Iran launched waves of missiles at Israel late Friday and early Saturday.
A hospital in Tel Aviv treated seven people wounded in the second Iranian barrage; all but one of them had light injuries. Israel’s Fire and Rescue Services said they were injured when a projectile hit a building in the city.
Hours later, an Iranian missile struck near homes in the central Israeli city of Rishon Lezion, killing two people and injuring 19, according to Israel’s paramedic service Magen David Adom. Israel’s Fire and Rescue service said four homes were severely damaged.
Meanwhile, the sound of explosions and Iranian air defense systems firing at targets echoed across central Tehran shortly after midnight on Saturday, and an Associated Press reporter could hear air raid sirens near their home.
Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency is reporting a fire at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport, with a video posted on X of a column of smoke and orange flames rising from what the outlet said was the airport.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a recorded message Friday: “We will not allow them to escape safely from this great crime they committed.” Iran’s U.N. ambassador said 78 people were killed and more than 320 wounded in Israeli attacks.
Israel’s paramedic services said 34 people were wounded in the barrage on the Tel Aviv area, including a woman who was critically injured after being trapped under rubble. In Ramat Gan, east of Tel Aviv, an Associated Press journalist saw burned out cars and at least three damaged houses, including one where the front was nearly entirely torn away.
Earlier on Friday, Israel launched blistering attacks on the heart of Iran’s nuclear and military structure Friday, deploying warplanes and drones previously smuggled into the country to assault key facilities and kill top generals and scientists
Israel asserted the barrage was necessary before its adversary got any closer to building an atomic weapon, although experts and the U.S. government have assessed that Iran was actively working on such a weapon before the strikes.
Iran retaliated by firing waves of ballistic missiles at Israel, where explosions flared in the skies over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and shook the buildings below. The Israeli military urged civilians, already rattled by the earlier wave of missiles, to head to shelter, as missiles damaged homes and killed two people.
U.S. ground-based air defense systems in the region were helping to shoot down Iranian missiles, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the measures.
Israel’s ongoing airstrikes and intelligence operation and Iran’s retaliation raised concerns about all-out war between the countries and propelled the region, already on edge, into even greater upheaval.
Israel had long threatened such a strike, and successive American administrations sought to prevent it, fearing it would ignite a wider conflict across the Middle East and possibly be ineffective at destroying Iran’s dispersed and hardened nuclear program.
But a confluence of developments triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack — plus the reelection of U.S. President Donald Trump — created the conditions that allowed Israel to finally follow through on its threats. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the U.S. was informed in advance of the attack.
On Thursday, Iran had been censured by the U.N.’s atomic watchdog for not complying with obligations meant to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon. (AP)
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