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Eight people have been killed in a strike in central Israel after Iran vowed to step-up its retaliation for the killing of its supreme leader.
Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said 28 people were injured within the explosion in Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem, on Sunday, and searches are ongoing for extra victims.
Elsewhere, loud explosions brought on by missile impacts or interceptions might be heard in Tel Aviv.
Meanwhile, a large explosion rocked Iran’s capital as Israel said it could perform “non-stop strikes” against its leaders and military.
The blasts in Tehran – whose goal was not immediately clear – sent an enormous plume of smoke into the sky. It happened in the realm of the national police headquarters and Iranian state television, in addition to Tehran’s Revolutionary Court and a defence ministry constructing.
Also on Sunday, the Israeli military said it will not be aware of any Israeli or American strikes in the realm of a college in southern Iran where greater than 100 people died.
State-run IRNA news agency said a strike hit an all-girls school within the town of Minab on Saturday.
The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and US President Donald Trump’s calls for the overthrow of the decades-old Islamic Republic marked the beginning of a shocking latest US intervention within the Middle East and potentially a chronic war.
It’s also a startling show of military might for an American president who swept into office on an ‘America First’ platform and vowed to maintain out of ‘ceaselessly wars’.
It’s the second time in eight months the Trump administration has joined Israel in using military force against Iran.
In a 12-day war in June, Israeli and American strikes greatly weakened Iran’s air defences, military leadership and nuclear programme. However the killing of Khamenei and a number of other top security officials creates a leadership vacuum, increasing the danger of regional instability.
‘You’ve crossed our red line and must pay the value,’ Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said in a televised address on Sunday.
‘We are going to deliver such devastating blows that you simply yourselves can be driven to beg.’
As Iran targeted the broader Gulf area, the United Arab Emirates said on Sunday that three people had been killed up to now in Iranian attacks on the country.
The defence ministry said Iran had launched 165 ballistic missiles targeting the country, of which 152 were destroyed. Thirteen fell into the ocean, it added.
Iran launched 541 bomb-carrying drones on the UAE, of which 506 were destroyed. One other 35 struck the country, killing three people from Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, while 58 others were wounded.
Flights across the Middle East were disrupted, and air defence fire thudded over Dubai, the United Arab Emirates’ industrial capital, with explosions continuing into Sunday.
Shrapnel from Iranian attacks on the Emirates’ capital of Abu Dhabi killed two people, state media said, and debris from aerial interceptions caused fires at the town’s foremost port and on the facade of Dubai’s iconic Burj Al Arab hotel.
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