Iran has claimed that the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran earlier this week was carried out by a “short-range projectile” and a “severe explosion” outside a guest house where he was staying.

The death of the Hamas leader further heightened tensions at an already volatile time, raising fears that Israel’s conflict with Hamas and its allies could develop into a multi-front, fully-fledged war in the Middle East.

The Iranian government and Hamas say that Israel carried out the assassination. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

On Saturday, Iran warned that “blood vengeance” for the killing was “certain.”

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed in a statement that the short-range projectile that reportedly killed Haniyeh had a warhead of about seven kilograms, based on “investigations and research conducted.”

US officials were briefed on the operation by Israeli officials only after the assassination, the source said.

“This action was planned and executed by the Zionist regime with the support of the criminal American government,” the IRGC alleged. Iran calls Israel the Zionist regime.

Israel “will decisively receive the response to this crime,” which is a “severe punishment” that will come at “an appropriate time, place, and manner,” the IRGC said.

The chief spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said Thursday that Israel is on “high alert” for both defensive and offensive military action.

“IDF forces are deployed in the air, at sea and on the ground, and are prepared for all scenarios, especially for offensive plans within the immediate timeframe,” Hagari said.

Anti-government rallies erupted in several cities across Israel this weekend, as tens of thousands of Israelis demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strike a deal with terror group Hamas to free more than 100 hostages still held in Gaza.

The demonstrations – a regular occurrence – were notable for taking place despite urgent security warnings as Israel braces for a possible strike from Iran. Some form of military retaliation has been widely expected in the region following the unclaimed assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday.

Despite the tense security situation, large crowds gathered to Begin Gate in Tel Aviv on Saturday to support the families of the hostages and to call for their release from captivity, according to protest organizers. Videos showed protestors waving Israeli flags and holding up signs with images of the Israeli hostages.

At the Begin gate of the Kirya IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv, people were heard chanting, “We’re not letting up; release the hostages.” Others shouted, “Stop the death, stop the bereavement, human lives above all!” Some protestors stood surrounded by barricades, symbolizing hostages who are reported to have been kept in cages.

There are currently 115 total hostages, living and dead, being held in Gaza, according to Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office and the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. Of that number, 111 hostages were taken during the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, which killed over 1,200 people.

Israeli’s ensuing military offensive in the isolated Palestinian enclave has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly 2 million, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health and the United Nations.

Family members of captives held in Gaza have harshly criticized the country’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach to the conflict. In a statement released Saturday, an association representing the families accused the Israeli leader of choosing “to escalate the situation instead of securing a deal that would save lives.”

Anger and impatience over the slow pace of hostage releases from Gaza flared this week following a new report that Israeli Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu clashed with top advisors on whether to accept a new hostage and ceasefire deal, which the Israeli Prime Minister Office has rejected as “incorrect.”

Israel’s Channel 12 reported that, at a tense meeting of Israel’s security council on Wednesday night, senior officials had urged Netanyahu to take a hostage and ceasefire deal with Gaza militant group Hamas.

The report claimed that Mossad director David Barnea had said “there is a deal ready and that Israel must take it,” while Ronen Bar, the head of Israeli security agency Shin Bet, said it appeared to him the prime minister did not want the outline of the deal on the table.

Netanyahu reportedly banged on the table and said the team “don’t know how to conduct negotiations.”

The Prime Minister’s office refuted the characterization of the alleged exchange in a statement, and said that Netanyahu is committed to the hostages’ release. “The head of the Mossad did not say that there was a deal ready and that it should be accepted. The description that Hamas supposedly agreed to the terms of the deal is false…” it said.

Netanyahu’s office on Saturday released another statement accusing “leaks and false briefings in the media” of misleading the public, and blaming Hamas for hindering negotiations. “While Prime Minister Netanyahu agreed to the deal outline, Hamas has been trying to introduce dozens of changes that, de facto, nullify the outline,” the statement said.

After the report was broadcast, families of hostages demanded to know “who is obstructing the negotiations,” in a statement, and called for a public report on efforts to secure a hostage release deal.

Israeli airstrikes on two school buildings in the north of Gaza City killed 17 Palestinians, most of them children, and left at least 63 injured according to Gaza Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal on Saturday.

“The schools were targeted a second time with three missiles, resulting in 17 martyrs and dozens of injured individuals who were transported to the Baptist Hospital in the city,” Basal said.

