American troops are on their way to the Middle East on Saturday, amid fears of an Iranian response against Israel. On Saturday, the Netherlands announced that its embassy in Iran as well as its consulate in Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, are closed to the public.
The German company Lufthansa and its Austrian subsidiary Austrian Airlines announced that they would suspend their flights to and from Tehran until Thursday April 18. On Friday, Lebanese Hezbollah, supported by Iran, announced that it had launched “dozens of rockets” at Israeli positions. The Israeli army announced on Saturday that it was continuing its operations against Hamas militants in the center of the narrow strip of land where nearly 2.4 million people live. More than 250 people have been kidnapped and 129 remain detained in Gaza, including 34 who have died, according to Israeli officials. The war was sparked on October 7 when the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas infiltrated from the neighboring Gaza Strip and carried out an attack in southern Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1170 people.