Iran strikes Tel Aviv and Haifa as Israel conflict enters fourth day
Iranian missiles have struck Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa, destroying homes and fuelling concerns among world leaders at this week's G7 meeting that the conflict between the two regional enemies could lead to a broader Middle East war.
Israeli media reported that three people were killed in a strike on a city in the country's centre while dozens more were wounded in the attacks.
Authorities in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva near Tel Aviv said that Iranian missiles had hit a residential building there, charring concrete walls, blowing out windows and heavily damaging multiple apartments.
Search and location operations were under way in the northern port city of Haifa where about 30 people were wounded, emergency authorities said, as dozens of first responders rushed to the strike zones. Fires were seen burning at a power plant near the port, media reported.
Iranian state TV said the country fired at least 100 missiles at Israel, signalling that it had no intention of yielding to international calls for de-escalation as it pressed on with its retaliation for Israel's surprise attack on Tehran's nuclear program and military leadership on Friday.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards claimed the latest attack employed a new method that caused Israel's multi-layered defence systems to target each other. The Guardian was unable to verify this claim. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strikes. Israeli officials have repeatedly said the defence system is not 100% infallible and warned of tough days ahead.
Israeli strikes on Iran on Sunday killed the intelligence chief of the country's Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Kazemi, along with two other officers, Iran's IRNA state media news agency reported.
Late on Sunday the Israeli military said that it was striking surface-to-surface missile sites in Iran.
Images from Tehran showed the night sky lit up by a huge blaze at a fuel depot after Israel began strikes against Iran's oil and gas sector – raising the stakes for the global economy and the functioning of the Iranian state.
At least 14 people in Israel, including children, were killed in earlier strikes in the lead-up to Monday's attacks, according to authorities.
The death toll in Iran had reached at least 224, with 90% of the casualties reported to be civilians, an Iranian health ministry spokesperson said.
G7 leaders began gathering in the Canadian Rockies on Sunday with the Israel-Iran conflict expected to be a top priority.
Before leaving for the summit on Sunday, US president Donald Trump was asked what he was doing to de-escalate the situation. 'I hope there's going to be a deal. I think it's time for a deal,' he told reporters. 'Sometimes they have to fight it out.'
German chancellor Friedrich Merz said his goals for the summit included for Iran to not develop or possess nuclear weapons, ensuring Israel's right to defend itself, avoiding escalation of the conflict and creating room for diplomacy. 'This issue will be very high on the agenda of the G7 summit,' Merz told reporters.
Iran has told mediators Qatar and Oman that it is not open to negotiating a ceasefire while it is under Israeli attack, an official briefed on the communications told Reuters on Sunday.
In Washington, two US officials told Reuters that Trump had vetoed an Israeli plan in recent days to kill Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
When asked about the Reuters report, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News 'There's so many false reports of conversations that never happened, and I'm not going to get into that.'
'We do what we need to do,' he added.
Israel began the assault with a surprise attack on Friday that wiped out the top echelon of Iran's military command and damaged its nuclear sites, and pledged the campaign would escalate in the coming days.
Iran vowed to 'open the gates of hell' in retaliation.
Trump has lauded Israel's offensive while denying Iranian allegations that the US has taken part and warning Tehran not to widen its retaliation to include US targets.
However, two US officials said on Friday that the US military had helped shoot down Iranian missiles that were headed toward Israel.
The US president has repeatedly said Iran could end the war by agreeing to tough restrictions on its nuclear program, which Iran says is for peaceful purposes but which western countries and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear watchdog say could be used to make an atomic bomb.