According to Gaza Civil Defense, the schools were being used as shelters for people displaced by violence. Both Al-Huda School and Al-Hamama School, which are adjacent to each other and share the same playground, were targeted, Basal said.

After the initial strike, more than three missiles struck the area in a “double tap” attack, according to Basal.

“The first bombing was unexpected and resulted in a large number of martyrs and injured individuals. While the martyrs and injured were being retrieved, the occupation forces issued a warning that another strike was imminent,” Basal said.

The Civil Defense in Gaza published a list of the names of the killed individuals, showing that at least three of the dead were female.

Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza on October 7, after terror group Hamas attacked southern Israel. At least 1,200 people were killed, and more than 250 others abducted in the Hamas-led assault, according to Israeli authorities.

Israeli military action in the strip has since killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians and injured over 90,000, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. As of early July, nearly 2 million people had been displaced in Gaza – almost the entire population, according to figures from the United Nations.

Ruqia Haidari was the baby of the family.

The youngest of five children, she was born in Afghanistan in 1999, just a month before her father, a fruit and vegetable seller, was killed by the Taliban.

So desperate was her mother to protect her children that she fled with the four youngest – all aged under five – first to Pakistan then to Australia, where they settled in Shepparton, a regional town in northern Victoria in 2013.

Australia offered the children opportunities their mother, Sakina Muhammad Jan, never had. They went to school, learned English, and made friends outside their Hazara community, an ethno-religious minority with a long history of persecution in Afghanistan.

But a decade on, Haidari is dead, and her mother has served the first week of a three-year sentence for forcing her to marry a man against her wishes to study and get a job.

Jan is the first person in Australia to be convicted of forced marriage since it was criminalized in 2013. The court heard there was no suggestion she knew her daughter’s husband would kill her just weeks after she moved in with him.

“You were the trusted and only living parent of the victim. It was your acts of coercion that caused her to enter the marriage,” Judge Fran Dalziel told Jan from the bench at Victoria County Court, in comments that had to be translated into Jan’s native language, Dari.

The crime carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison for victims over 18, but Jan was sentenced to three, to be released with restrictions after 12 months.

Since then, word has spread about what the sentence means, particularly for parents who feel compelled to push their children to marry due to their own beliefs or community pressure.

“It has caused a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety in our community,” said Helena Hassani, an expert on forced marriage in Australia with the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and founder of Boland Parwaz, an organization that seeks to end child and forced marriage.

“That day when she was sentenced, we had a family gathering. A lot of middle-aged women who never talk about these things were asking me, what’s going to happen? Is she going to go to jail?”

“I was like, yes, she’s sentenced, and you’re going to have to be really careful, because forced marriage is illegal in Australia,” said Hassani. “And they’re really looking pale, because I know at least one of their daughters are being forced to get married in Australia.”

A life sentence

Forced marriage is considered a form of gender-based violence that predominantly affects young women, whose control over their lives is passed without consent from their parents to their partners. It can lead to decades of physical and psychological abuse, and in some cases suicide or murder.

In the past six years, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) has received 531 reports of forced marriages in Australia, most involving children under the age of 18.

Haidari’s was one of them.

She was introduced to her future husband, Mohammad Ali Halimi, on June 1, 2019, and the very next day began confiding her objections to her friends, her driving instructor, her teachers, then ultimately the police.

Officers spoke to her on August 19, but the next day a mullah was called to officiate a permanent Nikah ceremony, confirming the couple’s earlier engagement.

He paid her family a dowry of 15,000 Australian dollars ($9,700).

Halimi returned to his home in Perth in Western Australia, under the agreement that his wife would join him when she finished high school.

“In our community, in our culture, we have got this saying, which is girls should leave their parents’ home with a white dress, which is your wedding dress, and they should leave their husband’s home again with a white dress, which is your coffin,” said Hassani.

And that is exactly what happened to Haidari.

In January 2020, within weeks of a party to celebrate their marriage at a sports center in Shepparton attended by 500 guests, Halimi killed his young wife.

At home in Perth, he had been arguing with Haidari’s brother on the phone, and when the call ended, the unhappy newlyweds continued to fight.

According to court documents, Haidari told him to “f*** off,” and he grabbed a large kitchen knife and lunged at her with such force that he severed two of her arteries.

