Deadly Iranian missile attack reported in Israel’s Beit Shemesh
We are hearing reports of an Iranian missile hitting a residential neighbourhood in central Israel’s Beit Shemesh area.
Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) rescue service says at least eight people were killed in a strike there. In an update, the emergency rescue service said:
double quotation markAdditional MDA teams are treating and evacuating 28 casualties to hospital including: 2 in serious condition, 2 in moderate condition, and 24 in mild condition.
Workers are currently searching for people feared to be trapped under the rubble.
Emergency personnel work at the site of an Iranian strike in Beit Shemesh, Israel. Photograph: Ammar Awad/ReutersShare
Updated at 09.40 EST
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Iran targeted the USS Abraham Lincoln, but the “missiles launched didn’t even come close,” according to a social media post from US Central Command (Centcom).
“The Lincoln was not hit,” the post said. “The missiles launched didn’t even come close. The Lincoln continues to launch aircraft in support of Centcom’s relentless campaign to defend the American people by eliminating threats from the Iranian regime.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s most powerful military body, was quoted earlier in an Iranian news outlet as saying that four ballistic missiles had targeted the ship.
An F/A-18E Super Hornet launches, as another prepares to launch from the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in support of the Operation Epic Fury attack on Iran 28 February, 2026. Photograph: US Navy/ReutersShare
In reaction to the news of the three US service members who have been killed in action, US senator Mark Warner posted: “My deepest condolences to the families of the service members killed in action abroad. My heart is heavy thinking of their loss.”
Senator Roger Marshall posted: “Our hearts are heavy this morning as we learn of the loss of American service members overseas. We are praying for their loved ones, for the safety of those still in combat, and a swift end to this conflict.”
Three US service members have been killed in action as part of US military operations against Iran, the US Central Command said in a statement on Sunday. These are the first confirmed deaths since the US began launching strikes against Iran on Saturday.
Five additional personnel have been reported seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury, the US military said. Authorities have not yet publicly identified the three soldiers who were killed.
While announcing the military action targeting Iran, Donald Trump cautioned that “the lives of American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war”.
On Sunday, Israel and the US carried out another round of heavy attacks across Iran, marking the second day of a military effort aimed at removing the country’s government. The campaign has pushed the Middle East into a broader regional confrontation with no clear end or predictable outcome.
Read more:
ShareTrump: ‘They want to talk, and I have agreed’
Donald Trump said on Sunday that Iran’s new leadership wants to talk to him and that he has agreed, according to an interview with The Atlantic.
“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them. They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long,” Trump said in an interview from his Florida residence, the magazine reported.
The president added that some of the Iranians involved in the previous negotiations were no longer alive. “Most of those people are gone,” he said. “Some of the people we were dealing with are gone, because that was a big—that was a big hit.”
Updated at 12.08 EST
Trump says 48 leaders killed in strikes on Iran and operation is ‘moving along rapidly’
Donald Trump told Fox News on Sunday that 48 leaders have been killed in US and Israeli strikes on Iran.
“It’s moving along. It’s moving along rapidly. This has been this way for 47 years,” he is quoted as saying in an interview with Fox News. “It’s moving along rapidly. Nobody can believe the success we’re having, 48 leaders are gone in one shot. And it’s moving along rapidly.”
Trump also told CNBC’s Joe Kernen that US military operations in Iran are “ahead of schedule.”
Updated at 11.29 EST
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said today that despite the attacks on his country, “nothing has changed in our … military capability.”
He told ABC’s This Week that in only a few hours after Iran was struck, Tehran retaliated against Israeli targets and American bases “and we have continued to do so. So, our military is in place. They are capable enough to defend our country.”
When asked whether a diplomatic deal with the Trump administration was still possible, he said, “We negotiated with the United States twice in the past 12 months. And in both cases, they attacked us in the middle of negotiation. And that has become a very bitter experience for us.”
He said “a deal was at our reach, and we left Geneva happily with the understanding that we can reach a deal next time we meet.”
ShareDeath toll from suspected US-Israeli bombing of Iranian school reportedly rises to almost 150
Tess McClure
The death toll from a missile strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran has risen to almost 150, according to Iranian state media.
Mizan news agency, the official news outlet of Iran’s judiciary, reported that the number killed in Saturday’s strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab in southern Iran had risen to 148 killed, with 95 others wounded. The news agency cited Ebrahim Taheri, a prosecutor in Minab.
The school, which was struck on Saturday morning, appears to be the worst mass casualty event of the US-Israeli-led bombing campaign on Iran so far.
Footage from Minab, Iran, shows the aftermath of a US-Israeli strike on a girls’ school – video
Video and photographs from the aftermath of the strike, which have been verified as authentic and geolocated to the site, show hundreds of people gathered around the partially collapsed, smoking building, with rubble strewn across the street and men digging through it for victims. Screams can be heard in the background. In some of the images, schoolbags and textbooks are being pulled from the debris.
Capt Tim Hawkins, the spokesperson for US Central Command, said the US was “aware of reports concerning civilian harm resulting from ongoing military operations. We take these reports seriously and are looking into them.”
