Israel-Iran conflict escalates, over 230 reported dead; Tehran rejects ceasefire talks

Israel and Iran traded more missile attacks on Sunday despite calls for a halt to the fighting, with neither country backing down as their conflict raged for a third day.

Iran said Israel struck its oil refineries, killed the intelligence chief of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and two other generals and hit population centres in intensive aerial attacks that raised the death toll in the country since Israel launched its major campaign on Friday to 224 people. Health authorities also reported that 1,277 were wounded, without distinguishing between military officials and civilians.

Israel, which has aimed its missiles at Iran’s rapidly-advancing nuclear programme and military leadership, said Iran has fired over 270 missiles since Friday, 22 of which slipped through the country’s sophisticated multi-tiered air defences and caused havoc in residential suburbs, killing 14 people and wounding 390 others.

In an indication of how far Israel was seemingly prepared to go, a US official told The Associated Press that President Donald Trump nixed an Israeli plan to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all major policies, serves as commander-in-chief of the armed forces and controls the powerful Revolutionary Guard.

Israel, the sole though undeclared nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, has said this attack—its most powerful ever against Iran—was to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

The latest round of talks between the US and Iran on the future of Tehran’s nuclear programme had been scheduled on Sunday in Oman but were cancelled after Israel’s attack.

Iran turns metro stations, mosques into bomb shelters Claiming to operate almost freely in the skies over Iran, Israel said its attacks on Sunday hit Iran’s Defence Ministry, missile-launch sites and factories producing air-defence components. Iran also acknowledged Israel had killed more of its top generals, including the Revolutionary Guard intelligence chief, Gen. Mohammad Kazemi.

But Israeli strikes have also extended beyond Iranian military installations to hit government buildings, including the Foreign Ministry and several energy facilities, Iranian authorities said, most recently sparking fires on Sunday at the Shahran oil depot north of Tehran and a fuel tank south of the city.

The strikes raised the prospect of a broader assault on Iran’s heavily-sanctioned energy industry that is vital to the global economy and markets.

Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh and other Iranian diplomats shared photos of the Foreign Ministry’s offices and library laid to waste by shrapnel.

Iran’s state TV broadcast footage of men and women carrying dust-covered and bloodied children from the ruins of residential buildings hit by Israeli missiles in downtown Tehran. The spokesperson for the Iranian Health Ministry, Hossein Kermanpour, said 90 per cent of the 224 people killed by Sunday were civilians.

The Washington-based group Human Rights Activists reported a far-higher death toll in Iran from Israeli strikes, saying the attacks have killed at least 406 people and wounded another 654. In recent crises, Iran routinely has undercounted casualties, including in the 2022 mass demonstrations over mandatory hijab laws after the death of Mahsa Amini.

State TV reported that metro stations and mosques would be made available as bomb shelters beginning Sunday night. Tehran residents told of long lines at gas stations and cars backed up for hours as families fled the city.

Traffic police closed a number of roads outside the city to control congestion. Energy officials on state TV sought to reassure the jittery public there was no gasoline shortage despite the long lines.

Iranian state-linked media acknowledged explosions and fires stemming from an attack on an Iranian refuelling aircraft in Mashhad, deep in the country’s northeast. Israel described the attack on Mashhad as the farthest strike it has carried out in Iranian territory.

Video obtained and verified by the AP showed smoke rising from the city.

The death toll rises in Israel

Air-raid sirens sounded across Jerusalem and major Israeli cities, sending Israelis scrambling to bomb shelters in the seaside metropolis of Tel Aviv and the northern port city of Haifa.

The Israeli military reported that almost two dozen Iranian missiles had slipped through the vaunted Iron Dome aerial-defence system and struck residential areas.

Early on Sunday, Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service reported that at least six people, including a 10-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl, were killed when a missile smashed into a high-rise apartment in Bat Yam, a coastal city south of Tel Aviv.

Daniel Hadad, a local police commander, said 180 people were wounded and seven missing in Bat Yam. Residents appeared dazed, staggering through the rubble of their homes to retrieve personal belongings while rescuers sifted through twisted metal and shattered glass in their search for more bodies.

Another four people, including a 13-year-old, were killed and 24 wounded when a missile struck a building in the Arab town of Tamra in northern Israel, emergency authorities said, while a strike on the central city of Rehovot wounded 42.

The Weizmann Institute of Science, a centre for military and other research in Rehovot, reported “a number of hits to buildings on the campus” and said no one was harmed.

An oil refinery was damaged in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, the firm operating it said. Israel’s main international airport and airspace was closed for a third day.

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