Iran claims it has downed two Israeli jets - as it fires missiles in response to Friday's attacks
The Iranian army claims it has shot down two Israeli jets and that its response to Friday night's attacks on nuclear and military infrastructure has begun.
The reports emerged as smoke was seen rising from Tel Aviv as Iran launched missiles at the city.
Air raid sirens had been heard across Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as the missiles neared Israel.
It comes as a reporter with the Iranian Tasnim news agency said missiles had been fired from Shiraz and Isfahan in Iran towards Israel.
The IRNA state news agency reported at least two Israeli jets had been shot down - with the fate of the pilots currently unknown.
The agency also said that the country's response to Israel's attacks on Friday had begun.
Israel launched a huge attack on Iran on Friday, which it says was aimed at degrading the country's nuclear ambitions and weakening its military.
Israel was able to target key facilities and kill top generals and scientists.
It said the barrage was necessary before its adversary got any closer to building an atomic weapon.
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Reuters
31 minutes ago
- Reuters
Countries evacuating citizens from Iran and Israel
June 19 (Reuters) - Countries around the world are taking measures to evacuate their citizens from Israel and Iran as the two nations enter the seventh day of their air war and airspace in the region remains closed. A week of Israeli air and missile strikes against its major rival has wiped out the top echelon of Iran's military command, damaged its nuclear capabilities and killed hundreds of people, while Iranian retaliatory strikes have killed at least two dozen civilians in Israel. The Australian government evacuated a small group from Israel through a land border crossing on Wednesday, and would look for more opportunities over the next day, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Thursday. Around 1,500 Australians in Iran have registered for assistance, with another 1,200 Australians in Israel seeking to leave, Wong told reporters. Bulgaria has evacuated 17 of its diplomats and their families from Iran to Azerbaijan and is planning to repatriate them by land and air, the Bulgarian government said on Thursday. It said an administration at the Bulgarian embassy in Tehran was moving temporarily to Baku. China has evacuated more than 1,600 citizens from Iran and hundreds more from Israel, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Thursday. Several thousand Chinese nationals are thought to reside in oil-rich Iran, according to state media reports. Diplomats and embassy staff from Tel Aviv and Tehran will leave most probably by land, Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlic Radman said. France will arrange convoy by the end of the week to get French nationals without their own means of doing so to the Turkish or Armenian borders from Iran to access airports in those countries, French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Thursday. French citizens in Israel will be able to board buses starting Friday morning from the Jordanian border for airports in Jordan, with a flight chartered from Amman by the end of the week to aid the passage of French citizens who are vulnerable or in emergency situations, Barrot said. Greece has evacuated 16 of its nationals and their families by land from Iran to Azerbaijan and is now working on their repatriation to Greece, the foreign ministry said on Thursday. India said on Wednesday it has launched "Operation Sindhu" to evacuate Indian nationals from Iran. So far 110 Indian students have been evacuated from northern Iran, having crossed over into Armenia on June 17, India's foreign ministry said. The Indian Embassy in Iran has been assisting Indians in moving from areas seeing increased hostilities to relatively safer areas within the country and to subsequently evacuate them. Italy is organizing commercial flights from Amman in the next days to allow its about 20,000 nationals living in Israel to leave the country if they ask for it, Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani said on X. 29 of the about 500 Italian nationals leaving in Iran already left the country on Wednesday with assistance from the government, a diplomatic source said, adding it wasn't a proper evacuation. Japan's top government spokesperson Yoshimasa Hayashi said on Thursday Japan would send two Self-Defense Forces transport aircraft to Djibouti in eastern Africa in preparation for the evacuation of Japanese nationals from Iran and Israel. He also said the Japanese embassies in Israel and Iran were preparing to evacuate Japanese nationals to neighbouring countries by bus, with plans to implement evacuation as early as Thursday. New Zealand has temporarily closed its Tehran embassy and evacuated two staff and their family by land to Azerbaijan. New Zealand's government warned that closed airspace limited how they can assist citizens requesting to leave. Foreign Minister Winston Peters added that consular partners are considering evacuation flights when air space reopens and the government is working closely with Australia. The Nigerian Government is finalizing arrangements for the emergency evacuation of stranded Nigerians in both countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Thursday. Norwegian foreign affairs ministry told Reuters it had no plans to evacuate Norwegian citizens from Iran, adding it had advised against travel to Iran for a long time. Norway's embassy remains operational in Tehran but currently does not accept visits from the public, its foreign ministry said. A group of Polish citizens evacuated from Iran landed in Warsaw on Thursday morning, ending the evacuation from the country, the Foreign Ministry's spokesperson told journalists. The first plane evacuated from Israel landed in Warsaw on Wednesday morning and a second one is expected on Thursday afternoon from Amman, with 65 people on board. Portugal has temporarily shut its embassy in Iran and evacuated four of its citizens via Azerbaijan. It has received 130 repatriation requests from citizens in Israel and is organising a repatriation flight, expected to land in Portugal later on Thursday, the foreign ministry said. A group of 100 Serbs have fled Israel via Egypt, ambassador Miroljub Petrovic said on Thursday. Eighteen South Korean nationals and two of their family members who are Iranian nationals were evacuated by land from Iran, South Korea's foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday. The United States is working to evacuate U.S. citizens wishing to leave Israel by arranging flights and cruise ship departures, U.S. ambassador Mike Huckabee said in a post on X on Wednesday.
