Tehran (AFP) – The United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday, sending columns of smoke rising over Tehran as the Islamic republic retaliated with barrages of missiles across the region. A strike on a school in southern Iran killed 63 people, a local official said. AFP was unable to immediately access the site in order to verify the toll.
Meanwhile, the UAE reported one civilian dead in an Iranian attack, and four people were killed by a missile of unspecified origin in Syria, state media reported. Iran’s missile salvo could be heard in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE, as well as Israel, after Tehran had vowed to retaliate fiercely if attacked. “The Iranian armed forces consider as legitimate targets the sites from which the US and Zionist operations were carried out,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Iranian TV.
Plumes of black smoke hung over Tehran on Saturday, including in the Pasteur district, site of the home of Khamenei, and there was a huge security deployment in the capital. “Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian were among the targets of the attack,” Israel’s public broadcaster reported, citing an Israeli source. Iranian local media reported Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and “all the commanders” of Iran’s army were in good health. Witnesses told AFP correspondents they had heard at least three blasts in the area. AFP journalists also saw long lines of people queueing at bakeries at various locations in Tehran.
“It was all very loud,” said one witness in the city’s north, before communications and internet access were cut, a step authorities typically take during periods of heightened tension. “I saw with my own eyes two Tomahawk missiles flying horizontally toward targets,” a Tehran office worker told AFP. More than 20 of Iran’s 31 provinces were affected by the US and Israeli strikes, Iran’s Red Crescent Society said. Across Israel, city streets stood deserted as residents took cover in shelters, while the blasts of intercepted Iranian missiles reverberated overhead.
– ‘Eliminating imminent threats’ –
The attacks came after US President Donald Trump expressed frustration at Iran’s stance in negotiations over its nuclear and missile programmes. Trump said Washington’s goal was “eliminating imminent threats” from Iran, and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the operation was to remove an “existential threat”. “We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally, again, obliterated. We’re going to annihilate their navy,” Trump said, warning of possible US casualties. He also told Iranians the “hour of your freedom is at hand”, urging them to rise up and “take over your government”.
It was the first US military action of this scale since the 2003 invasion of Iraq that appeared to be aimed at toppling a foreign government. Israel’s Netanyahu echoed Trump’s call, telling Iranians that the time had come to “cast off the yoke of tyranny”. “We are embarking on an operation that is taking place at a completely different scale — more complex and more complicated,” Israel’s army chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir was quoted as saying in a military statement. “I know that the preparation was short but intensive and incredibly thorough.”
Iran again vowed to “respond decisively to the aggressors”. “The IRGC’s missiles and drones have struck the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain and other American bases in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as military and security centres in the heart of the occupied territories (Israel), with severe blows,” the Revolutionary Guards said. Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, the UAE and Israel all closed their airspaces to civilian traffic, at least in part, and multiple airlines cancelled flights to the Middle East. US embassies in the Gulf urged American citizens to take shelter, and in Lebanon, the embassy urged Americans to depart while commercial options were available.
– Blasts and sirens –
Explosions were heard over central Doha and near Al-Udeid military base, the largest US facility in the region. Witnesses in Dubai saw missiles streaking across the sky. Residents and AFP correspondents in the Emirati, Qatari and Bahraini capitals heard multiple waves of explosions over the course of the day. Kuwait and the UAE reported intercepting incoming Iranian missiles, with Abu Dhabi saying it “reserves its full right to respond” and slamming the attacks as “a dangerous escalation”. A bombing that targeted an Iraqi military base housing a pro-Iran group killed at least two fighters, according to sources from the powerful group Kataeb Hezbollah, which said it would retaliate.
With the strikes underway, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah voiced confidence in victory against the Islamic republic. “We are very close to final victory. I want to be by your side as soon as possible so that together we can take back and rebuild Iran,” Reza Pahlavi, who lives in the Washington area, said in an online video address. The foreign ministry of Oman, a mediator in recent US-Iran talks, called “on all parties to immediately cease military operations and urges the United Nations Security Council to convene an emergency meeting to impose a ceasefire”.
The strikes also sparked concern outside the region, with the UN’s human rights chief warning that further attacks “would only result in death, destruction and human misery”.
© 2024 AFP
