Israel struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon before dawn and said it intercepted a fresh barrage of Iranian missiles, as a widening war waged by the United States and Israel rippled across the Middle East with new disruptions from the Strait of Hormuz to Iraq and Turkey.
Explosions rocked Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, hours after Israel warned residents to flee. The Israeli military said it was working to down missiles fired from Iran, despite recent U.S. claims that strikes had severely degraded Tehran’s capabilities. Iran has vowed to exact a heavy price and has fired missiles across the region, while its elite Revolutionary Guards claimed to have closed the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow Gulf chokepoint that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s crude.
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Oil tanker transits through the strait have plunged by 90 percent, the energy intelligence firm Kpler said. Britain’s maritime agency reported a large early-morning explosion near Kuwait, with oil spilling into Gulf waters.
In a dramatic escalation at sea, the United States said one of its submarines sank an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka — the country’s first torpedoing of a vessel since World War II. The IRIS Dena frigate had been on a friendly visit to India when it was hit, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters, describing the operation as a “quiet death” and adding, “We are fighting to win.”
U.S. Department of Defense video purports to show the sinking. Sri Lankan officials said at least 87 people were killed and 61 remain missing; 32 sailors were rescued, many wounded, Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath said.
Iran’s official IRNA news agency said 1,045 military personnel and civilians have been killed since the war began, a toll that AFP could not independently verify. Iran says more than 150 people, many of them children, died in a strike on a school Saturday in the southern town of Minab; AFP reporters could not independently access the site to verify the toll. U.S. authorities say six American soldiers have died in the war.
Regional spillover widened. A missile launched from Iran was destroyed by a NATO air-defense system while heading toward Turkish airspace, in what Ankara and NATO condemned as an alarming first. A Turkish official told AFP the projectile was aimed at a British base in Cyprus and “veered off course.” Turkey summoned the Iranian ambassador, and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi that “any steps that could lead to the spread of conflict should be avoided.”
The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar said they intercepted Iranian missiles, including a drone bound for Saudi Arabia’s vast Ras Tanura refinery. Kuwait reported an 11-year-old girl died after she was hit by falling shrapnel. Thirteen people, seven of them civilians, have been killed in countries around the Gulf since the war began, officials said, with air travel severely disrupted. The United States sent its first charter flight to bring back Americans after urging them to leave, following similar moves by France and Britain.
Inside Iraq, a nationwide electricity blackout struck after what the electricity ministry called a sudden drop in gas supplies to a key plant. In northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, Iran struck and killed a member of an exiled Iranian Kurdish group, a representative said, amid reports the United States was looking to arm guerrillas to infiltrate Iran. “Separatist groups should not think that a breeze has blown and try to take action,” said Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. “We will not tolerate them in any way.” Two pro-Iran fighters were killed in a separate strike on their base inside Iraq.
Lebanon remains a flashpoint. Israeli strikes have killed 75 people and displaced more than 83,000 since the latest round of fighting began, officials said. Israel urged people to leave the section of Lebanon south of the Litani River, saying the army was “compelled to take military action.” An Israeli airstrike hit a hotel in Hazmieh, the first reported attack on the predominantly Christian area in Beirut’s suburbs, near the presidential palace and several embassies.
AFP video appeared to show two Israeli tanks amid residential buildings in Khiam, about six kilometers inside Lebanon, reviving memories of previous Israeli occupations. French President Emmanuel Macron, in his first call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since last year, warned against a ground offensive and urged Israel to “preserve Lebanon’s territorial integrity.” Macron said he also spoke with Lebanese leaders to press Hezbollah to halt its attacks.
Iran’s military threatened to target Israeli embassies worldwide if Israel attacks Tehran’s mission in Lebanon.
As tensions mount, the conflict’s military, economic and humanitarian costs are widening by the day — from halted oil flows and grounded flights to blacked-out cities and rising civilian tolls — with no sign of immediate de-escalation.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