Halimi pleaded guilty, telling police he’d become increasingly frustrated after she repeatedly rebuffed his attempts at sexual intimacy. He also complained that she had failed to cook or keep the house clean, and often slept while he worked seven days a week to support them.

Halimi was sentenced to life in prison.

“She really did not want to get married,” Hassani, of UTS, said of Haidari.

“She came back from Perth, asking the family, please don’t let me go, please get my divorce, and mom was like, ‘No, go back.’”

“You’re supposed to leave your husband’s home with white coffin, which she did, poor lady.”

A civil response

Jennifer Burn, the founding director of Anti-Slavery Australia, says that women inside and outside the country seek help every day via My Blue Sky, a website that offers free and confidential advice to women stuck in or trying to avoid forced marriages.

“Australia is so multicultural, and we have reports across the board, all religions, all ethnicities,” said Burn, who has campaigned against modern slavery for more than two decades. Forced marriages have been reported within communities from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and India, among others.

Often, those at risk are young girls from socially conservative families, who are living at home and are reluctant to go to the police because they don’t want their parents to get into trouble.

The practice has been going on for decades, but in recent years the Australian government has made a point of targeting offenders, and on the day of Jan’s sentencing, the attorney general announced the start of consultations about what a stronger civil response could look like.

Changes could include allowing victims to apply for a court protection order against potential offenders or relaxing the rules so that adults can be added to airport watch lists, if there’s a fear they could be taken abroad to be married.

“This idea of building greater civil protection for people who are facing forced marriages is really, really important, and that can go hand in hand with the criminal response,” said Burn.

Some of the measures borrow from forced-marriage laws in Britain, where hundreds of people take out protection orders each year to thwart an impending forced marriage.

The United Kingdom also has the interagency Forced Marriage Unit, which works with the foreign and interior ministries as well as charities to try and stop British victims being compelled to marry both at home and abroad.  The unit’s latest statistics show 69% of cases referred to them involve female victims, while 31% are male.

Other countries such as France, Canada and Germany also have specific laws against forced marriage.

Support is already given to women within Australia, but in late July rules were relaxed so that social welfare groups can also refer victims for crisis support and accommodation, alongside the AFP.

“You don’t need to talk to the police. You can be supported for up to 200 days, and potentially more,” said Burn. “You’d be provided with comprehensive 24/7 casework support, including accommodation. That is something that can be incredibly important in a crisis situation.”

A mother behind bars

Straight after Monday’s sentencing hearing, Jan was taken away to spend her first days inside a women’s prison on the outskirts of Melbourne.

Her barrister Andrew Buckland said that, as an illiterate, non-English speaker, it’s likely she doesn’t have a good understanding of what’s going on, though she has indicated she wants to appeal the sentence.

As a permanent resident and not an Australian citizen, Jan’s sentence will cost her far more than 12 months in prison. Under Australia’s Migration Act, her visa could be cancelled under rules that seek to remove non-citizens who commit serious crimes.

A month before Jan’s sentencing, the immigration minister circulated a directive specifically naming the crime of forced marriage as serious enough to warrant the removal of a visa. Without a visa, Jan would be subject to deportation to her home country of Afghanistan, although as signatory to the Refugee Convention, Australia is obligated to not send refugees back to potential harm.

Since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in August 2021, the persecution of Hazaras has escalated alongside increasing deprivations for women who are now living under a system of “gender apartheid,” according to the United Nations.

Without a visa, after serving her sentence, Jan could be forced into immigration detention, or potentially released under a bridging visa with strict monitoring conditions including the use of an ankle bracelet.

During Jan’s sentencing hearing, Judge Dalziel cited a letter of support from the Goulburn Valley Afghanistan Association that described her as “a quiet, kind and helpful woman.”

However, Hassani says Jan has lost the respect of the community she tried so hard to please.

“It has really damaged her reputation, her respect, and she has literally no place in the community,” she said.

Like many perpetrators, Jan was also a victim of forced marriage, compelled to marry a man she didn’t know at age 12. Her first baby followed soon after.

Her parents would likely have believed they were acting in her best interests.

“The whole community believes that if you have got a husband, then you’re respected, you’re valued, the whole world is yours,” said Hassani. “To be a good woman, you have to be married, and you have to be a nice, obedient wife.”

To be divorced is to bring shame on the family. It can also be financially debilitating for whichever party has to pay back the dowry and cost of wedding celebrations.

