AP
Dubai/Colombo
Iran launched a new wave of attacks against Israel, American bases and countries around the region on Thursday, while warning the US would “bitterly regret” torpedoing an Iranian warship.
Tehran’s expanding retaliatory strikes came even as Israel and the US hammered Iran for a
sixth day.
The war has escalated each day, affecting an additional 14 countries across the Middle East and beyond. On Thursday, Azerbaijan accused Iran of attacking it with drones – though Tehran denied that. A day earlier, the US said it sank an Iranian frigate in the waters off Sri Lanka coast.
Sri Lanka on Thursday allowed a second Iranian ship to dock at the eastern port of Trincomalee and evacuated all 208 personnel on board, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said.
Israel meanwhile issued a mass evacuation warning for all of Beirut’s southern suburbs as the fighting escalated with Lebanon’s Iran-allied Hezbollah
militants.
UN peacekeepers reported ground combat in southern Lebanon as more Israeli troops crossed the border.
All the while, the US and Israel have battered Iran with nationwide strikes, targeting their military capabilities, leadership and nuclear programme.
Israeli and American leaders have also suggested that toppling the government was a goal – and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed when they launched the war Saturday. But the exact aims and timelines have repeatedly shifted, and the conflict increasingly appeared to be open-ended.
US President Donald Trump has told Axios on Thursday that he should be involved in picking Iran’s next supreme leader, and that Mojtaba Khamenei, a frontrunner to succeed his father, would be an “unacceptable” choice.
Iran’s attacks have targeted their Arab neighbours, disrupted oil supplies and snarled global air travel. The war has killed at least 1,230 people in Iran, more than 100 in Lebanon and around a dozen in Israel, according to officials in those countries. Six US troops have been killed.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the US Navy of committing an “an atrocity at sea” for sinking the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean earlier in the week, killing at least 87 people.
“Mark my words: The US will come to bitterly regret (the) precedent it has set,” he said on social media.
An Iranian cleric later called on state television for the shedding of both Israeli and “Trump’s blood”.
The statement from Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli represented a rare call for violence by an ayatollah, one of the highest ranks within the clergy of Shiite Islam. There are dozens in Iran.
Israel announced multiple incoming missile attacks and air sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Israeli military said it carried out a wave of strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile launch sites.
Gulf countries also reported coming under fire. In the United Arab Emirates, a drone was shot down near the Al Dhafra Air Base, which hosts US forces, and shrapnel fell to the ground, authorities said. Six people were wounded.
Qatar evacuated residents near the US Embassy in Doha as a temporary precaution and later reported a missile attack on the city. Saudi Arabia said it destroyed a drone in its province bordering Jordan.
Sirens sounded in Bahrain Thursday afternoon, while the country’s Defence Ministry said its forces had intercepted 75 Iranian ballistic missiles and 124 drones since the start of the war on Saturday.
Bahrain says an Iranian missile hit a state-run oil refinery. It said the fire Thursday night was extinguished and the refinery was still working. There were no reports of casualties.
