Iraq’s oil ports have completely stopped operations while commercial ports continue to operate after an attack on a fuel tanker, an Iraqi official has said.
Farhan Al-Fartousi, the head of Iraq’s General Company for Ports, also told Al-Iraqiya News that one crew member was killed and 38 had been rescued, according to state news agency INA. He said a search for the missing was continuing.
Iraqi port security officials had said, as reported earlier, that two foreign tankers carrying Iraqi fuel oil were in flames after being attacked by Iranian boats laden with explosives.
Al-Fartousi said a tanker loaded with petroleum products was in the process of loading when it was involved in an “incident”, the INA report said, also saying:
He added that “one of the smaller tankers involved flies the Maltese flag” noting that the vessel was hit by an explosion, though it remains unclear whether it was a direct strike or a waterborne improvised explosive device (suicide boat).
Al-Fartousi said the tankers were about 30 miles (48km) off the Iraqi coast.
The Iraqi government’s media cell has been quoted as telling INA that “two tankers were subject to sabotage”.
An airstrike killed at least two fighters in northern Iraq on Thursday, a news report is saying, citing sources.
Thursday’s airstrike targeted a base in the city of Kirkuk, occupied by the Hashed al-Shaabi, a former paramilitary coalition now integrated into Iraq’s regular army, the report from Agence France-Presse says.
The Hashed also encompasses brigades from Iran-backed groups, which have been targeted in attacks blamed on the US and Israel since the start of the war.
A security source in Kirkuk said at least “two members of the Hashed forces were martyred in an airstrike that hit their base”.
Search and rescue operations were still under way at the site, which had been engulfed by flames.
A Hashed official told AFP that three fighters were killed in the strike.
A journalist with the agency reported from Kirkuk that security forces had been deployed near the site, which is close to the city’s airport.
Pentagon officials have estimated that the first six days of the war on Iran cost the US at least $11.3bn, news reports are saying.
Lebanon has said an Israeli strike along the seafront in central Beirut killed at least seven people early on Thursday, hours after another attack in the heart of the capital.
The strike on Ramlet al-Bayda caused an initial toll of seven dead and 21 wounded, the health ministry said in a statement cited by the AFP news agency.
Local media published footage showing chaos and smoke along the seaside corniche after the strike on Thursday.
It was the third attack in the heart of the capital since the war in the Middle East began, after a raid on an apartment on Wednesday and a strike on a seafront hotel on Sunday.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah said early on Thursday that it launched missiles at an Israeli military intelligence base in the suburbs of Tel Aviv.
It was the Iran-backed militant group’s latest attack in a major new operation against Israel, which said it had struck 10 Hezbollah targets in southern Beirut.
Australia’s foreign minister has said most of the Australians who were caught in transit in Middle East airline hubs have now returned home on flights that made it out, but warned others there not to leave it “too late” to leave the region.
Penny Wong told told Sky News there were still about 13,000 Australians who had registered for assistance in the region, while more than 100,000 others were believed to be living in the Middle East.
She said it was “good” that those stuck in transit had been able to leave on several dozen flights that had made it out in recent days, but stressed the government was urging any Australian able to secure a seat out of the region to do so.
We don’t want to see a situation where commercial flights that are in operation … where they dry up. We hope that will not happen, but don’t leave it too late.
Israeli warplanes have bombarded Beirut’s southern suburbs and southern Lebanon after Hezbollah launched drones and rockets at northern Israel on Wednesday night in a sharp escalation of the conflict.
Hezbollah let off successive volleys of rockets and drone swarms at Israel on Wednesday night, injuring two people, with most of the projectiles either being intercepted or falling into open areas, reports William Christou in Beirut.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards later said they had carried out some strikes with Hezbollah in a “joint” operation involving a missile attack by Iran along with missile and drone fire from Lebanon’s Iran-backed militant group. It their first joint operation against Israel since the war began 12 days ago.
The operation focused on “more than 50 targets” on Israeli territory including Israeli military bases in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Beersheba, the Guards said in a statement.
Lebanon has been quickly becoming the most intense site of fighting in the region.
