TEL AVIV/DUBAI: Israel and Iran launched fresh attacks on each other late on Saturday, stoking fears of a wider conflict after Israel expanded its surprise campaign against its main rival with a strike on the world’s biggest gas field.
Tehran called off nuclear talks that Washington had said were the only way to halt Israel’s bombing, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacks were nothing compared with what Iran would see in the coming days.
Israel’s military said more missiles were launched from Iran toward Israel late on Saturday, and that it was working to intercept them. It also said it was attacking military targets in Tehran. Iranian state television said Iran had launched missiles and drones at Israel.
Several projectiles were visible in the night sky over Jerusalem late on Saturday. Air raid sirens did not sound in the city, but were heard in the northern Israeli city of Haifa.
Israel’s ambulance service said a woman in her 20s was killed and 13 other people injured when a missile struck a two-story house in northern Israel.
Iran said the Shahran oil depot in Tehran was targeted in an Israeli attack but that the situation was under control. A video posted online by the semi-official Iran Students' News Agency, or ISNA, showed a massive fire raging at the Shahran oil depot in western Tehran.
US President Donald Trump had warned Iran of worse to come, but said it was not too late to halt the Israeli campaign if Tehran accepted a sharp downgrading of its nuclear program.
A round of US-Iran nuclear talks due to be held in Oman on Sunday was canceled, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi saying the discussions could not take place while Iran was being subjected to Israel’s “barbarous” attacks.
In the first apparent attack to hit Iran’s energy infrastructure, the semi-official Tasnim news agency said Iran partially suspended production at the world’s biggest gas field after an Israeli strike caused a fire there on Saturday.
The South Pars field, offshore in Iran’s southern Bushehr province, is the source of most of the gas produced in Iran.
Fears about potential disruption to the region’s oil exports had already driven up oil prices 9 percent on Friday even though Israel spared Iran’s oil and gas on the first day of its attacks.
An Iranian general, Esmail Kosari, said on Saturday that Tehran was reviewing whether to close the Strait of Hormuz controlling access to the Gulf for tankers.
Iran says scores killed
Iran said 78 people were killed on the first day of Israel’s campaign, and scores more on the second, including 60 when a missile brought down a 14-story apartment block in Tehran, where 29 of the dead were children.
Iran had launched its own retaliatory missile volley on Friday night, killing at least three people in Israel.
With Israel saying its operation could last weeks, and Netanyahu urging Iran’s people to rise up against their Islamic clerical rulers, fears have grown of a regional conflagration dragging in outside powers.
B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organization, said on Saturday that instead of exhausting all possibilities for a diplomatic resolution, Israel’s government had chosen to start a war that puts the entire region in danger.
Tehran has warned Israel’s allies that their military bases in the region would come under fire too if they helped shoot down Iranian missiles.
However, 20 months of war in Gaza and a conflict in Lebanon last year have decimated Tehran’s strongest regional proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, reducing its options for retaliation.
Israel sees Iran’s nuclear program as a threat to its existence, and said the bombardment was designed to avert the last steps to production of a nuclear weapon.
Tehran insists the program is entirely civilian and that it does not seek an atomic bomb. However the UN nuclear watchdog reported it this week as violating obligations under the global non-proliferation treaty.
‘We will hit every site’
Israel said three people were killed and 76 wounded by Iran’s retaliatory drone and missile barrage overnight, which lit up the skies over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Netanyahu vowed to keep up Israel’s campaign.
“We will hit every site, every target of the ayatollah regime,” he said in a video statement, threatening greater action “in the coming days.”
He added that the Israeli campaign had dealt a “real blow” to Iran’s nuclear program and maintained it had the “clear support” of US President Donald Trump.
Netanyahu’s defense minister, Israel Katz, warned “Tehran will burn” if it kept targeting Israeli civilians.
Israel’s fire service reported residential buildings were hit following the latest launches.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian fired back that “the continuation of the Zionist aggression will be met with a more severe and powerful response from the Iranian armed forces.”
According to a statement from his office, Pezeshkian also condemned Washington’s “dishonesty” for supporting Israel while engaged in nuclear talks with Iran — which mediator Oman said would no longer take place on Sunday.
Western governments have repeatedly accused Iran of seeking a nuclear weapon, which it denies.
Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, said the Israeli attacks undermined negotiations and were pushing the region into a “dangerous cycle of violence.”
With world leaders seeking to contain the conflict, Trump said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed in a phone call that it needed to stop.
“He feels, as do I, this war in Israel-Iran should end,” Trump said on Truth Social.
After decades of enmity and conflict by proxy, it is the first time the arch-enemies have traded fire with such intensity, triggering fears of a prolonged conflict that could engulf the Middle East.
Highlighting the unease, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned against a “devastating war” with regional consequences in a call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Ankara said.
Israeli strikes have hit Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant and killed its highest-ranking military officer, Mohammad Bagheri, as well as the head of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami.
The Israeli military said its strikes had killed more than 20 Iranian commanders.
Iranian media reported five Guards killed Saturday in Israeli strikes, while authorities in one northwestern province said 30 military personnel had been killed there since Friday.
Iran’s Red Crescent said an ambulance was hit Saturday in Urmia city, killing two.
Iran called on its citizens to unite in the country’s defense, while Netanyahu urged them to rise up against against the government.
Iran’s Mehr news agency said Tehran had warned Britain, France and the United States it could retaliate if they came to Israel’s defense.
AFP images from the city of Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv showed blown-out buildings, destroyed vehicles and streets strewn with debris after Iran’s first wave of attacks.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had struck dozens of targets in Israel. One Iranian missile wounded seven Israeli soldiers, the military said.
Firefighters had worked for hours to free people trapped in a Tel Aviv high-rise building on Friday.
Chen Gabizon, a resident, said he ran to an underground shelter after receiving an alert.
“We just heard a very big explosion, everything was shaking, smoke, dust, everything was all over the place,” he said.
In Tehran, fire and heavy smoke billowed over Mehrabad airport on Saturday, an AFP journalist said.
The Israeli army said it had struck an underground military facility Saturday in western Iran’s Khorramabad that contained surface-to-surface and cruise missiles.
Iranian media also reported a “massive explosion” following an Israeli drone strike on an oil refinery in the southern city of Kangan.
The attacks prompted several countries to temporarily ground air traffic, though on Saturday Jordan, Lebanon and Syria reopened their airspace.
Iran’s airspace was closed until further notice, state media reported, as was Israel’s, according to authorities.