Israel has launched widescale strikes against Iran, saying it targeted nuclear facilities, ballistic missile factories and military commanders.
It said this was the start of a prolonged operation to prevent Tehran from building an atomic weapon.
Iran had launched about 100 drones towards Israeli territory in retaliation, which Israel is working to intercept, Israeli military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin said.
Iranian media and witnesses reported explosions including at the country’s main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.
Israel declared a state of emergency in anticipation of retaliatory missile and drone strikes.
Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards corps said its top commander, Hossein Salami, was killed and state media reported the unit’s headquarters in Tehran had been hit. Several children had been killed in a strike on a residential area in the capital, it said.
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“We are at a decisive moment in Israel’s history,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a recorded video message.
Defrin said 200 Israeli fighter jets took part in the strikes, hitting more than 100 targets in Iran.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a statement that Israel had “unleashed its wicked and bloody” hand in a crime against Iran and that it would receive “a bitter fate for itself”.
Airlines cleared out of the airspace over Israel, Iran and Iraq and Jordan after the Israelis strikes, Flightradar24 data showed, with carriers scrambling to divert and cancel flights to keep passengers and crew safe.
The United States said it had no part in the operation, which raises the risk of a fresh escalation in tensions in the Middle East, a major oil producing region.
Source: Reuters
