Iran's IRGC chief: Israel to pay 'heavy price' for violent attacks in Gaza

Chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Hossein Salami has condemned Israel’s latest onslaught against the Gaza Strip, saying the Tel Aviv regime will pay a heavy price for its atrocities.

Salami made the remarks after a meeting with Secretary General of the Islamic Jihad Palestinian resistance movement Ziad al-Nakhalah in the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Saturday, a day after Israel began to target residential areas in the Gaza Strip, killing at least a dozen civilians, including a five-year-old child, and injuring many more.

"Undoubtedly, the swift response of the Palestinian Islamic resistance to such a crime proves that a new era has begun for the resistance to take power and the Zionists will pay yet another heavy price for their recent crime,” he said.

Salami further noted that the power of the Palestinian resistance front has increased compared to the past, adding that given its vast capacities, the resistance has gained the ability to take the control of major wars.  

"The course of developments in the occupied Palestinian territories and the waning power of the Zionists, who are on the decline, is a road of no return … which ends in the liberation of al-Quds," he added.

'Palestinian resistance groups ready to strike back'

Meanwhile, Nakhalah said the Islamic Jihad and other resistance groups have made “significant” military progress and are ready to respond to Israeli attacks.

He further noted that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s resistance against the United States and the Zionist regime has “increased the morale of the Palestinian fighters.”

The Islamic Jihad leader also emphasized that his fellow fighters will press ahead with resistance, adding that with the cooperation of other Palestinian resistance groups, “we would be able to retaliate for any act of aggression by the Zionist regime and respond to it in a timely manner.”

On Friday, twelve people, including a senior commander of the Islamic Jihad, were killed in an airstrike by Israel on a center affiliated with the resistance movement in the city of Rafah located in the southern part of the besieged Gaza Strip.

Following the strike, the Islamic Jihad fired more than 100 rockets toward the occupied territories. The movement called the retaliatory barrage only an “initial response” to the Israeli bloodbath.

Nakhalah said the Israeli enemy must expect a "non-stop" confrontation in the wake of the Friday aggression.

There will be no truce following this attack, the Islamic Jihad official said. All resistance groups must struggle under one flag in this fight, he said.

The regime in Tel Aviv continued to target residential areas in Gaza on Saturday, drawing worldwide condemnations as observers warn of yet another one similar to the May 2021 war on Gaza.

Last May, Gaza’s resistance groups fired around 4,000 rockets during Operation Sword of al-Quds after the Israeli regime initiated the war, which marked the fourth wholesale military campaign by the occupying regime against the densely-populated Palestinian enclave.

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