Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari is pictured in October 2023. Hagari mentioned on Saturday that Iran had launched drones towards Israel.

Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP by way of Getty Images

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Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP by way of Getty Images

Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari is pictured in October 2023. Hagari mentioned on Saturday that Iran had launched drones towards Israel.

Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP by way of Getty Images

In a serious escalation of battle within the Middle East, Israeli officers mentioned late Saturday evening that Iran had launched a drone assault towards Israel.

The drones would would take hours to reach in Israeli airspace, Israeli navy spokesman Daniel Hagari mentioned. He warned Israelis to remain in secure rooms for 10 minutes if sirens of their areas go off.

The launch comes 4 days after Iran’s chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed retaliation for an April 1 strike on an Iranian consulate within the Syrian capital of Damascus. Iran mentioned the strike had killed seven members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, together with two generals, and it blamed Israel for the assault.

By Saturday, as anticipation grew over a potential retaliation, Israeli officials warned residents dwelling in communities close to Gaza and the Lebanon border to restrict the scale of gatherings and to work indoors or inside attain of a shelter. Schools throughout Israel had been closed by Monday. Officials mentioned Israel would take any measures essential to defend its residents.

“Iran is a terrorist state — the world is seeing this now more than ever,” Israel’s protection minister Yoav Gallant mentioned Saturday, hours earlier than the launch. “We are determined to defend our citizens against this terrorism, and we know how to respond to it.”

In anticipation of a potential assault, President Biden had cut short a trip to Delaware with the intention to return to the White House Saturday. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel. And Iran will not succeed,” Biden mentioned Friday.

The strike and retaliation characterize an escalation that many officers worldwide had expressed fear about ever because the outbreak of conflict between Israel and the Gaza-based militant group Hamas on Oct. 7, the day Hamas led an assault on Israel that left some 1,200 individuals lifeless.

In the six months since, Israel has bombarded Gaza and carried out a devastating floor invasion that has left a lot of the territory in ruins and greater than 33,000 Palestinians lifeless, in accordance with Palestinian well being officers.

This is a breaking information story and might be up to date.

Additional reporting by NPR’s Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv and NPR’s Jane Arraf in Amman.