In a fresh escalation of hostilities in the Middle East, Iran and Israel traded missiles and airstrikes on Saturday, the day after Israel launched a sweeping air offensive against its old enemy.
The Israel’s strikes killed Iranian commanders and scientists and bombed its nuclear sites in a stated bid to stop it building an atomic weapon.
Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, was the most senior leader among the dead, and Gen. Hossein Salami, the commander of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was killed in an Israeli strike within Tehran, the Revolutionary Guards said in a statement.
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Moreover, Gen. Gholamali Rashid, a senior leader in the Iranian armed forces; Mohammad Mehdi Tehranji, an Iranian physicist; and Fereydoun Abbasi, an Iranian nuclear scientist were sent to graves too.
In Tehran, Iranian state TV reported that around 60 people, including 20 children, had been killed in an attack on a housing complex, with more strikes reported across the country. Israel said it had attacked more than 150 targets.
In Israel, air raid sirens sent residents into shelters as waves of missiles streaked across the sky and interceptors rose to meet them. At least three people were killed overnight. An Israeli official said Iran had fired around 200 ballistic missiles in four waves.
This is as Nigerian Government strongly condemned Israel’s preemptive military strike on Iran, describing it as a dangerous escalation that threatens both regional and global stability.
However, U.S. President Donald Trump has lauded Israel’s strikes and warned of much worse to come unless Iran quickly accepts the sharp downgrading of its nuclear programme that the U.S. has demanded in talks that had been due to resume on Sunday.
But with Israel saying its operation could last weeks, and urging Iran’s people to rise up against their Islamic clerical rulers, fears have grown of a regional conflagration dragging in outside powers.
The United States, Israel’s main ally, helped shoot down Iranian missiles, two U.S. officials said.
“If (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei continues to fire missiles at the Israeli home front, Tehran will burn,” Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said.
Iran had vowed to avenge Friday’s Israeli onslaught, which gutted Iran’s nuclear and military leadership and damaged atomic plants and military bases.
Tehran warned Israel’s allies that their regional military bases would come under fire too if they help shoot down Iranian missiles, Iranian state television reported.
However, 20 months of war in Gaza and a conflict in Lebanon last year have decimated Tehran’s strongest regional proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, reducing its options for retaliation.
Gulf Arab states that have long mistrusted Iran but fear coming under attack in any wider conflict have urged calm as worries about disruption to the Gulf region’s crucial oil exports boosted the price of crude by about 7% on Friday.
Iranian general and parliament member Esmail Kosari said the country was seriously reviewing whether to close the Strait of Hormuz, the outlet for oil shipped from the Gulf.
Night of blasts and fear in Israel and Iran
Iran’s overnight fusillade included hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones, an Israeli official said. Three people, including a man and a woman, were killed and dozens wounded, the ambulance service said.
In Rishon LeZion, south of Tel Aviv, emergency services rescued a baby girl trapped in a house hit by a missile, police said. Video showed teams searching through the rubble of one home.
In the western suburb of Ramat Gan, near Ben Gurion airport, Linda Grinfeld described her apartment being damaged: “We were sitting in the shelter, and then we heard such a boom. It was awful.”
The Israeli military said it had intercepted surface-to-surface Iranian missiles as well as drones, and that two rockets had been fired from Gaza.
In Iran, Israel’s two days of strikes destroyed residential apartment buildings, killing families and neighbours as apparent collateral damage in strikes targeting scientists and senior officials in their beds.
Iran said 78 people were killed on the first day and scores more on the second day, including when a missile brought down a 14-storey apartment block in Tehran.
State TV said 60 people were believed to have been killed there, though the figure was not officially confirmed. It broadcast pictures of the aftermath, with the collapsed building flattened into debris and the façade of several upper storeys lying sideways in the street, while slabs of concrete dangled from a neighbouring building.
“Smoke and dust were filling all the house and we couldn’t breathe,” 45-year-old Tehran resident Mohsen Salehi told Iranian news agency WANA after an overnight air strike woke his family.
Fars News agency said two projectiles had hit Mehrabad airport, located inside the capital, which is both civilian and military.
With Iran’s air defences heavily damaged, Israeli Air Force chief Tomer Bar said “the road to Iran has been paved”.
In preparation for possible further escalation, reservists were being deployed across Israel. Army Radio reported units had been positioned along the Lebanese and Jordanian borders.
Iranian nuclear sites damaged
Israel sees Iran’s nuclear programme as a threat to its existence, and said the bombardment was designed to avert the last steps to production of a nuclear weapon.
A military official on Saturday said Israel had caused significant damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities at Natanz and Isfahan, but had not so far operated in another uranium enrichment site, Fordow.
The official said Israel had “eliminated the highest commanders of their military leadership” and had killed nine nuclear scientists who “were main sources of knowledge, main forces driving forward the (nuclear) programme”.
Tehran insists the programme is entirely civilian in line with its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and that it does not seek an atomic bomb.
However, it has repeatedly hidden parts of its programme from international inspectors, and the International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday reported it in violation of the NPT.
Iranian talks with the United States to resolve the nuclear dispute have stuttered this year. The next meeting is set for Sunday. Tehran implied it would not attend but stopped short of pulling out.
“The other side (the U.S.) acted in a way that makes dialogue meaningless,” state media quoted foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei as saying. “It is still unclear what decision we will make on Sunday in this regard.”
Reuters