With Reuters and the Associated Press
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BBC News
16 minutes ago
- BBC News
"We need to keep hitting them": Israelis in city struck by Iran back offensive
Bat Yam, just south of Tel Aviv, has long been a stronghold of support for Israel's right-wing governing coalition. In the early hours of Sunday morning, an Iranian missile struck a 10-storey block of flats there, killing at least eight people and trapping dozens more under thick layers of the severe damage, locals here strongly back Israel's attack on Iran, which began on Friday and has targeted nuclear facilities, missile sites, air defences, an airport and other infrastructure as well as nuclear and military personnel. "It needed to be done," says Veronica Osipchik, 33, who lives about 200m (321ft) from the strike site. "But we didn't expect it to affect us like this."Ms Osipchik had the windows and shutters of her apartment completely blown through. Almost every building in the vicinity suffered similar damage."We were in shock," she said, sat on a camping chair alongside a suitcase packed with food and toiletries. The ballistic missiles that caused the damage in Bat Yam are far more powerful than the rockets fired by Hamas and Hezbollah over the past year and half. Those are mostly intercepted by Israel's sophisticated air defence first of those trapped under rubble were pulled out within hours. As of late Sunday, at least three people remained unaccounted for. "I saw fear in their eyes," said rescue paramedic Ori Lazarovich. "People came out all grey, covered in soot and ash and debris."Avi, a 68-year old who did not want to give his surname, was born and raised in Bat Yam. "We need to keep hitting [Iran]" he says. "Of course we have to keep going. Otherwise, they'll drop an atomic bomb on us.""They're weak. We're much stronger," he adds. "Israel is number one in the world."Emil Mahmudov, 18, agreed: "We should have done this sooner. That's what most Israelis think." Israel's justification for its attack on Iran is to stop its nuclear programme. For well over a decade, successive governments have sounded alarm about the Iranian regime gaining nuclear weapons - something Iran denies as Netanyahu has come under fire within Israel for the state of the war in Gaza, his chief political rivals - Benny Gantz, Avigdor Lieberman and Yair Lapid - have all expressed support for attacking Iran. Professor Yossi Mekelberg, of the Middle East Programme at Chatham House, says there has "always been support to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear military capabilities".But, he says, "this is much bigger than fighting Hamas in Gaza, even Hezbollah in Lebanon, or a very limited direct confrontation with Iran.""This is evolving into a full-blown war. And there is fatigue in Israel after 20 months of war.""If there are more casualties, if people are spending a long time in shelters, and if it becomes, again, another never-ending war," then support, he says, could mid-afternoon on Sunday, Israel's far-right national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir - who was recently sanctioned by the UK government for "inciting violence against Palestinians" - arrived in Bat Yam to meet by a cohort of armed security personnel, he shook hands with shop owners along a street where many had their windows blown through by the shock of the blast. One, who did not want to give his name, was sat on a plastic chair outside his bakery, which he'd run for 29 years. He said he was there to prevent he support opening a new front against Iran? "Of course," he says, waving his hands. "What kind of question is that?"Netanyahu also visited Bat Yam on Sunday, to chants of "Bibi, King of Israel" - a play on a popular song about the Biblical warrior King David that many Jewish children learn in later, in an evening address, he mourned the dead, telling the nation: "This is a difficult day. I told you, there will be difficult days."Even with broad support for the conflict, if it continues to escalate - and civilian deaths continue to rise - there will be a question over how many difficult days the Israeli public will tolerate.
The Guardian
28 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Iran threatens to leave nuclear weapons treaty as Israeli bombing enters fourth day
Iran has threatened to leave the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) as Israel bombing raids entered a fourth day, underlining the conflict's potential to trigger a broader war and Tehran's race to construct a nuclear weapon. The human cost of the war continued to escalate with both sides broadening their range of targets, as G7 leaders convened in the Canadian rockies with no clear plan to end the conflict. As he left for the summit on Sunday, the US president, Donald Trump, told reporters: 'Sometimes they have to fight it out.' Iran's health ministry said that 224 people in Iran had been killed by Israeli attacks, 90% of them civilian, and more than 1,400 had been injured. Israel's defence minister, meanwhile, threatened further bombing strikes on Tehran, where an exodus of residents has been reported, clogging roads out of the capital. In Israel, at least 23 civilians have been killed in Iran's retaliatory missile strikes since Israel's initial surprise attack on Friday morning, and nearly 600 have been injured, according to official sources. Both sides have targeted each other's oil and gas facilities, increasing the threat of environmental disaster, and explosions were reported on Monday near oil refineries in southern