Welcome to our rolling coverage of events across the Middle East after the US and Israel launched an attack on Iran over the weekend.
If you’re just joining us, here’s the latest in the escalating crisis.
- The Israeli military says it has begun strikes against Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Explosions were heard in the south of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, a known Hezbollah stronghold, after Hezbollah fired missiles across the border earlier today.
- In a new video message posted this morning, US President Donald Trump pledged to avenge the deaths of three Americans killed in Kuwait overnight, and called on members of the Iranian military to “surrender or face certain death”. He predicted there would be more US casualties before the conflict ends, but has given no firm indication of how long the military campaign will last. Earlier, he said the conflict might last more than four weeks.
- Trump also claimed this morning the attacks sank nine Iranian naval ships and killed 48 Iranian leaders. Iran retaliated with a missile strike on a residential building in the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, killing nine people. American officials say US and Israeli joint forces have hit more than 2000 targets, while Iran has struck 27 targets across eight countries.
- The leaders of Britain, France and Germany say they are ready to defend their interests in the region after “indiscriminate and disproportionate” missile attacks by Iran. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer also said he had agreed to a request from the US to use British bases to conduct defensive operations. “It is my duty to protect British lives,” he said in a social media video.
- The death toll from a US-Israeli strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran on Saturday was at 165, including children and adults. The school is reportedly next to a military installation.
- Reactions to the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have reverberated around the world. While Iranians in Turkey marched on the US embassy in Istanbul in protest and mourned Khamenei’s death, Iranians in other parts of the world celebrated. Iran’s foreign minister said a new leader could be chosen “in a day or two”.
- Flights in and out of the region have been halted or cancelled due to the conflict, with more than 20,000 flight delays and disruptions reported. Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the Australian government could not guarantee repatriation flights to bring home Australians stranded in the region, as most planes remained grounded.
- Smartraveller now advises Australians “do not travel” to most destinations in the Middle East. This includes Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, Qatar, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Wong urged permanent residents and their immediate family members in Israel and Iran to register on DFAT’s registration portal to receive direct updates from the government.
Read more on the US-Israel-Iran war:
Britain’s Defence Ministry says a suspected drone has hit its military base at Akrotiri, Cyprus.
It said there were no casualties from the suspected strike which occurred at midnight in Cyprus. It did not provide further details.
British servicemen stationed on the island are said to have received an alert warning of a “security threat” and urging them to remain indoors.
Some reports suggested the explosions may have been caused by missiles fired from Lebanon.
If launched from Lebanon, the potential attack is likely to have been orchestrated by Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy group.
RAF Akrotiri is Britain’s main air base for operations in the Middle East and is a British sovereign territory.
There was no immediate comment from the government of Cyprus.
With AP
The Israeli military has urged people in nearly 50 villages in Lebanon to evacuate ahead of possible strikes, the Associated Press reports.
It comes after the IDF said it had begun strikes against Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah across Lebanon.
Explosions were heard earlier in the south of Beirut, which is a known Hezbollah stronghold.
AP
Welcome to our rolling coverage of events across the Middle East after the US and Israel launched an attack on Iran over the weekend.
If you’re just joining us, here’s the latest in the escalating crisis.
- The Israeli military says it has begun strikes against Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Explosions were heard in the south of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, a known Hezbollah stronghold, after Hezbollah fired missiles across the border earlier today.
- In a new video message posted this morning, US President Donald Trump pledged to avenge the deaths of three Americans killed in Kuwait overnight, and called on members of the Iranian military to “surrender or face certain death”. He predicted there would be more US casualties before the conflict ends, but has given no firm indication of how long the military campaign will last. Earlier, he said the conflict might last more than four weeks.
- Trump also claimed this morning the attacks sank nine Iranian naval ships and killed 48 Iranian leaders. Iran retaliated with a missile strike on a residential building in the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, killing nine people. American officials say US and Israeli joint forces have hit more than 2000 targets, while Iran has struck 27 targets across eight countries.
- The leaders of Britain, France and Germany say they are ready to defend their interests in the region after “indiscriminate and disproportionate” missile attacks by Iran. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer also said he had agreed to a request from the US to use British bases to conduct defensive operations. “It is my duty to protect British lives,” he said in a social media video.
- The death toll from a US-Israeli strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran on Saturday was at 165, including children and adults. The school is reportedly next to a military installation.
- Reactions to the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have reverberated around the world. While Iranians in Turkey marched on the US embassy in Istanbul in protest and mourned Khamenei’s death, Iranians in other parts of the world celebrated. Iran’s foreign minister said a new leader could be chosen “in a day or two”.
- Flights in and out of the region have been halted or cancelled due to the conflict, with more than 20,000 flight delays and disruptions reported. Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the Australian government could not guarantee repatriation flights to bring home Australians stranded in the region, as most planes remained grounded.
- Smartraveller now advises Australians “do not travel” to most destinations in the Middle East. This includes Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, Qatar, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Wong urged permanent residents and their immediate family members in Israel and Iran to register on DFAT’s registration portal to receive direct updates from the government.
Read more on the US-Israel-Iran war:
NSW Premier Chris Minns has condemned plans to hold a Sydney vigil for the late Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, after reports a prayer hall has announced three days and nights of mourning.
