Latest Iranian strikes on Israel kill at least eight, Tehran oil depot struck

Israel and Iran exchanged another round of air strikes late on Saturday and into Sunday, with at least 10 people killed in Israel.

Iranian missiles penetrated air defences in the north and centre of the country as well as hitting a science institute near Tel Aviv.

The latest wave of Iranian attacks began shortly after 11pm on Saturday, when air raid sirens blared in Jerusalem and Haifa.

Israeli authorities have raised the confirmed death toll at Bat Yam to six, with about 180 injured.

The city south of Tel Aviv was hit in a second wave of strikes during the night, which began after 2am.

It brings the number of fatalities from Iran’s missile strikes on Israel to 10.

At least four people were killed in an Iranian strike on the Palestinian majority town of Tamra, in Israel’s north. All four were reported to be from the same family, including a woman and her two daughters aged 13 and 20.

In Iran, Shahran oil depot in Tehran was targeted and set ablaze in an Israeli attack, Iran said, but added the situation was under control.

“Tehran is burning,” Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said on social media.

Israeli strikes also targeted Iran‘s defence ministry building, causing minor damage, the semi-official Tasnim news agency said on Sunday.

Iran has said 78 people were killed there on Friday, the first day of Israel’s shock attack, 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.

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that Israel’s strikes have set Iran’s nuclear programme back, possibly by years, and that heavier blows were yet to come.

“We will hit every site and every target of the Ayatollahs’ regime and what they have felt so far is nothing compared with what they will be handed in the coming days,” Mr Netanyahu said in a video message.

 Hours after presiding over a military parade in Washington, DC, Donald Trump has threatened that if Iran attacks the United States in any way, it would face the might of the US military “at levels never seen before.”

In a post on his Truth Social platform, the US president also said the US had nothing to do with Israel’s latest attack on Iran overnight and that “we can easily get a deal done” to end the conflict.

He wrote: “The US had nothing to do with the attack on Iran, tonight. If we are attacked in any way, shape or form by Iran, the full strength and might of the US Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before. However, we can easily get a deal done between Iran and Israel, and end this bloody conflict!!!”

Amid the continued conflict, planned negotiations between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s nuclear programme were cancelled, throwing into question when and how an end to the fighting could come.

Both Israel’s military and Iran’s state television announced the latest round of Iranian missiles as explosions were heard near midnight, while the Israeli security cabinet met.

Israel’s ongoing strikes across Iran have left the country’s surviving leadership with the difficult decision of whether to plunge deeper into conflict with Israel’s more powerful forces or seek a diplomatic route.

World leaders made urgent calls to de-escalate and avoid all-out war. The attack on nuclear sites set a “dangerous precedent”, China’s foreign minister said.

The region is already on edge as Israel makes a new push to eliminate the Iranian-backed militant group Hamas in Gaza after 20 months of fighting.

Israel – widely believed to be the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East – said its hundreds of strikes on Iran over the past two days have killed a number of top generals, nine senior scientists and experts involved in Iran’s nuclear programme. – Agencies