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Iran launches retaliatory attack on Israel with hundreds of drones, missiles

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Iran launched explosive drones and fired missiles at Israel late on Saturday in its first direct attack on Israeli territory, a retaliatory strike that raised the threat of a wider regional conflict, as the U.S pledged “ironclad” backing for Israel.

Sirens wailed and Reuters journalists in Israel heard distant heavy thuds and bangs from what local media called aerial interceptions of explosive drones. Authorities said a 7-year-old girl was critically injured.

Israel’s military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Iran launched dozens of ground-to-ground missiles at Israel, most of them intercepted outside Israeli borders. They included more than 10 cruise missiles, he said.

The Iranian salvo came to more than 200 drones and missiles so far, Hagari said, and had caused light damage to one Israeli military facility.

The Israeli military later said it was not advising any residents to prepare to take shelter. This revision of an earlier alert appeared to signal the end of the threat.

Israel’s Channel 12 TV cited an unnamed Israeli official as saying there would be a “significant response” to the attack.

Iran had vowed retaliation for what it called an Israeli strike on its Damascus consulate on April 1 that killed seven officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps including two senior commanders and said its strike was a punishment for “Israeli crimes”. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the consulate attack.

“Should the Israeli regime make another mistake, Iran’s response will be considerably more severe,” the Iranian mission to the United Nations said, warning the U.S. to “stay away”. However, it also said Iran now “deemed the matter concluded”.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned Iran’s attack, saying he was “deeply alarmed about the very real danger of a devastating region-wide escalation.”

The U.N. Security Council was set to meet at 4 p.m. ET (2000 GMT) on Sunday after Israel requested it condemn Iran’s attack and designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, according to a schedule released late on Saturday.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by telephone on Saturday night, the White House said, without immediately giving details. The White House said it would provide a summary of the call.

Biden, who on Friday had warned Iran against an attack, cut short a weekend visit to his home state of Delaware and returned to Washington to meet with his national security advisers, including his secretaries of defense and state, in the White House Situation Room. He pledged to stand with Israel.

“Our commitment to Israel’s security against threats from Iran and its proxies is ironclad,” Biden said on X after the meeting.

The Gaza war between Israel and Hamas, now in its seventh month, has ratcheted up tensions in the region, spreading to fronts with Lebanon and Syria and drawing long-range fire at Israeli targets from as far away as Yemen and Iraq.

British maritime security company Ambrey said in a statement that drones were also reportedly launched against Israel by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group.

Those clashes now threaten to morph into a direct open conflict pitting Iran and its regional allies against Israel and its main supporter, the United States. Regional power Egypt urged “utmost restraint”.

While Israel and Iran have been bitter foes for decades, their long feud has mostly unfolded via proxies or by targeting each other’s forces operating in third countries.

U.S. and British warplanes were involved in shooting down some Israel-bound drones over the Iraq-Syria border area, Channel 12 reported. Two American officials said the U.S. military had shot down dozens of drone aircraft headed for Israel.

ESCALATION

Netanyahu convened Israel’s war cabinet at a military headquarters in Tel Aviv, his office said.

Israel and Lebanon said they were closing their airspace on Saturday night. Jordan, which lies between Iran and Israel, had readied air defences to intercept any drone or missile that violated its territory, two regional security sources said.

Residents in several Jordanian cities said they heard heavy aerial activity.

Syria, an ally of Iran, said it was putting its ground-to-air defence systems around the capital and major bases on high alert, army sources there said.

The European Union, Britain, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Mexico, the Netherlands and Norway condemned Iran’s attack.

Biden’s Republican rival in November’s presidential election, Donald Trump, briefly referred to the airstrikes at a rally in Pennsylvania, criticizing his Democratic rival.

“They’re under attack right now,” Trump said. “That’s, because we show great weakness. This would not happen, the weakness that we’ve shown, it’s unbelievable, and it would not have happened if we were in office.”

Israel had been bracing for an Iranian response to the Damascus consulate strike since last week, when Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Israel “must be punished and shall be” for an operation he called equivalent to one on Iranian soil.

Iran’s main ally in the region, the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah that has been exchanging fire with Israel since the Gaza war began on Oct. 7, said early on Sunday it had fired rockets at an Israeli base.

 

(Reuters)

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Trump rejects Iran’s response to US peace proposal as ‘unacceptable’

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President Donald Trump’s swift rejection of Iran’s response to a U.S. peace proposal ​sent oil prices surging higher on Monday amid concerns the 10-week-old conflict will drag on, keeping shipping through the Strait of Hormuz paralyzed.

Days ‌after the U.S. floated an offer in the hopes of re-opening negotiations, Iran on Sunday released a response focused on ending the war on all fronts, especially Lebanon, where U.S. ally Israel is fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants. Tehran also included a demand for compensation for war damages and emphasized Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian state TV said, Reuters reported.

It also called on the U.S. to ​end its naval blockade, guarantee no further attacks, lift sanctions and end a U.S. ban on Iranian oil sales, the semi-official Tasnim news agency said.

Within ​hours, Trump dismissed Iran’s proposal with a post on social media.

“I don’t like it — TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, ⁠without giving further detail.

The U.S. had proposed an end to fighting before starting talks on more contentious issues, including Iran’s nuclear program.

Oil prices jumped $3 a barrel on Monday ​following news of the continued stalemate that leaves the narrow Strait of Hormuz largely closed. Before the war the waterway carried one-fifth of the world’s oil supply and ​has emerged as one of the central pressure points in the war.

Surveys show the war is unpopular with U.S. voters facing sharply higher gasoline prices less than six months before nationwide elections that will determine whether Trump’s Republican party retains control of Congress.

The U.S. has also found little international support, with NATO allies refusing calls to send ships to open the Strait of Hormuz without a ​full peace deal and an internationally mandated mission.

