Israel and Iran launched fresh attacks on each other last night, stoking fears of a wider conflict after Israel expanded its campaign with a strike on the world’s biggest gas field.
Tehran called off nuclear talks that Washington had said were the only way to halt Israel’s bombing, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacks were nothing compared with what Iran would see in the coming days.
Israel’s military said yesterday that more missiles were launched from Iran towards Israel, and it was working to intercept them. It also said it was attacking military targets in Tehran. Iranian state television said Iran had launched missiles and drones at Israel.
Several projectiles were visible in the night sky over Jerusalem late last night. Air raid sirens did not sound in the city, but were heard in the northern Israeli city of Haifa.
Israel’s ambulance service said 14 people were injured, including one critically, at a two-storey house in northern Israel following an Iranian missile strike. Israeli media reported that one person had been killed in the strike.
US President Donald Trump had warned Iran of worse to come, but said it was not too late to halt the Israeli campaign if Tehran accepted a sharp downgrading of its nuclear programme.
A round of US-Iran nuclear talks due to be held in Oman on Sunday was cancelled, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi saying the discussions could not take place while Iran was being subjected to Israel’s “barbarous” attacks.
In the first apparent attack to hit Iran’s energy infrastructure, the semi-official Tasnim news agency said Iran partially suspended production at the world’s biggest gas field after an Israeli strike caused a fire there yesterday.
The South Pars field, offshore in Iran’s southern Bushehr province, is the source of most of the gas produced in Iran.
Fears about potential disruption to the region’s oil exports had already driven up oil prices nine per cent on Friday even though Israel spared Iran’s oil and gas on the first day of its attacks.
An Iranian general, Esmail Kosari, said yesterday that Tehran was reviewing whether to close the Strait of Hormuz controlling access to the Gulf for tankers.
Iran said 78 people were killed on the first day of Israel’s campaign, and scores more on the second, including 60 when a missile brought down a 14-storey apartment block in Tehran, where 29 of the dead were children.
Iran had launched its own retaliatory missile volley on Friday night, killing at least three people in Israel.
With Israel saying its operation could last weeks, and Netanyahu urging Iran’s people to rise up against their Islamic clerical rulers, fears have grown of a regional conflagration dragging in outside powers.
B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organisation, said that instead of exhausting all possibilities for a diplomatic resolution, Israel’s government had chosen to start a war that puts the entire region in danger.
&uuid=(email))