Israeli warplanes began bombing Lebanon nearly immediately after Hezbollah’s strikes. The skies of Beirut were lit red and windows around the capital city shook as Israel unleashed its most powerful bombardment of the southern suburbs yet in this round of fighting.
You can read the full report here:
As video circulating online appears to show oil tankers filled with Iraqi oil in flames in the Persian Gulf after the reported attacks by Iran, Donald Trump assured his supporters at a rally in Kentucky that the war on Iran he started from his Florida beach club 12 days ago is already over and “we won”.
After Trump first shouted “Operation Epic Fury!”, the Pentagon’s name for the US offensive, and received cheers from his supporters, he added: “Is that a great name? Well, it’s only good if you win … and we’ve won. Let me tell you, we’ve won.”
“You know, you never like to say too early you won,” Trump continued, perhaps thinking of his predecessor, George W Bush, standing in front of a huge “Mission Accomplished” banner in 2003 and prematurely declaring a US victory in Iraq.
But then he plowed ahead with his own declaration. “We won. We won. In the first hour it was over,” Trump said.
Iraq’s oil ports have completely stopped operations while commercial ports continue to operate after an attack on a fuel tanker, an Iraqi official has said.
Farhan Al-Fartousi, the head of Iraq’s General Company for Ports, also told Al-Iraqiya News that one crew member was killed and 38 had been rescued, according to state news agency INA. He said a search for the missing was continuing.
Iraqi port security officials had said, as reported earlier, that two foreign tankers carrying Iraqi fuel oil were in flames after being attacked by Iranian boats laden with explosives.
Al-Fartousi said a tanker loaded with petroleum products was in the process of loading when it was involved in an “incident”, the INA report said, also saying:
He added that “one of the smaller tankers involved flies the Maltese flag” noting that the vessel was hit by an explosion, though it remains unclear whether it was a direct strike or a waterborne improvised explosive device (suicide boat).
Al-Fartousi said the tankers were about 30 miles (48km) off the Iraqi coast.
The Iraqi government’s media cell has been quoted as telling INA that “two tankers were subject to sabotage”.
The United States will release 172m barrels of oil from its strategic petroleum reserve in a bid to reduce oil prices that have soared due to supply shocks from war, the US energy secretary has said.
Chris Wright said the release is part of a broader release of 400m barrels of oil agreed to by the 32-country International Energy Agency earlier in the day.
He said the release would begin next week and will take about 120 days to deliver.
In his statement on Wednesday, Wright accused Iran of having “manipulated and threatened the energy security of America and its allies”.
Trump had said earlier on Wednesday that he planned to tap the petroleum reserve.
The full report is here:
US intelligence indicates that Iran’s leadership is still largely intact and is not at risk of collapse any time soon after nearly two weeks of relentless US and Israeli bombardment, the Reuters news agency is reporting, citing three sources familiar with the matter.
A “multitude” of intelligence reports provide “consistent analysis that the regime is not in danger” of collapse and “retains control of the Iranian public”, said one of the sources, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss US intelligence findings.
The Reuters report also quoted one of the sources as saying latest intelligence report was completed within the past few days.
The intelligence reporting underscores the cohesion of Iran’s clerical leadership despite the killing of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the US and Israeli strikes.
Israeli officials in closed discussions have also acknowledged there is no certainty the war will lead to the clerical government’s collapse, a senior Israeli official told Reuters.
The sources stressed that the situation on the ground was fluid and that the dynamics inside Iran could change.
The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment, while the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The war in the Middle East is likely to result in worsening institutionalised repression of Iranian citizens, UN-mandated investigators looking into rights abuses in Iran have said.
The UN’s independent international fact-finding mission on Iran said civilians in the country were caught between ongoing armed hostilities and repression that had reached unprecedented levels, which may amount to crimes against humanity.
Iran’s deepening human rights crisis “is likely to worsen in the wake of the US-Israeli attacks on Iran and Iran’s retaliatory strikes across the region”, the mission said on Wednesday.
Over the past 11 months, it had identified “a clear pattern that is directly relevant to what we are seeing today in Iran”, said the statement, cited by AFP.
The protection of civilians, including detainees, becomes acutely precarious during armed conflict, and in the aftermath, state repression intensifies, particularly where as now, a connectivity and internet shutdown is imposed.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
