All personnel on board ​a military helicopter have been ‌killed in a crash near Muzaffarabad in Pakistani Kashmir, Pakistan’s ​military said in a ​statement on Wednesday, without specifying ⁠the number of deaths.

“An ​Mi-17 helicopter of Pakistan Army ​Aviation crashed near Muzaffarabad today during take-off due to technical fault,” ​the military said in ​a statement, Reuters reported. “There were no survivors.”

Rescue teams have ‌reached ⁠the site and a board of inquiry has been ordered to ascertain the ​exact technical ​cause ⁠of the accident, it said.

The helicopter crashed ​while taking off and ​caught ⁠fire, a Reuters witness said, adding that firefighters were ⁠trying ​to control the ​flames.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had carried out attacks against a U.S. base in Jordan and 21 other targets in the Gulf on Wednesday in retaliation for American strikes around ​the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian media reported.

The clashes mark one of the biggest exchanges in hostilities since the two countries agreed to a ceasefire in April, Reuters reported.

The Iranian strikes, which included attacks in ‌Kuwait and Bahrain, came after the U.S. military said on X it had targeted Iranian air defence, ground control stations and surveillance radar sites near the strait in response to what U.S. President Donald Trump said was the downing of a U.S. Apache helicopter on Tuesday.

“I believe the response should be very strong, very powerful, and that’s what this one is,” Trump told ABC News on Tuesday.

The escalation in violence deepens doubts about the prospects for a deal to end the war that started on February 28 with joint U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran. Tehran ​responded by firing on Gulf neighbours that host U.S. bases and all but choked off the Strait of Hormuz, a vital conduit for oil and gas.

The latest U.S. strikes lasted around four hours before the ​U.S. Central Command posted just before 9 p.m. ET (0100 GMT Wednesday) that they had ended. A U.S. official said almost 20 Iranian targets had been struck.

Iran’s state media reported that ⁠Qeshm island and the port city of Sirik in the Strait of Hormuz were attacked.

Sounds of explosions were heard in nearby Bandar Abbas, and later in the vicinity of Jask, near the entrance to the strait, Iranian media reported, citing local ​sources and residents.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in response they had targeted four sites at the U.S. al-Azraq base in Jordan using long-range missiles, Iranian media reported.

The Guards said the targets included F-35 fighter jet hangars and a command-and-control centre, and ​warned they were ready to deliver a “crushing and decisive” response to any further U.S. attack.

Jordanian armed forces said on Wednesday they had intercepted and shot down five missiles launched from Iran toward al-Azraq. The military added that debris from the interception operation fell on Jordanian territory but caused no injuries or material damage.

The Kuwaiti army said its air defence systems were engaging hostile aerial targets and urged the public to follow official safety instructions, after Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had targeted the Ali Al Salem base in Kuwait with drones.

Iran’s Revolutionary ​Guards said earlier they attacked the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain with drones and threatened “more severe responses” if hostilities continued, according to media.

Bahrain’s Interior Ministry said a warning siren had been sounded and urged the public to head to safety. ​Air defences had repelled Iranian attacks, a media adviser to Bahrain’s king said soon after in a post on X.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said initial assessments showed nearly all missiles and drones launched by Iran were intercepted and they ‌were not immediately ⁠aware of any reports of harm to U.S. personnel or damage to U.S. locations.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters could not immediately verify the battlefield reports.

Oil prices climbed about 1% in early Asian trade on Wednesday following the escalation in hostilities.

NOT A BIG DEAL?

On Tuesday, a U.S. Apache helicopter was brought down by a one-way Iranian attack drone, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Two U.S. pilots involved in the helicopter incident were uninjured, Trump said.

Iran’s state media cited a military source as saying that no offensive air military operations had been conducted in the Strait of Hormuz in the previous 24 hours.

A U.S. Navy surface drone found and rescued the two ​crew, the U.S. military said, after the U.S. Army attack ​helicopter went down in waters near Oman’s coast while ⁠on patrol at around 3 a.m. on Tuesday (2300 GMT on Monday).

The U.S. military’s Central Command gave no reason for the crash. It said the two crew were rescued after two hours and said they were in stable condition – a more cautious assessment than Trump’s description.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi did not directly address the helicopter incident, but said in a ​post on X that foreign forces in the region risked being involved in accidents or crossfire.

“To reduce risk, best solution is for them to leave,” he wrote.

Trump told ​The Wall Street Journal during a ⁠phone call on Tuesday that the helicopter incident “wasn’t a big deal” and stressed that “the pilot is fine.”

However, the episode could well add further strain to efforts to broker a peace deal to end the wider Middle East war and reopen Hormuz.

Trump has repeatedly said Iran and the United States are close to an agreement, though there have been few signs of progress since a tenuous ceasefire took effect in early April.

Fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon has continued, and Tehran has maintained its ⁠restrictions on most ​shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which before the war carried a fifth of the world’s crude oil and liquefied natural gas. Washington has ​imposed its own blockade of Iranian ports.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Tuesday that ship traffic through Hormuz is rising “very meaningfully,” but added it would take many months to get back to normal flows of energy once the war is over.

Trump has said any peace deal must ensure ​Iran cannot develop a nuclear weapon. Iran denies any such ambitions.

Iran’s demands include the lifting of international sanctions, the release of billions of dollars in frozen assets and recognition of its control of the strait.

Iran and Israel said on Monday they had ​halted attacks on each other after an appeal from U.S. President Donald Trump, though Tehran warned it would resume hostilities if Israel continued to hit Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The most direct ‌confrontation between the two countries since April threatened to wreck Washington’s efforts to reach an agreement with Tehran to end their more than three-month-old war, Reuters reported.

Oil prices rose as much as 5% after the flurry of attacks, then fell when Iran’s military said its first wave of strikes on Israel was over. The dollar retreated from its highest level in nearly two months.

A source briefed on the matter said Israel had also decided to halt its attacks on Iran.

Tehran had fired missiles towards Israeli territory late on Sunday, calling ​them retaliation for attacks on the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia on the outskirts of Beirut.

Israel then hit Iranian air defense systems and a petrochemical plant that it said was used to produce ballistic missiles. Iran’s ​Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it retaliated with a strike aimed at a similar Israeli plant in the city of Haifa.

No deaths were reported by authorities on ⁠either side.

The latest exchanges complicated Trump’s push to end a war that the U.S. and Israel launched on February 28. A ceasefire announced on April 8 paused all-out warfare. But flare-ups in the Gulf have continued.

Trump said Israel and Iran ​both wanted an immediate ceasefire.

“Final negotiations on ‘Peace’ are proceeding, subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way,” he wrote on social media.

U.S. and Israeli officials said Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on Monday.

In an interview ​with Axios published on Monday, Trump said he warned Netanyahu that if the Israeli leader went back to war with Iran, he might find himself fighting alone. “I said, ‘Bibi, you better be careful, or you will be on your own very soon,'” Trump said.

Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter pushed back on reports that Trump pressured Netanyahu, telling Fox News’ “Special Report” that conversations between the two leaders were cooperative and accusing journalists of playing up a misleading narrative.

“They have a deep friendship that goes back ​some 40 years, and sometimes lovers have a spat, and sometimes the tension in the room and on the conversation can get a little heated,” Leiter said.

An Israeli military official said Israel was prepared to continue ​operations for “as long as it takes”, while Iranian officials struck a similarly defiant tone. A military source quoted by the semi-official Tasnim news agency said Tehran was ready for a prolonged conflict and could renew strikes against U.S. interests in the ‌region.

‘EXTREME SUSPICION’

U.N. ⁠Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all parties to exercise maximum restraint and refrain from any action that could further inflame an already volatile situation, according to spokesperson Farhan Haq.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran was exchanging messages with Washington in an atmosphere of “extreme suspicion.”

Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, warned that any action against Iranian national security or Iran’s allies in the region, including Yemen’s Houthis, would be met with a decisive and costly response, Iranian media reported.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis pledged in a statement to stop Israeli navigation in the Red Sea, and said they had also fired missiles at Israel.

The Israeli military later said it intercepted a suspicious aerial ​target from Yemen after hostile aircraft sirens sounded in ​the Eilat area.

The Houthis have so far largely ⁠stayed out of the regional war. They control territory at the mouth of the Red Sea, increasingly important as an alternative route for millions of barrels per day of Middle East oil otherwise blocked by Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz.

In Tehran, Iranian media reported explosions, with air defenses shooting down a drone over the ​capital. There were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage.

There were also signs of conditions returning to normal. Flights resumed at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport on ​Tuesday, nearly 24 hours after ⁠being suspended following Iran’s missile attack on Israel, Iranian media reported.

LEBANESE-ISRAELI TALKS TO RESUME

Israel has never halted its Lebanon campaign, which has killed thousands of people, saying it should be treated separately from any U.S.-Iranian ceasefire. Hezbollah has also continued its attacks.

Tehran has long said any peace deal with the U.S. depends in part on an end to fighting in Lebanon, which Israel invaded in March in pursuit of Hezbollah fighters who had fired across the border.

The U.S. ambassador to ⁠Lebanon, Michel Issa, ​said on Monday that Lebanese-Israeli negotiations had been scheduled to resume in Washington.

Tehran has continued to block most shipping through the Strait ​of Hormuz, which before the war carried a fifth of the world’s crude oil and liquefied natural gas. Washington has imposed its own blockade of Iranian ports.

Trump has said any peace deal must ensure Iran cannot develop a nuclear weapon. Iran’s demands include the lifting ​of international sanctions, the release of billions of dollars in frozen assets and recognition of its control of the strait.