“A lot of girls would rather suicide, than live with that shame and stigma,” she said.

Divorcees are labeled as “bewa,” which was the label attached to Haidari years earlier when her mother arranged for her to marry another man at age 15. That union ended in divorce.

The court heard that Jan thought that marrying off Ruqia would be in her best interests.

“Whilst you believed you were acting in her best interests, you were not in fact doing so,” said Judge Dalziel.

It’s not acceptable within the Hazara community to force a child to marry. But it does happen, and the value the community places on marriage makes it hard to break the cycle.

But Hassani believes change can happen – she’s already seeing younger generations pushing back against the pressure placed on them to marry.

“I’m really happy that a lot of children who have grown up here are standing up for themselves,” she said. “But it still needs a lot of time to resolve this clash between parents and the community’s expectations.”

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrates what he sees as major victories against Hamas and Hezbollah this week, the mood in Tel Aviv is far from celebratory.

Often bustling with crowds on a weekend, the coastal city of more than 400,000 residents was quieter than usual, with some attributing the subdued mood to fears of an Iranian attack in retaliation to the assassinations carried out against Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in recent days.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was on “high alert,” and Israeli supermarkets are reporting a spike in shopping for basic goods as citizens stock up.

On Wednesday, Netanyahu said that his country “struck crushing blows” to the “the three H’s” – Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah, all Iranian-backed, all fierce Israeli foes. The prime minister was celebrating the assassination of Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, Hezbollah military commander Fu’ad Shukr and retaliatory strikes on the Houthis in Yemen last month.

Hamas also blamed Israel for the assassination of their political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed on Wednesday in Tehran. Israel has not commented on the killing.

Netanyahu’s tone stands at odds with the mood on the ground in Tel Aviv, including among families of the hostages still in Gaza.

Four of Yifat Zailer’s relatives are still held in Gaza by Hamas – Zailer’s cousin Shiri and her husband Yarden, along with their two sons, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, who spent his first birthday in captivity in January.

The Bibas boys remain the youngest of 111 hostages still held in Gaza since October 7, according to Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office and the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

“I feel they (the government) don’t hear it’s enough; I feel they don’t hear the people on the streets shouting, that our priority is getting the hostages back,” Zailer said.

Polls have repeatedly shown that most Israelis prioritize the release of hostages over continued war.

A recent survey conducted by independent research center the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) showed that 56% of Israelis support a deal to release all the hostages and end the war in Gaza. It also showed that most right-wing Israelis have a greater appetite for the war.

“A large majority of those on the left and in the center consider a deal for the release of hostages to be the highest priority,” the survey said, “while the majority on the right prioritize a military operation in Rafah.”

Zailer’s family was taken from Kibbutz Nir Or on October 7, when Hamas launched an attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage, according to Israeli authorities. Israel retaliated by waging a war in Gaza, which Palestinian authorities say killed more than 39,000 people in the enclave, most of whom are women and children.

The war has also displaced almost all of Gaza’s population, flattened much of the strip and triggered a humanitarian crisis. But Netanyahu has said that the war will continue until Hamas is eliminated, a goal deemed unrealistic by his critics.

Hopes that a deal that would release Zailer’s family, along with the more than 100 other hostages, have ebbed and flowed throughout the past ten months of war. The spike in tensions last week only raised the worst of fears.

Zailer worries she will wake up one day to find that all the hostages had been killed, she said, “because they (Hamas) decided they have nothing to gain out of them.”

‘We’re waiting for an attack’

As families worry for their loved ones in Gaza, those in Israel are bracing for a possible Iranian retaliation, a move that could plunge the Middle East into an all-out war that drags in other regional players and potentially the United States.

On Tel Aviv’s main beach promenade, some Israelis are spending their Saturday swimming and surfing, knowing an Iranian attack could hit their city at any moment.

“The achievements (assassinations) are good, but let’s get this thing over with. Let’s get out. Let’s finish this thing. We’re tired, everyone is tired,” Oved said.

Alona Lelchuk, 31, said this war feels different, however, mainly because there are hostages still in captivity.

Netanyahu has been accused of losing focus of one of the main purposes of the war, which was to bring back those kidnapped. Without a ceasefire deal, they are unlikely to come home. But the Israeli leader has been under pressure from far-right ministers of his coalition to delay a ceasefire deal and press on with the war in Gaza, which today shows few signs of ending.