Tehran. The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, announced on Monday that Iran's parliament, the Majlis, was preparing a bill that would withdraw the country from the 1968 NPT agreement, which obliges it to forego nuclear weapons and to undergo international inspections to verify compliance. Baghaei added that Tehran remained opposed to the development of weapons of mass destruction. The country's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, also insisted that Iran did not intend to develop nuclear weapons but would pursue its right to nuclear energy and research. He pointed out that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had issued a religious edict against weapons of mass destruction. Israel is the only Middle East state with nuclear weapons and did not sign the NPT, but has never formally acknowledged its arsenal. It is seeking to maintain its monopoly with air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, claiming that Tehran was close to building a bomb. Previous assessments by US intelligence and the UN nuclear watchdog found no evidence that Iran had begun work on assembling a nuclear weapon. Israeli critics of the offensive say it cannot destroy Iran's reserve of nuclear knowhow – though Israel has targeted Iranian nuclear scientists, claiming to have killed 14 – and could push the leadership into ordering the assembly of nuclear warheads. There were reports on Monday of Israeli strikes on the Tehran headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard Corps al-Quds force, an expeditionary arm deployed in foreign wars. Despite Israeli claims to have air superiority over much of Iran, Iranian forces have still been able to launch ballistic missiles from their territory and some continue to evade Israel's multi-layered air defences. IDF officials estimate that it is has been able to intercept 80-90% of Iran's missiles, with 5-10% hitting actual residential areas. Eight more Israelis were killed overnight by Iranian missile strikes, including four in Petah Tikva where a missile hit an apartment block. Three people died from blasts in Haifa and an elderly man was killed when his home collapsed from the shockwave from an explosion in Bnei Brak, east of Tel Aviv. Iran's Revolutionary Guards claimed to have begun strikes 'more powerful and deadly than previous waves,' and to have found a way of causing confusion in Israeli air defence systems. There was no immediate way of independently verifying the claim. The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, reported on social media 'some minor damage from concussions of Iranian missile hits' near the US embassy branch office in Tel Aviv. An Israeli biology professor, Eran Segal, posted photos on X f damage to his laboratory at the Weizmann Institute, a scientific research centre which has been previously targeted by Iranian intelligence for its nuclear research. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Israeli strikes have caused damage to the above-ground part of the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, and to the nuclear complex in Isfahan. The IAEA director general, Rafael Grossi, reported on Monday that four buildings in Isfahan had been damaged in Friday's bombing raids: its central chemical laboratory, a uranium conversion plant, a plant making nuclear fuel for a research reactor in Tehran and a processing facility which had been under construction which would process enriched uranium into metal form, which is the form used in a nuclear warhead. Addressing the IAEA board of governors representing member states, Grossi said there were no signs of damage at the Fordow enrichment plant, which is deeply buried. Military commentators have suggested that Israel would find it hard to destroy Fordow and other underground facilities without the intervention of US forces, who have much bigger bunker-busting bombs. Iran urged the board to condemn Israeli attacks on its nuclear sites, which Grossi has also said are contrary to the UN charter and international law. Iranian state TV said the country fired at least 100 missiles at Israel, with no signs of a reduction in Iran's efforts to strike back against Israeli attacks, which have wiped out the top echelon of the Iranian military command. As Tehran residents evacuated the capital in increasing numbers, Israel's defence minister, Israel Katz, threatened to make Tehranis 'pay the price' for Khamenei's decision to keep firing missiles at Israel in retaliation for the Israeli attack. 'The arrogant dictator from Tehran has become a cowardly murderer who deliberately fires at Israeli civilians to deter the IDF from continuing the attack that is tearing him down,' Katz wrote. 'The residents of Tehran will pay the price, and soon.' The Iranian state-backed news agency Fars reported that the authorities had executed a man found guilty of spying for Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad. It was the third execution of an alleged spy in recent weeks. Iran's chief justice, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, vowed there would be speedy trials anyone arrested on suspicion of collaboration. 'If someone is arrested for having ties to and collaborating with the Zionist regime, their trial and punishment should be carried out and announced very quickly, in accordance with the law and given the war conditions,' Ejei said, quoted by the Tasnim news agency. G7 leaders began gathering in the Canadian Rockies on Sunday with the Israel-Iran conflict expected to be a top priority. Before leaving for the summit on Sunday, Trump was asked what he was doing to de-escalate the situation. 'I hope there's going to be a deal. I think it's time for a deal,' he told reporters. 'Sometimes they have to fight it out.' Talks previously scheduled between the US and Iran in Oman on Sunday were cancelled and Iranian officials have signalled they will not resume any negotiations while their country is under attack. 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Daily Mail
