Seven people were found dead on Friday at a rural property in Western Australia (WA), police said.

The bodies of four children and three adults were discovered in the town of Osmington, 280km south of state capital Perth, reports the BBC.

The cause of death is not ascertained but the police have confirmed that two firearms were found at the scene.

“The bodies of two adults were located outside (and) five bodies were located inside a building on the rural property,” said WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson.

If confirmed to be a mass shooting, it would be Australia’s worst since a massacre in Tasmania claimed the lives of 35 people in 1996.

Dawson said the police would launch a large-scale investigation, and were contacting relatives of the victims.

Osmington is a sparsely populated town about 20km from Margaret River, a popular tourism area.

US President Donald Trump will meet North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12. The two leaders will try to make it a very special moment for World Peace.

In a tweet Trump said, the highly anticipated meeting will discuss the denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula.

His tweet came hours after three American nationals of South Korean-origin returned home after North Korea released them.

Hindusthan Samachar/Shri Ram Shaw

Israeli air strikes against what it says were Iranian targets in Syria draw global calls to avoid further escalation.
The United Nations, Russia, France, Germany and Britain have urged Israel and Iran to avoid any further escalation after Israel carried out air raids against what it said were Iranian targets in Syria.

Israel said the bombardment on Thursday was in retaliation for Iranian rocket fire on its positions in the occupied Golan Heights. There were no Israeli casualties.

Iran made no comment about the rocket fire.

The raids come after weeks of rising tensions and followed US President Donald Trump’s decision on Tuesday to withdraw from the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal, a move Israel had long advocated.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed for an “immediate halt to all hostile acts” in a statement.

He urged the Security Council to remain actively aware of the situation and “shoulder its responsibilities” under the UN Charter.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was also quick to call for restraint. He said the Israeli raids were “very alarming development” and called on both Israel and Iran to avoid provoking each other.

All issues “should be solved through dialogue”, he added.

Both Russia and Iran have intervened in war-torn Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

Israel has long warned it will not accept Iran entrenching itself militarily in Syria.

In recent years, it has been suspected of carrying out air strikes on installations manned by Syrian, Iranian, and allied Lebanese fighters across Syria.

What are the ramifications of US exiting Iran nuclear deal?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday Iran had “crossed a red line” and the resulting bombardment “was a consequence”.

‘Provocative attack’
Iran does not want “new tensions” in the Middle East, President Hassan Rouhani told German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday.

“Iran has always sought to reduce tensions in the region, trying to strengthen security and stability,” Rouhani told Merkel in a telephone call, according to a statement on the website of Iran’s presidency.

The White House also condemned Iran’s “provocative attack” in a statement, with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying Iran has deployed into Syria “offensive rocket and missile systems aimed at Israel”.

That deployment “is an unacceptable and highly dangerous development for the entire Middle East”, she said.

Germany and Britain joined the US in denouncing the rocket fire they also said came from Iran, while France reiterated its “unwavering support for Israel’s security”.

Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, following a meeting in Aachen, Germany on Thursday, called for “level-headedness and de-escalation in the region”.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Iran must refrain from “further actions that will only lead to increased instability”, and called on Russia to press the Syrian government to work for a broader political statement.

Meanwhile, in a rare move for an Arab country, Bahrain backed Israel’s right to “defend itself” after the air raids.

Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa wrote on Twitter that so long as Iran uses its forces and missiles to try and destabilise the region, “it is the right of any country in the region, including Israel, to defend itself by destroying sources of danger.”

Bahrain is a close ally of Saudi Arabia and the two countries, whose foreign policies are often in lockstep, view Iran as the chief threat to the region.

Spectre of major confrontation
Outside observers see a dangerous game of brinkmanship.

“The rules of the game are worked out by trial and error, by push and shove. The pushing and shoving has become more intense,” said Heiko Wimmen of the International Crisis Group. “We are getting closer to the brink.”

It was only a matter of time before Iran pushed back, said Wimmen.

“The point will come with these actions where the Iranians will say, ‘We have to push back forcefully, we have to establish deterrence against the Israelis if we want to stay in Syria,'” said Wimmen.

