Iran-backed Hezbollah says it launched rockets and drones at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
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Podcast: The assassination of Iran’s ayatollah – and fears for a wider conflict
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Full report: Trump open to talks with Iran as conflict deepens in Middle East
Israel has carried out heavy airstrikes on the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut after the Iran-backed group launched missiles and drones towards Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader.
More than a dozen explosions shook Beirut on Monday, witnesses said, in the most intensive strikes on the southern suburbs since a war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2024.
Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed on Saturday after the US and Israel launched a war on the country to trigger regime change. The US president had earlier announced the death of the ayatollah, who ruled Iran since 1989, in a post on Truth Social. Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was also killed in strikes.
Donald Trump warned on Sunday that combat operations in Iran were continuing and would carry on “until all of our objectives are achieved.” He continued to justify the operation, saying “an Iranian regime armed with long range missiles and nuclear weapons would be a dire threat to every American… I once again urge the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian military police, to lay down your arms and receive full immunity or face certain death.”
Trump told Fox News that 48 leaders have been killed in US and Israeli strikes on Iran. “It’s moving along. It’s moving along rapidly. This has been this way for 47 years,” he said. “Nobody can believe the success we’re having, 48 leaders are gone in one shot.”
A suspected drone strike hit RAF Akrotiri – a UK base in Cyprus – the Ministry of Defence confirmed. There were no casualties in the incident at the base. The suspected strike came hours after Keir Starmer said the UK had allowed the US to strike Iranian missile sites from British bases as officials plan an unprecedented rescue operation for UK citizens in the Gulf.
Oil prices have soared and stock markets came under pressure on Monday after intense US-Israeli strikes on Iran prompted fears of significant global economic disruption. Brent crude jumped by as much as 13% during early trading – to hit $82 per barrel, a 14-month high – as the effective closure of the strait of Hormuz, one of the most important arteries for global trade, intensified concerns over oil supplies.
Three US service members have been killed in action as part of US military operations against Iran, the US Central Command said in a statement on Sunday. These are the first confirmed deaths since the US began launching strikes against Iran on Saturday. Trump warned in his Truth Social video that there would likely be more casualties.
The death toll from a missile strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran has risen to almost 150, according to Iranian state media. Mizan news agency, the official news outlet of Iran’s judiciary, reported that the number killed in Saturday’s strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab in southern Iran had risen to 148 killed, with 95 others wounded. The school, which was struck on Saturday morning, appears to be the worst mass casualty event of the US-Israeli-led bombing campaign on Iran so far.
Trump said earlier that Iran’s new leadership wants to talk to him and that he has agreed, according to an interview with The Atlantic. “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them. They should have done it sooner,” he said.
Just 27% of Americans approve of the US strikes that killed Iran’s leader on Saturday, while about half — including one in four Republicans — believe Trump is too willing to use military force, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Sunday.
The war led to major disruption to the airline industry and the plans of hundreds of thousands of travellers in the Middle East and beyond as countries across the region closed their airspace, and three of the key airports that connect Europe, Africa and the west to Asia halted operations.
For more details: Navamalayalam.com