31 minutes ago
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G7 leaders ready for Trump in bear-proofed Canada
The last time world leaders gathered in Kananaskis, a bear tried to make its way into the 2002 meeting of the world's top eight economies and met an untimely end. This time, members of the G7 are developing strategies to handle a different formidable figure: President Donald Trump. It will be Trump's first time setting foot on Canadian soil since saying Canada was 'meant to be' the 51st U.S. state and slapping 25 percent tariffs on Canada's steel. U.S. statehood polls abysmally here, and the issue sets up a gathering that is anything but typical. 'He's not acting like an ally right now when he's trying to disrupt our economy and threatening to take us over. Even if he says it's a joke, it's not a joke. You don't treat another sovereign country like that,' Robert Mallach, a law professor at the University of Calgary told the Daily Mail. Mallach said other leaders should 'ignore' Trump at the summit, and said Canada's new Prime Minister Mark Carney took the best posture: 'Let's start protecting Canada by spending some money on defense. And let's realize we need allies other than America to do that.' Trump 'comes to the G7 running into allies who are quite frankly tired of the kind of threats and the kind of taunts that Trump has been engaged in,' said Brett Bruen, a former White House National Security Council official during the Obama administration. 'I think he's going to get a firsthand dose and dousing of reality, which is that these comments have consequences,' he said. 'I think this is one of those situations where Trump's bluster and bulldozing is going to run into some pretty hard, harsh realities on the international scene.' Still to be determined is whether Trump arrives ready for compromise, or feeling emboldened after watching a parade of MI Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles during the Army 250th military parade on his birthday in D.C. 'It certainly is going to put him in jingoistic mindset where he will feel, if not regal, at least replenished in his splendor, and that, as we've seen in the past, can lead to some really strange outbursts and sense of self-importance,' Bruen added. It is also unclear how much pre-planning fellow leaders have done. They could try to seek an 'intervention' on trade, although that could backfire. Canadian PM Mark Carney appears to have managed the situation deftly when he met with Trump in the Oval Office and declared his country not for sale while also pushing cooperation with Canada's more powerful neighbor. Now, he is holding out hope of a deal with the U.S. on trade and security. 'We're having intensive discussions in real time,' he said this week. Any agreement would progress compared to Trump's 2018 meeting with then-PM Justin Trudeau. That meeting ended in angry outbursts from Air Force One, with Trump calling Trudeau 'very dishonest and weak' and threatening to impose new auto tariffs. Russia's President Vladimir Putin attended the 2002 meeting, also in Kananaskis, during George W. Bush's presidency but got kicked out of the group after his 2014 annexation of Ukraine. This time, Putin's militarism will be a topic for other leaders to analyze, a day after Trump touted a forthcoming talk with him after Putin called with birthday greetings and the two talked about the war between Israel and Iran. A senior administration official previewing the summit sketched out the topics of discussion: 'trade in the global economy, critical minerals, migrant and drug smuggling, wildfires, international security, artificial intelligence and energy security.' The topic the official didn't mention are the deep tensions set off by Trump's repeated call to absorb the host country. The official did say that 'we appreciate Canada's cooperation in the planning of the summit and their choice of a great location in Canada for these important conversations.' Middle East security, with Israel's attack on Iran's nuclear program and military leadership and Iran firing missiles at Israel, is certain to soak up attention. French President Emmanuel Macron set the tone Sunday with a pointed visit to Greenland – a sprawling Arctic territory that Trump said the U.S. needed to obtain. 'I don´t think that´s something to be done between allies,' Macron said as he met with Danish PM Mette Frederiksen and Greenland's PM Jens-Frederik Nielsen. 'It´s important to show that Denmark and Europe are committed to this territory, which has very high strategic stakes and whose territorial integrity must be respected,' said Macron. As far as the actual bears roaming the G7 meeting spot in Kananaskis next to the Canadian Rockies, local officials have taken steps to avoid further mishaps. Among the security gear they trotted out early this month in advance of the event was a large bear trap. Local students were enlisted to pluck thousands of berries from area bushes so as to lower the temptations that might lure bears to try to crash the confab. That's what happened at the 2002 summit, when security officials used a bear-banger device to try to scare away a bear who got near delegates. It ended up falling out of a tree and dying.