Israel, too, may feel emboldened by US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

“Israel has been chomping at the bit to take a big bite out of Iran’s forces in Syria,” said Nicholas Heras of the Center for a New American Security.

Netanyahu sees that decision as a “green light to go after Iran in Syria, the consequences be damned”, said Heras.

“The Israelis believe they are facing a nightmare scenario right now where Iran is on the march in Syria with the intention to start a war that will end Israel.”

Aljazeera

Earlier this month, Iraqi journalist Muntadher al-Zaidi – who shot to prominence in 2008 when he hurled a shoe at George W Bush and called the former US president “a dog” – announced his candidacy for the May 12 parliamentary elections.

“I want to lock up all the thieves who’ve robbed Iraq of its wealth,” he told Al Jazeera, explaining that he plans to pass a law that would see “corrupt politicians held to account”.

The nomination of Zaidi with the Sairoon Coalition – an alliance between the Sadirst Movement and the Iraqi Communist Party – was celebrated by his supporters. But it was not received with the same level of enthusiasm among the wider Iraqi public as his “farewell kiss [to Bush] from the Iraqi people” 10 years ago.

The Sairoon Coalition led by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is one of the five main Shia factions running in the election for a new parliament.

While many parties have taken the opportunity to emphasise a unified, cross-sectarian national identity in the run-up to the vote, Iraq remains plagued by divisions along sectarian and ethnic lines.

With a large number of Iraqi journalists contesting the upcoming elections, the first since the defeat of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL also known as ISIS), observers fear that the lines between independent journalism and politics in Iraq are becoming increasingly blurred.

According to Iraq’s High Electoral Commission, there has been a record number of journalists and media personalities entering the electoral fray.

“We don’t know the exact number for journalists running in the election, but they are definitely in the tens. The numbers are visibly larger than in previous votes, said Hazem Al-Radinee, a member of the high board of electoral commissioners.

The Israeli army said on Thursday it hit dozens of Iranian military targets in Syria overnight, accusing Tehran of launching rocket and missile attack towards its forces in the occupied Golan Heights.

“The (Israeli military) has struck dozens of Iranian military targets in Syria,” Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus told journalists.

He said they targeted intelligence, logistics, storage and vehicles as well as the origin of the rockets.

A Syrian radar installation was destroyed in the attack, Syrian state news agency SANA cited a military source as saying.

“This is the first time that Israel has directly accused Iran of attacking it from within Syrian territory since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011,” Al Jazeera correspondent Harry Fawcett said from Jerusalem.
It [Israeli military] also said that some of those attacking forces were met by Syrian anti-aircraft systems and that resulted in Syrian military targets being struck as well.

“The question is whether that will be a deterrent or whether it could invite further escalation from the other side now that these things are in train, accidental escalation towards further conflict is always a possibility.”

‘Destabilise the entire region’
Israel was accused of attacking an airbase near Homs province in April. In February, an Israeli F-16 fighter jet was shot down by the Syrian military while targeting what it called Iranian sites responsible for launching a drone into the occupied Golan Heights.

Israel has carried out more than a dozen strikes inside Syria in the past one year.

The two countries are still technically at war, although the border remained largely quiet for decades until 2011, when the Syrian conflict broke out.

Israeli military spokesman Conricus said that the Russians were informed prior to the attack. It is one of the largest Israeli military operations in recent years and the biggest against Iranian targets.

Moscow and Tehran are close allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has presided over a civil war for the past seven years. Over half a million Syrians have died and nearly half of the prewar population displaced.

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Beirut, said that the move has created concerns in neighboring Lebanon after Lebanese army said that the country’s airspace was violated by Israeli fighter jets.

“Israel has been saying in the past that the Syrian government is paving the way for Iran and Hezbollah [a Lebanese Shia militia] to maintain strong military presence in the [occupied] Golan Heights not far from the border with Israel.

Ahelbarra said that any confrontation between Israel and Iran could trigger a reaction from Hezbollah [that backs President Assad].

“If that happens, then you might end up with a situation where you have different frontlines, different battlefields happening at the same time, which could further destabilise the entire region.”