An Iranian missile has hit the Israeli town of Dimona, home to a nuclear facility, in what Iran said was retaliation for strikes on its own nuclear site at Natanz.<\/p>\n
Dimona hosts a facility just outside the main town widely believed to possess the Middle East\u2019s sole nuclear arsenal, although Israel has never admitted to possessing nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s atomic energy organisation earlier accused the US and Israel of hitting the Natanz enrichment complex, but noted there was \u201cno leakage of radioactive materials reported\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Israeli army told AFP there had been a \u201cdirect missile hit on a building\u201d in Dimona, with Magen David Adom first responders saying their teams had treated 33 people injured at multiple sites, including a 10-year-old boy in serious condition with shrapnel wounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was extensive damage and chaos at the scene,\u201d paramedic Karmel Cohen said.<\/p>\n
The Israeli military said \u201cinterception attempts were carried out\u201d after the missiles were detected.<\/p>\n
Images shared by Israeli media showed an object hurtling out of the sky at high speed before crashing into the town.<\/p>\n
Iranian state TV said the attack was a \u201cresponse\u201d to the earlier strike on Natanz.<\/p>\n
After that attack, the UN nuclear watchdog chief, Rafael Grossi, repeated a \u201ccall for military restraint to avoid any risk of a nuclear accident\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Natanz facility hosts underground centrifuges to enrich uranium for Iran\u2019s disputed nuclear programme and was already damaged in last year\u2019s June war.<\/p>\n
Asked about Natanz, the Israeli military said it was \u201cnot aware of a strike\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Israeli military also said Saturday it had struck a facility embedded within a Tehran university \u201cutilised by the Iranian terror regime\u2019s military industries and ballistic missiles array to develop nuclear weapon components and weapons\u201d.<\/p>\n
Three weeks of heavy US-Israeli bombardment appear to have done little to blunt Iran\u2019s ability to retaliate with missile and drone attacks across the region.<\/p>\n
The United Arab Emirates said on Saturday it had faced aerial attacks after Iran warned it against allowing attacks from its territory on disputed islands near the strategic strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
Iran has choked off the vital waterway, which is used for a fifth of global crude trade during peacetime.<\/p>\n
Adm Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command, said US warplanes had dropped 5,000-pound bombs on an underground facility on Iran\u2019s coast that was storing anti-ship cruise missiles, mobile launchers and other equipment, leaving Iran\u2019s ability to threaten the waterway \u201cdegraded\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe not only took out the facility, but also destroyed intelligence support sites and missile radar relays that were used to monitor ship movements,\u201d Cooper said in a video statement, revealing details of a strike first announced on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
A statement from the leaders of mainly European countries, including the UK, France, Italy and Germany, but also South Korea, Australia, the UAE and Bahrain, meanwhile condemned the \u201cde facto closure of the strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the strait,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump has called Nato allies \u201ccowards\u201d and urged them to secure the strait.<\/p>\n
The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Tehran had only imposed restrictions on vessels from countries involved in attacks against Iran, and would offer assistance to others that stayed out of the conflict.<\/p>\n
The standoff in the strait has sent crude oil prices soaring, with a barrel of North Sea Brent crude up more than 50% over the past month and now comfortably more than $105 (\u00a379).<\/p>\n
Analysts say Iran\u2019s Islamic government has survived the loss of its top leaders and that its strike capacity is proving more durable than expected.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re showing a lot of resilience that we didn\u2019t perhaps expect, that the US didn\u2019t expect, when it took this on,\u201d Neil Quilliam of Chatham House told the London-based thinktank\u2019s podcast, adding that Iran had deep roots.<\/p>\n
Tehran, meanwhile, marked the end of Ramadan as the war was entering its fourth week.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s supreme leader traditionally leads Eid al-Fitr prayers, but Mojtaba Khamenei, who came to power earlier this month after his father, Ali Khamenei, was killed, has remained out of the public eye.<\/p>\n
Instead, the head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, attended prayers at central Tehran\u2019s overflowing Imam Khomeini grand mosque.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe atmosphere of the new year was spreading through the city,\u201d said Farid, an advertising executive reached by AFP through an online message.<\/p>\n
But \u201cthe thought that some people could be dying right at the new year dinner table was painful\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n
Shiva, a 31-year-old painter, told AFP that the \u201conly common feeling these days is uncertainty\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only night we felt genuinely happy was the night Ali Khamenei was reportedly killed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Iranian missile has hit the Israeli town of Dimona, home to a nuclear facility, in what Iran…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-555931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}