Agencies
Dubai
US forces bombed Iran’s south and west after President Donald Trump said Tehran would pay dearly for the deaths of American soldiers, while Iran targeted US sites in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan on Tuesday and a tanker was hit in the Strait of Hormuz.
Oil prices gained nearly 2 percent on the escalating cycle of attacks that has all but wrecked an interim peace agreement signed last month. But signs that Tehran and Washington want to resume diplomacy helped to limit price rises.
US Central Command said it had hit Iranian military command centers, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and air defense systems in its latest round of strikes.
Explosions were heard around the city of Shiraz in southern Iran, state media said. Konarak and Chabahar on the southern coast, the city of Khorramabad and a civilian site outside the city of Abdanan, both in the west, all came under attack, media reports said. Later the IRNA news agency quoted an official in Khorramabad as saying no enemy attack had taken place there.
Fifty civilians have been killed and 500 wounded in the recent US strikes on Iran, a health ministry official said.
As hostilities spread across the region, the US State Department issued a new “worldwide caution” for Americans due to “heightened tensions in the Middle East.”
Iran launched renewed attacks across the Gulf, where recent strikes on desalination facilities have raised concerns about water shortages. Attacks on Kuwaiti power generation and water desalination plants on Monday caused several generation units to be taken out of service as a precautionary measure and repairs were underway, authorities said.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they targeted infrastructure in Bahrain belonging to US tech company Amazon in response to what they described as a US strike on the construction site of Iran’s planned Darkhovin nuclear power plant. Iranian state media reported that Iranian forces also targeted accommodation facilities of US military personnel at Bahrain’s Sheikh Isa Air Base. There was no immediate comment from the US military, Bahrain or Amazon on the reported incidents, which Reuters was unable to verify.
The Iranian army said it launched drone attacks against three US military bases in Kuwait on Tuesday. The Guards said they attacked a US military site in Jordan, while Jordan said its forces intercepted and destroyed five Iranian drones.
Tankers struck
The maritime security agency UKMTO said on Tuesday a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz reported being struck by a projectile, forcing its crew to abandon the vessel and board a lifeboat.
Also on Tuesday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said two oil tankers had caught fire after explosions while attempting to transit the southern route of the strait.
Just four commodity vessels crossed the strait on Monday, mostly using the northern shipping lane near Iran’s coast, down from seven the previous day, Kpler data showed.
Iran had been pressing the Houthis to close the Bab El-Mandeb gateway to the Red Sea if the US continued to attack Iranian power infrastructure — putting two of the world’s most vital energy arteries at risk.
The latest phase of fighting has proved to be among the deadliest of the conflict for US forces. US troop deaths rose to 17 over the weekend.