Telegraph
44 minutes ago
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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Israel could attempt to destroy Iran's Fordow nuclear facility
Israel could attempt to damage or destroy Iran's Fordow nuclear facility by deploying a team of special forces if the US is unwilling to deploy its 'bunker-busting' bombs, an official has claimed. The Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP), buried deep beneath the mountains near the holy city of Qom, is one of Iran's most secretive and heavily fortified nuclear facilities. Enrichment centrifuges housed within its secured chambers are capable of producing uranium at near-weapons-grade levels, and access to the site is tightly controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Built in defiance of international pressure and revealed to the world only after Western intelligence agencies exposed its existence in 2009, the site was constructed some 90 metres (285ft) underground to shield it from aerial bombardment. Only the US has the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) munitions capable of reaching the facility, but Trump on Wednesday said: 'We have the capability to do it, but that doesn't mean I am going to do it.' Hours later, a US official told Axios that Israel had informed the Trump administration that while they may not be able to reach deep enough into the mountain with bombs, they may 'do it with humans'. This raises the prospect of a daring boots-on-the-ground operation - and one that is not without precedent. In September, Israeli special forces deployed to Masyaf in Syria where they conducted a raid on an underground missile production facility they claimed was 'the flagship of Iranian manufacturing efforts in our region'. And Israel's Mossad spy agency has proven its capability to operate on Iranian soil, having constructed a clandestine base of attack drones used to sabotage Iran's air defence systems prior to Friday's initial assault. But Fordow is one of Iran's most prized and protected nuclear assets, and any Israeli military operation would surely be met with huge resistance. Israeli Defence Forces Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told reporters earlier this year about the special forces' bold operation to destroy the missile production site in Syria. 'This facility was designed to manufacture hundreds of strategic missiles per year from start to finish, for Hezbollah to use in their aerial attacks on Israel,' he said. The plant, dug into a mountainside, had been under observation by Israel since construction began in 2017. The IDF claimed it was on the point of being able to manufacture precision-guided missiles, some with a range of up to 300km (190 miles). 'This ability was becoming active, so we're talking about an immediate threat,' Lt. Col. Shoshani said. Shoshani added that the nighttime raid was 'one of the more complex operations the IDF has done in recent years'. Accompanied by airstrikes, it involved dozens of aircraft and around 100 helicopter-borne troops, he said. 'At the end of the raid, the troops dismantled the facility, including the machines and the manufacturing equipment, themselves,' he claimed. However, there is no telling whether Israeli special forces could pull off the same feat in an attack on Fordow. Since launching the first round of attacks on Friday, Israel's warplanes have now struck hundreds of targets linked to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, and Israeli military officials boasted the Islamic Republic's military leaders were 'on the run'. Despite Israel's early success, questions have already arisen over whether the Jewish state is capable of reaching its targets as described by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu . Speaking on Monday, Netanyahu said Israel was 'pursuing three main objectives' in Iran: 'The elimination of the nuclear programme, the elimination of ballistic missile production capability, and the elimination of the axis of terrorism.' But many analysts believe Jerusalem is incapable of achieving those aims unless its most powerful ally decides to enter the fray. 'Without active US military participation, Israel's operational ceiling remains constrained,' Dr Andreas Krieg, an expert in Middle East security and senior lecturer at King's College London's School of Security Studies, told MailOnline. So far, Israel has targeted multiple Iranian nuclear sites and has damaged the Natanz FEP. But Israeli security officials confirmed earlier this week that the air force has not attempted any strikes on Fordow. To have any hope of eliminating it without resorting to its own nuclear weapons - or if an elite commando raid is deemed unlikely to succeed - Israel would need to harness the power of some of the world's most powerful conventional bombs. The 30,000-pound (14,000-kilogram) GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a US-made bunker-busting bomb that uses its weight and sheer kinetic force to reach deeply buried targets, could manage to take Fordow out. This terrifying munition can penetrate some 200 feet (61 meters) below the surface before exploding, and the bombs can be dropped one after another, effectively drilling deeper and deeper with each successive blast. In theory, the MOP could be dropped by any plane capable of carrying the weight. But Israel has neither the bomb, nor the capability to deliver it. 'Only the US Air Force's B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is capable of deploying the MOP,' Krieg explained. 'Without these assets, Israel's capacity to destroy the core of Iran's enrichment infrastructure is severely limited.' And, even if Fordow could be destroyed, a successful strike would not erase Iran's nuclear ambitions, according to Krieg. 'The fundamental challenge remains that Iran's nuclear programme is not just a collection of facilities. It is also a body of knowledge, personnel, and dispersed technical infrastructure. Much of the scientific expertise survives the bombings. Iran has long decentralised and concealed aspects of its programme precisely in anticipation of such scenarios. This means that unless there is sustained international pressure, robust inspections, and political change within Iran, the regime can, and likely would, rebuild over time thanks to its scientific base and global black-market procurement networks,' Krieg said. Krieg also claimed that continued attacks by Israel may have the opposite of their intended effect. Going after Iran's nuclear programme could 'reinforce Tehran's belief that a nuclear deterrent is not only justified but essential for regime survival'. 'Rather than halting Iran's nuclear trajectory, the strikes may serve as a powerful vindication of the logic that drives Iran's long-term nuclear ambition - deterrence through capability,' he said. Tehran has repeatedly insisted its nuclear programme is peaceful and that it has never intended to make a bomb, despite the fears of Israel and the West . However, its ever-growing stockpile of enriched uranium – needed to produce an atomic weapon – had triggered major concerns. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, said Iran's activity was a 'matter of serious concern'. On June 12, the day before Israel's sudden attack, the IAEA ruled that Iran was in breach of its safeguard obligations. Iran criticised the 'politically motivated' decision, announcing it would bolster its nuclear programme with a new enrichment facility in a 'secure location'.