It’s not clear what fresh diplomatic or military steps may be ahead.

Trump is expected to arrive in Beijing on Wednesday. ​With mounting pressure to draw a line under the war and the global energy crisis it has ignited, Iran is among topics Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to ‌discuss.

Trump has ⁠been leaning on China to use its influence to push Tehran to make a deal with Washington.

Addressing whether combat operations against Iran were over, Trump said in remarks aired on Sunday: “They are defeated, but that doesn’t mean they’re done.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war was not over because there was “more work to be done” to remove enriched uranium from Iran, dismantle enrichment sites and address Iran’s proxies and ballistic missile capabilities.

The best way to remove the enriched uranium would be through diplomacy, Netanyahu ​said in an interview that aired Sunday on ​CBS News’ “60 Minutes.” But he did ⁠not rule out removing it by force.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a social media post that Iran would “never bow down to the enemy” and would “defend national interests with strength.”

Despite diplomatic efforts to break a deadlock, the threat to shipping lanes and ​the economies of the region remained high.

Recent days have seen the biggest flare-ups in fighting in and around the strait since ​a ceasefire began.

On Sunday, ⁠the United Arab Emirates said it intercepted two drones coming from Iran, while Qatar condemned a drone attack that hit a cargo ship coming from Abu Dhabi in its waters. Kuwait said its air defences had dealt with hostile drones that entered its airspace.

Clashes have also continued in southern Lebanon between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, despite a ⁠U.S.-brokered ceasefire announced ​on April 16.

An end to hostilities with Iran would not necessarily bring an end to the ​war in Lebanon, Netanyahu said in the “60 Minutes” interview, in which he also said Israeli planners had underestimated Iran’s ability to choke off traffic through the Hormuz Strait.

“It took a while for them to understand ​how big that risk is, which they understand now,” he said.

 

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Fourteen Pakistani police officers killed in KP car bombing and shootout

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The death toll from a suicide attack on a security post in northwest Pakistan rose to 14 police officers, authorities said early Sunday.

A suicide bomber and several gunmen detonated an explosives-laden vehicle near the post in Bannu, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, late Saturday, said senior police official Sajjad Khan. The attack triggered an intense shootout, and some officers were killed in the exchange, while others died later after the building collapsed, the Associated Press reported.

Rescuers conducted an hourslong search operation using heavy machinery to retrieve bodies from under the rubble, Khan said, adding that three police officers were wounded in the attack.

Security forces have also launched an operation to track down the perpetrators.

A newly formed militant group, Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack.

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UAE countering Iranian air attack after Trump says ceasefire still in effect

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U.S. ally ​the United Arab Emirates said its air defences were engaging missile and drone threats from Iran early on Friday in a further ‌test of the shaky, month-long ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran.

There were few details immediately available about the latest attack on the UAE, which came a day after the U.S. and Iran exchanged fire around the Strait of Hormuz, and as Washington awaited a response from Tehran to its proposal to end the conflict. Iran has often targeted the UAE and other Gulf countries that ​host U.S. bases since the war began on February 28, Reuters reported.

President Donald Trump said on Thursday three U.S. Navy destroyers were attacked as they ​moved through the strait, a conduit for around a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flows that Iran has ⁠all but closed since the conflict started.

“Three World Class American Destroyers just transited, very successfully, out of the Strait of Hormuz, under fire. There was no damage ​done to the three Destroyers, but great damage done to the Iranian attackers,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump later told reporters the ceasefire was still in effect and ​sought to play down the exchange.

“They trifled with us today. We blew them away,” Trump said in Washington.

Iran’s top joint military command accused the U.S. of violating the ceasefire by targeting an Iranian oil tanker and another ship, and of carrying out air attacks on civilian areas on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz and the nearby coastal areas of Bandar ​Khamir and Sirik on the mainland. The military said it responded by attacking U.S. military vessels east of the strait and south of the port of Chabahar.

A ​spokesperson for Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said the Iranian strikes inflicted “significant damage,” but U.S. Central Command said none of its assets were hit.

Iran’s Press TV later reported that, following ‌several hours ⁠of fire, “the situation on Iranian islands and coastal cities by the Strait of Hormuz is back to normal now.”

The two sides have occasionally exchanged gunfire since the ceasefire took effect on April 7, with Iran hitting targets in Gulf countries including the UAE.

Oil prices rose in early trade in Asia on Friday, with Brent crude jumping above $100 a barrel after the latest clashes between the U.S. and Iran.

TRUMP URGES NEGOTIATED END TO WAR

Trump suggested ongoing talks with Tehran remained on track despite Thursday’s ​hostilities, telling reporters, “We’re negotiating with the ​Iranians.”

Before the latest strikes, the U.S. ⁠had floated a proposal that would formally end the conflict but did not address key U.S. demands that Iran suspend its nuclear work and reopen the strait.

Tehran said it had not yet reached a decision on the emerging plan.

Even so, Trump said Tehran had ​acknowledged his demand that Iran could never get a nuclear weapon, a prohibition he said was spelled out in the ​U.S. proposal.

“There’s zero chance. ⁠And they know that, and they’ve agreed to that. Let’s see if they are willing to sign it,” Trump said.

Asked when any deal might be reached, Trump said, “It might not happen, but it could happen any day. I believe they want to deal more than I do.”

The war has tested Trump’s relationship with his U.S. base of ⁠supporters, after he ​had campaigned against involving the United States in foreign wars and promised to bring down fuel ​prices.

Average U.S. gasoline prices have climbed more than 40% since late February, rising by about $1.20 a gallon to more than $4, according to data from the American Automobile Association, as disruptions to oil shipments ​through the Strait of Hormuz pushed crude oil prices higher.

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