{"id":683063,"date":"2026-07-09T21:37:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T21:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/683063\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T21:37:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T21:37:16","slug":"trump-strikes-iranian-railway-bridges-on-route-to-khameneis-funeral-as-ceasefire-unravels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/683063\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump strikes Iranian railway bridges on route to Khamenei\u2019s funeral as ceasefire unravels"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Iran accused the US on Thursday of striking railway bridges en route to the holy city where the slain supreme leader was buried as a fragile truce between the two countries unravelled. <\/p>\n

Huge crowds gathered as the former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was buried at a \u2060shrine in Mashhad, northeast Iran, the culmination of a week of mass funeral processions and rallies. Khamenei was killed in a US\/Israeli airstrike on the first day of the war on 28 February. <\/p>\n

His burial came as Iran and the US traded strikes for a second day on Wednesday, after US president Donald Trump declared an interim peace deal agreed between the two sides as \u201cover\u201d. The US military launched its most significant attacks on the country in a month on Wednesday in response to attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has not claimed responsibility for the attacks. <\/p>\n

Iran claimed that US forces struck an area near a nuclear power plant on Thursday as both sides ramped up attacks<\/a> following a dramatic collapse in talks to end the war.<\/p>\n

Ehsan Jahanian, the deputy governor of Bushehr, told Iranian state media that the perimeter of the Russian-built plant had been struck during fresh attacks across the southern coastal province<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Several explosions were reported in Bushehr and in Bandar Abbas.<\/p>\n

\"FootageFootage of strikes at an undisclosed location in Iran, according to Centcom (Reuters)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Iranian officials said that passenger trains from Tehran to Mashhad were disrupted on Thursday morning due to US strikes. They said one attack had hit a bridge 55km (34 miles) from the holy city. <\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s foreign ministry said the strikes showed Trump\u2019s \u201cinability to comprehend the depth of Iranians\u2019 patriotism and loyalty to the revolution\u2019s ideals\u201d. <\/p>\n

Khamenei\u2019s body was carried by truck slowly through crammed streets towards the Shrine of Imam Reza. Black-clad mourners waved Iranian flags, photographs of the late leader and red placards with revolutionary slogans.<\/p>\n

Iranian officials said the US attacks had killed 14 people and injured 78 across five provinces since Wednesday. In retaliation, Iran said it had renewed strikes on Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, and Jordan said it had intercepted eight missiles from Iran.<\/p>\n

\"MournersMourners gather around a vehicle transporting the coffin of Iran’s late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Reuters)<\/p>\n

The Iranian army said it had fired on US Patriot systems with drones in Kuwait, a military early warning site in Qatar and a US fuel storage facility in Bahrain.<\/p>\n

Kuwait said that its armed forces had engaged a cruise missile, three ballistic missiles and 10 drones in its airspace, and that one person had been injured from falling shrapnel.<\/p>\n

As both sides butt heads over the future of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that \u201cadventurism and interference\u201d in the region would provoke a \u201ccrushing response\u201d from the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s top negotiator, parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, remained defiant that the strait \u201cwill be reopened only under Iranian arrangements, not through US threats\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"MournersMourners march with flags and banners during a funeral procession for Khamenei (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe US has yet to learn that bullying and breaking its commitments no longer come without a cost,\u201d he wrote on social media. \u201cLet me be clear: If you strike, you will be struck back.\u201d<\/p>\n

A senior American official told Axios that the current escalation could last a matter of days, a week or a month, depending on whether Iran continues to attack vessels in the strait.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll give them a little slap so they understand we\u2019re not playing games,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

US Central Command said its forces had struck around 90 Iranian military targets, including naval capabilities and missile and drone storage sites, as punishment for \u201crecent unjustified aggression\u201d on commercial shipping in the strait.<\/p>\n

\"DonaldDonald Trump claims Iran is pushing for a deal in the wake of the latest strikes (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

Oil tanker traffic through the vital waterway, which in peacetime carries around a fifth of global oil supplies, was at a near standstill on Thursday. Just two tankers sailed through the channel in the early hours of Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cTanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has essentially stopped, which tells you more about risk perception right now than any statement from Washington or Tehran,\u201d Jorge Leon, head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy, wrote in a report.<\/p>\n

Despite the escalation on the ground, and Trump saying on Wednesday he believed the ceasefire was \u201cover\u201d, the US president said early on Thursday that the regime had called him and wanted \u201cto make a deal so badly\u201d in the wake of the latest strikes.<\/p>\n

\"SmokeSmoke rises from a port, near Strait of Hormuz, following a US strike in Kuhestak on 8 July (Social Media\/Reuters)<\/p>\n

Tempering hopes of a return to diplomacy, he added: \u201cI just don\u2019t know if they\u2019re worthy of making a deal. I don\u2019t know that they\u2019re going to honour the deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump had said he did not think the war would necessarily restart, either: \u201cAnything that happens is going to be over very quickly … and will only make it safer, including for oil.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US had agreed to halt talks with Iran for a week for Khamenei\u2019s funeral, as millions of people turned out into the streets to mourn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48,636],"class_list":["post-683063","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","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}