Iran has launched “multiple” ballistic missiles in an “attempted surprise attack” on American forces in the Middle East, the US military said, shattering a lull in the fighting.<\/p>\n
The attack occurred at 17:45 EDT (21:45 GMT) on Tuesday, with all missiles “successfully intercepted”, said US Central Command (Centcom), which did not disclose any locations of targets.<\/p>\n
The US military and Saudi Arabian forces meanwhile struck “Iran-aligned terrorists” in Iraq in retaliation for Iran-directed drone attacks, according to Centcom.<\/p>\n
Tehran has not yet commented. The reported crossfire ended a brief break in hostilities between the US and Iran, which was designed to bring negotiators back to the table.<\/p>\n
The US and Saudi Arabia struck “multiple terrorist logistics and weapons sites” in eastern Iraq, according to Centcom.<\/p>\n
The US military said this was “a strong response to over 30 IRGC-directed aerial drone attacks in the last 72 hours”, using an acronym for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.<\/p>\n
Centcom said Iran’s military “and its terrorist proxies must cease these attacks to avoid further US military response”.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Tuesday, Saudi Arabia said its military had intercepted and destroyed drones targeting petroleum facilities in the country’s eastern region.<\/p>\n
Defence ministry spokesman Major General Turki al-Maliki alleged the drones were launched by Iran-affiliated militia groups in Iraqi territory.<\/p>\n
The reignited hostilities come a day after US President Donald Trump spoke of “very friendly negotiations” with Iran. At that point, the two sides had not exchanged strikes for a third consecutive day.<\/p>\n
Access and control of the Strait of Hormuz remains a key sticking point in talks, which Tehran has denied are even happening.<\/p>\n
The latest strikes coincided with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, where he met Trump at the White House and attended the funeral of US Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent Iran hawk.<\/p>\n
At least 624 US military service members have been wounded since Trump ordered strikes against Iran in February, according to recent Pentagon data.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon said 417 of those personnel were injured in relation to Operation Epic Fury, the joint US-Israeli military operation against Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran has launched “multiple” ballistic missiles in an “attempted surprise attack” on American forces in the Middle East,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-716383","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\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716383","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=716383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}