US launches 'heavy' strikes on Iran after attempted attack on American troops
41 minutes ago
Jude Sheerinand Helen Sullivan
Watch: Explosions on Iran’s Qeshm island
The US military says it has completed a "heavy wave" of strikes against Iran in retaliation for Tuesday's attempted ballistic missile attacks on American forces.
Centcom said it hit "dozens" of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets in response to Iran's firing on US bases in Jordan and at ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian state media said the latest strikes had killed three people, including a two-year-old child, on Qeshm island, while other locations were also hit in the south and west of the country.
The latest hostilities come on a week that has seen the conflict expand, with the first publicly announced joint US-Saudi strikes targeting Iranian proxies in Iraq.
Iran and the US have engaged in escalating strikes and counter-strikes since a ceasefire in April, aimed at pausing the months-long war, fell apart in June.
The US has blockaded Iranian ports and bombed Iranian sites, while Iran has fired missiles and drones at US assets in countries across the Middle East and targeted shipping in the economically important Strait of Hormuz, connecting the Gulf and Arabian Sea.
On Wednesday, news outlet Axios cited an unnamed US official as saying that Trump had met Saudi defence minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, who had conveyed that Saudi Arabia wants to de-escalate tensions. The BBC has contacted the White House for comment.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian government said a fire at a port on Wednesday had been caused by a drone attack. Egypt, a US ally, has not previously been directly attacked during the war.
The US-Iran conflict has reignited after several days of relative calm.
For days, both sides halted strikes as talks apparently restarted in hopes of some type of diplomatic solution. Trump called them "very friendly negotiations", though Tehran denied any discussions were happening.
But following the Iranian missile attack on a US base in Jordan on Tuesday, Trump vowed to retaliate, telling reporters at the White House: "We're going to be hitting them very hard because it's our turn to hit them. They know it's coming. They asked us not to do it."
US Central Command released this image of a plane taking off during the strike operation
On Tuesday, the IRGCsaid it had targeted a US air base and a command centre in Jordan "in response to the acts of aggression of the American child-killing army".
It also said naval forces had struck three oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz after they "ignored warnings" and sailed along what it described as an "unsafe and illegal route" through the vital Gulf waterway.
Last Friday, Trump suspended an intensive bombing campaign that had lasted for 13 consecutive nights. The US said it had targeted Iranian weapons and military sites. Scores of people were reported to have died.
On Tuesday, Centcom said the joint US-Saudi strikes hit "multiple terrorist logistics and weapons sites across eastern Iraq in a strong response to over 30 IRGC-directed aerial drone attacks in the last 72 hours".
Iraq's paramilitary Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), which is dominated by Iran-backed Shia militias, said at least 20 of its members had been killed in US-Saudi strikes on its bases.
The Iraqi presidency said it denounced the bombing of the PMF bases, calling it "an unacceptable attack and a blatant violation of Iraq's sovereignty".
But Trump told Fox News the strikes had been "co-ordinated with the Iraqi government".
Saudi Arabia, which sees itself as the leading Sunni Muslim power, and Iran, the largest Shia Muslim country, have been locked in a struggle for regional dominance for decades.
With additional reporting from Ghoncheh Habibiazad, BBC Persian