Even before the last escalation, the prime minister has been accused by critics of obstructing negotiations leading to a deal, and instead clinging to an extended war in efforts to ensure his political survival and that of his coalition.

Zailer is worried that as the war drags on and the death tolls rise in Gaza, her concerns for the hostages become less and less “legitimate” in the eyes of the world, especially as Israel increasingly loses international support for its military campaign in the Palestinian enclave.

She also worries for the children, Israeli and Palestinian, who will be forced to grow up with the wounds of this drawn-out war.

Ukraine’s military has claimed it sank a Russian submarine in a port in Crimea, in what would be another major setback for Moscow in the occupied peninsula.

The submarine Rostov-on-Don was hit in the port of Sevastopol on Friday, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a statement Saturday.

“The boat sank on the spot,” the General Staff said, without providing further evidence.

If confirmed, the sinking would be Ukraine’s latest blow to Russia’s navy, which Kyiv claims has already lost a third of its Black Sea Fleet.

The alleged loss of the Rostov-on-Don “proves once again that there is no safe place for the Russian fleet in Ukrainian territorial waters of the Black Sea,” the General Staff said.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry hailed the attack, saying in a post on social media that “a Russian submarine went to the bottom of the Black Sea” after it was attacked in Sevastopol’s port. “As a result of the attack, the submarine sank. Great work, warriors.”

Russia has occupied Crimea since its forces annexed the peninsula in 2014. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine more than two years ago, it has come under sporadic attack from Kyiv’s forces.

The Russian-appointed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said submarine defense exercises were taking place on Saturday, and “everything is calm in the city.”

On a post on Saturday, Russian military blogger Boris Rozhin said the ship repair plant in Sevastopol, where the submarine was docked, appears to have been hit.

Commissioned in 2014, the Rostov-on-Don is a 73.8-meter (242-foot) Kilo II-class submarine and carries a crew of 52. With a submerged displacement of 3,100 tons, the diesel-electric-powered vessel can carry Kalibr cruise missiles.

“Hitting this submarine is a big, big deal,” Leighton said.

Ukraine has targeted the Rostov-on-Don before.

The submarine was “severely damaged” in a Ukrainian missile attack in September 2023, according to Ukraine’s General Staff. After that attack, open-source intelligence photos, including ones cited by Britain’s defense ministry, showed what the ministry said was “catastrophic damage.”

But Ukraine’s General Staff said the Rostov-on-Don was repaired and recently tested in the waters of Sevastopol harbor.

Kyiv’s forces have enjoyed sustained successes targeting Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, with either missile strikes or sea drone attacks.

More than 20 Russian naval vessels have now been disabled or destroyed, a third of the entire fleet. Though Ukraine has virtually no navy of its own, technological innovation, audacity and Russian incompetence have given it the upper hand in much of the Black Sea.

Russia’s worst naval loss of the war was the sinking of the guided-missile cruiser Moskva in April 2022.

In October last year, satellite imagery indicated that Russia relocated some of its naval ships away from Sevastopol after a series of Ukrainian attacks.

In addition to striking the submarine, Ukrainian forces also severely damaged four S-400 anti-aircraft missile launchers on Friday, the Ukrainian General Staff said.

Leighton said destruction of the anti-aircraft batteries could help open up the skies over Crimea for Ukrainian warplanes to take on more Russian targets on the occupied peninsula.

Two people have been killed in a stabbing attack in the Israeli city of Holon, near Tel Aviv, medical officials have said.

The two killed were a 66-year-old woman and an “approximately 80-year-old man,” medical officials said. Two others were injured.

Police said the attacker was a West Bank resident and was “neutralized” at the scene. He was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.

A large police presence is at the scene conducting “extensive searches with a helicopter and other means,” a police spokesperson added.

Israel’s Minister for State Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, visited the site of the attack and repeated a call for Israelis to arm themselves.

“I share in the grief of the families and wish a full recovery to the wounded. Our war is not only against Iran, but here in the streets. This is exactly why we armed the people of Israel. More than 150,000 licenses for weapons in the last eight months,” he said, urging people to “carry a weapon, it saves lives.”

Palestinian militant groups celebrated the attack in Holon with the Popular Resistance Committees, an umbrella organisation of armed groups, and the Al-Qassam Brigades posting messages of support on their social media channels.

This is a developing story and will be updated.