THE ISRAELI government said today that it and its allies thwarted 99 per cent of the more than 300 drones and missiles Iran launched toward the country on Saturday night.

US President Joe Biden said he would convene a meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) today “to co-ordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.”

The language indicated that the Biden administration does not want Iran’s assault to spiral into a broader military conflict.

Iran launched the attack in response to a strike widely blamed on Israel on an Iranian consular building in Syria earlier this month, which killed two Iranian generals.

Israel said that Iran launched 170 drones, more than 30 cruise missiles and more than 120 ballistic missiles.

By this morning, Iran said the attack was over and Israel reopened its airspace.

The two foes have for years been engaged in a shadow war, marked by incidents like the Damascus strike.

But today’s assault was the first time Iran has launched a direct military attack on Israel, despite decades of enmity dating back to the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Rescuers said that a seven-year-old girl was seriously wounded in southern Israel, apparently in a missile strike, though they said police were still investigating the circumstances of her injuries.

General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, said the operation was over, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.

“We have no intention of continuing the operation against Israel,” he said.

Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi claimed Iran had taught Israel a lesson and warned that “any new adventures against the interests of the Iranian nation would be met with a heavier and regretful response from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Meanwhile, Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank went on the largest rampage against Palestinians since the genocidal assault on Gaza began, as Israel’s army said on Saturday the body of a missing Israeli teen was found after he was killed in a “terrorist attack.”

The Israeli military said dozens of people were injured in confrontations in several locations, with shots fired and rocks thrown. It did not specify how many Palestinians and Israelis were hurt.

The disappearance of 14-year-old Binyamin Achimair sparked the attacks on Palestinian villages on Friday and Saturday.

On Friday, Palestinian Jehad Abu Alia was killed, and 25 others were wounded in the attack on al-Mughayyir village, Palestinian health officials said.

On Saturday, Israeli troops delayed for several hours the ambulance carrying the 26-year-old man’s body for burial, witnesses said.

Dozens of Israeli settlers returned to the village’s outskirts on Saturday, burning 12 homes and several cars.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said that three people from the village were injured, one critically. Border police fired tear gas toward villagers who gathered, trying to disperse them.

“They entered the house and burned it and burned cars, as you can see,” 42-year-old Akef Abu Allu said, looking at his blackened two-storey home in al-Mughayyir.

In the nearby village of Douma, Israeli settlers set fire to around 15 homes and 10 farms, the head of the local village council, Slieman Dawabsheh, told the Associated Press.

“The army came but unfortunately, the army were protecting the settlers,” he said, asserting that it fired tear gas and rubber bullets at Palestinians trying to confront and expel them.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said six people were injured by gunfire but did not say who fired.

The Israeli human rights group Yesh Din in a statement said at least 10 villages in the West Bank were attacked by Israeli settlers, with homes and vehicles damaged.

Tensions in the West Bank have been especially high since Israel began its assault on Gaza on October 7, sparked by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and took 250 hostages.

More than 33,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in Israel’s offensive, according to Gaza health officials.

More than 460 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since October 7, most in clashes sparked by army raids but some by vigilante settlers.