Iran launched a new wave of strikes in the early hours of Monday, triggering air raid sirens across Israel as authorities reported at least four had been killed and dozens wounded.
Tehran said it had launched 100 missiles and promised further strikes against Israel on the fourth day of the conflict between the two nations, which shows no sign of slowing down.
In response to the strikes, the defence minister of Israel, Israel Katz, posted on X: “Residents of Tehran will pay the price, and soon.”
The attacks raised Israel’s total death toll to at least 18, and in response, the Israeli military said fighter jets had struck ten command centres in Tehran belonging to Iran’s Quds Force, an elite arm of its Revolutionary Guard that conducts military and intelligence operations outside Iran.
On Sunday evening, Israel confirmed it had also killed the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) intelligence unit, Mohammad Kazemi, along with two other generals.
Israel has killed numerous high-ranking Iranian military officials in recent days as a key part of its plan to weaken Tehran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon.
In an indication of how far Israel was prepared to go in its latest offensive, a US official told the Associated Press that President Donald Trump in recent days vetoed an Israeli plan to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The Israeli Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency service reported on Monday that two women and two men – all in their 70s – were killed in the wave of missile attacks that struck four sites in central Israel.
“We clearly see that our civilians are being targeted,” said Israeli police spokesman Dean Elsdunne outside the bombed-out building in Petah Tikva. “And this is just one scene, we have other sites like this near the coast, in the south.”
The MDA added that paramedics had evacuated another 87 wounded people to hospitals, including a 30-year-old woman in serious condition, while rescuers were still searching for residents trapped beneath the rubble of their homes.
“When we arrived at the scene of the rocket strike, we saw massive destruction,” said Dr Gal Rosen, a paramedic with MDA who said he had rescued a four-day-old baby as fires blazed from the building.
The strikes on Monday also caused minor damage to the US Consulate in Tel Aviv, with the ambassador saying the building would remain closed for the rest of the day as a result.
During an earlier barrage of Iranian missiles on central Israel on Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran will stop its strikes if Israel does the same.
The Iranian Health Ministry said late on Sunday that 224 people have been killed since Israel’s attacks began.
But after a day of intensive Israeli aerial attacks that extended targets beyond military installations to hit oil refineries and government buildings, the Revolutionary Guard struck a hard line on Monday, vowing that further rounds of strikes would be “more forceful, severe, precise and destructive than previous ones.”
The ongoing conflict is likely to dominate the G7 being held in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, with it being understood that Donald Trump had given his tacit approval for Israel to launch the strikes against Iran.
The other members of the group have all urged caution, but Europe and North America have mostly backed Israel’s justification for its actions.
Israel argues that its assault on Iran’s top military leaders, uranium enrichment sites and nuclear scientists was necessary to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Iran has always insisted its nuclear programme is peaceful, and the US and others have assessed that Tehran has not pursued a nuclear weapon since 2003.
But Iran has enriched ever-larger stockpiles of uranium to near weapons-grade levels in recent years and was believed to have the capacity to develop multiple weapons within months if it chose to do so.
EU foreign ministers are also due to meet at an emergency summit on Tuesday to discuss the ongoing conflict.
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