilians to return.

In April, in its first-ever direct assault against Israeli territory, Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles.

Tehran said the barrage was retaliation for a strike on Iran’s consular annex in Damascus that killed members of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Explosions later in April shook Iran’s Isfahan province in what US officials, cited by American media, said was Israeli retaliation.

Iran said its October 1 missile attack on Israel was retaliation for an Israeli air raid that killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah as well as the assassination in Tehran of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh.

On Friday, Gaza’s health ministry accused Israeli forces of storming the last functioning hospital in the territory’s north in a raid it said left two children dead.

The Israeli military said its forces were operating around Kamal Adwan Hospital in north Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp but was ‘not aware of live fire and strikes in the area of the hospital’.

The Israeli military says it is seeking to destroy operational capabilities Hamas is trying to rebuild in the north.

Also on Friday, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli drone strikes killed 12 people waiting to receive aid near the Al-Shati refugee camp.

Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Israel’s policies in northern Gaza ‘risk emptying the area of all Palestinians’.

‘We are facing what could amount to atrocity crimes, including potentially extending to crimes against humanity.’