“I think it’s atrocious,” Minns said of the reports. “I mean by any objective measure, the ayatollah was evil. I don’t think we should be mincing words about this.”
Minns said Khamenei was responsible for killing thousands of protesters for simply demonstrating against the regime.
“This is a regime that murders young boys for the crime of the suspicion of being gay. I think we can call the mourning of this tyrant atrocious and that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” he said.
Minns said Iranians who had been “respectfully demonstrating” in Sydney over the past few weeks were from a community that “had been torn apart by an evil regime” and were not mourning the “death of an evil dictator”.
“That’s what they had in Iran for the last 30 years and prior to that with his predecessor,” he said.
Minns said he acknowledged the call for human rights in Iran but added violence or racism would not be tolerated on Sydney’s streets.
Australian petrol and diesel prices are widely tipped to rise as worries about the widening conflict in Iran send the cost of a barrel of oil climbing more than 10 per cent.
The US-Israel attacks on Iran threaten to severely restrict global supplies of crude oil – the natural resource that is refined into usable fuels – and will push up the cost of transport for consumers around the world.
When markets opened this morning contracts to buy and sell a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, jumped from $US72 to beyond $US80 for the first time since 2024.
As a general rule of thumb, if prices continue rising, each $US10-a-barrel rise could add 10¢ a litre at the pump in Australia, economists say.
Any price swings for Australia’s regional oil benchmark, known as Tapis crude, take between a week to 10 days to flow through to prices at Australian petrol stations, said Peter Khoury, a spokesman for the National Roads and Motorists Association (NRMA).
Regular unleaded was currently trading at the top of the price cycles in Melbourne and Sydney, at $2.01 a litre and $1.98 respectively, he added.
While retailers would typically now begin discounting their fuel by a few cents each day to compete for customers, “it might be that we stay [at these peaks] for a bit longer”, Khoury said.
But the size of the increase so far was similar to previous market jolts sparked by geopolitical tensions last year, and were not yet a cause for panic, he said.
What happens next will depend on a broad range of factors, including whether the conflict de-escalates quickly or if it widens and affects the production or transport of energy commodities through the region.
Analysts said the main worry for energy markets was the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow shipping lane south of Iran, which is a major choke point for about one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies. MST Financial analyst Saul Kavonic said shipments through the strait had just about halted.
Without a de-escalation of the conflict or ceasefire soon, Australian drivers may start seeing price rises at the bowser within “the next week or so”, Sydney University economics lecturer Luke Hartigan said.
The Israeli military said today it had begun strikes against Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Explosions were heard in the south of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, a known Hezbollah stronghold.
Lebanese security sources told Reuters that at least one target in Beirut’s southern suburbs was hit in the strikes.
The barrage of Israeli strikes on Lebanon came after Hezbollah fired missiles across the border earlier today. The IDF said it had intercepted a projectile fired from Lebanon.
Hezbollah said in a statement that the strikes were carried out in retaliation for the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei and for “repeated Israeli aggressions”.
It marks the first time that the terror group has fired at Israel since the US-brokered Israel-Lebanon ceasefire came into effect in November 2024.
No injuries have been reported.
AP, Reuters
A spokesman for Iran’s Health Ministry, Hossein Kermanpour, said that the Gandhi Hospital in northern Tehran had been evacuated, and three other hospitals in the country had been struck, The New York Times reported.
Intensive care patients were among those who had to be moved to other facilities after missile strikes, he said.
“For the first time in my life, I am witnessing something I never even saw during the Iran-Iraq War,” he told The New York Times. “Patients being carried in their caregivers’ arms, fleeing into smoke-filled streets after missiles exploded beside their hospital.”
Director of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the reports were “extremely worrying”, and that the WHO was working to verify them.
It is unclear at this stage whether there are any casualties from the hospital strikes.
Donald Trump has touched down in Washington after spending the weekend in Florida.
While the US president usually walks back to the press cabin on Air Force One to answer questions from journalists in the travelling press pool, he did not stop to speak with reporters today.
Iran has returned fire after attacks by the US and Israel wiped out its supreme leader and much of its senior leadership on Saturday.
Iranian officials said the country’s military had struck 27 targets across eight different countries in retaliatory strikes.
An American official told The New York Times this morning that the US and Israel had hit “more than 2000 targets” in Iran so far.
Our map shows where strikes have been exchanged so far between Iran, the US and Israel.
Opposition defence spokesman James Paterson has questioned whether the federal government gave Australians in the Middle East sufficiently strong advice to consider evacuating the region before the US launched military strikes on Iran.
“I’m not sure there were sufficient warnings for Australians in the region in the recent days and weeks given the likelihood of military action,” Paterson told reporters in Canberra.
“I think many Australians have been caught by surprise and might have chosen to leave had they been warned to do so.”
The government’s Smartraveller website is now advising Australians not to travel to several inthe Middle East countries, including as Israel, because of the worsening security situation.
Paterson said that, with many airports closed in the region, the government should consider emergency repatriation flights for stranded Australians.
“Yes, the Australian government should be doing everything they can to assist Australians to leave the region,” he said.
If repatriation flights using Australian military assets are necessary, Paterson said they would “have our unqualified bipartisan support”.
Defence Minister Richard Marles said earlier this morning that “for a very long time now, our travel advice has been to not travel to Iran, and that if it is safe to do so to leave”.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