The school building appears to be adjacent to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps barracks. You can read more here:
Updated at 11.07 EST
The IDF has said in a new post on X that the Israeli air force has launched a “new wave of strikes in the heart of Tehran” in a simialr update to the one we mentioned in our post at 09.02.
ShareIran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly killed in strikes
Robert Tait
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the firebrand former Iranian president, who gained international notoriety by calling for Israel’s erasure and denying the Holocaust, appears to have been killed in Saturday’s military strikes, according to local media.
Several Iranian outlets ran reports confirming Ahmadinejad’s death on Sunday after it had initially been reported as confirmed by ILNA, a semi-official news agency.
ILNA later retreated somewhat from its original report in a later post that was headlined “Is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad martyred?”
The later report cited an unnamed source who the agency said had denied Ahmadinejad’s death “without providing further information”.
The original report, which ILNA said was based on “informed sources”, said the former president had been killed in strikes on his home in the Narmak district of Tehran. The report was picked up by the websites of several Iranian newspapers, including Shargh and Etemad, before the agency qualified it with a question mark.
Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gives an interview to the Associated Press at his office in Tehran in 2017. Photograph: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP
Earlier reports on Saturday suggested Ahmadinejad’s team of bodyguards had been killed in the strikes but that his fate was unknown. His Wikipedia page had been updated on Sunday to refer to him in the past tense and suggest he was deceased.
The populist Ahmadinejad was a dominant and highly controversial figure in Iranian politics during his eight-year presidency who also repeatedly generated international headlines.
Months after his election in 2005, he triggered outrage at a conference in Tehran by saying Israel should be “erased from the pages of time” – a quote that was widely translated into English as “wiped off the map”.
He later dismissed the Holocaust as a “myth” and was the driving force behind a 2006 “scientific” conference ostensibly aimed at investigating the evidence for the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis during the second world war, but tendentiously concluding that it did not happen …
He was believed to have been the favoured candidate of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who himself was killed in Saturday’s strikes carried out by Israel.
Updated at 10.47 EST
Helena Smith
On Saturday, the British prime minister Keir Starmer confirmed that the UK government had “stepped up protections for British bases and personnel to their highest level” in the wake of the strikes on Iran.
Earlier this month, six F-35B fighter jets joined Typhoon jets already stationed in Cyprus to boost defence of the island’s bases and wider sovereign territories.
ShareHelena Smith
An extraordinary meeting of Cyprus’ national security council will be convened this evening following revelations of Iranian missiles being intercepted heading towards the island.
Highlighting the “indiscriminate” nature of Iran’s retaliation to the US and Israeli offensive on Saturday, Britain’s defense secretary, John Healey, revealed on Sky news that two missiles had been fired in the direction of Cyprus, home to two of the UK’s most strategic military facilities abroad.
“This is a really serious and deteriorating situation, (with) rising risks of increasing Iranian indiscriminate retaliatory attacks,” he told the Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme.
“We had two missiles fired in the direction of Cyprus. We don’t believe they were targeted at Cyprus, but nevertheless, it’s an example of how there is a very real and rising threat from a regime that is lashing out widely across the region, and that requires us to act.”
Cyprus’s President Nikos Christodoulides has condemned what he has described as ‘the unjustified and indiscriminate attacks against Gulf countries’. Photograph: Fabio Frustaci/EPA
President Nikos Christodoulides, who called tonight’s meeting, was quick to allay fears that the island – which is less than a twenty minute flight from Lebanon – could be caught up in the crosshairs of retaliatory attacks, saying he had spoken to his British counterpart, Keir Starmer, “regarding the ongoing developments”.
“He confirmed clearly and unequivocally that Cyprus was not a target,” the leader said in a statement. “We are maintaining direct communication. All relevant authorities are fully engaged and monitoring developments closely.”
The two sovereign base areas, covering 99 square miles of the island’s territory, were retained by Britain when the former colony won independence in 1960. As such, Cypriot authorities have no control over the areas.
RAF Akrotiri is particularly significant for Britain because of its role as a forward mounting post for overseas operations in the Middle East. There has been criticism of the RAF facility being used to assist Israel, including surveillance flights by Akrotiri-based spy planes over Gaza.
The US Central Command (Centcom) said it was a “lie” that the USS Abraham Lincoln was struck by Iranian missiles. It issued the statement after Iranian state media reported earlier that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp said they had attacked the aircraft carrier with four ballistic missiles.
Updated at 11.08 EST
The death toll from the Iranian missile attack in the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh has increased to at least nine people, first responders said, in what is the deadliest strike in the country since the war began on Saturday (see post at 14.23 for more details).
Emergency personnel in the aftermath of the deadly attack in Beit Shemesh. Photograph: Ammar Awad/ReutersShare
Updated at 10.24 EST
US claims it has sunk an Iranian ship
In an earlier update, Centcom said an “Iranian Jamaran-class corvette” (ship) was hit by US forces and is “currently sinking to the bottom of the Gulf of Oman”.
“As the President said, members of Iran’s armed forces, IRGC and police “must lay down your weapons.” Abandon ship,” it added in a post on X.
ShareThree US service members killed ‘in action’ as part of Iran operation – Centcom
The US has said three American service members have been killed in action as part of the Iran operation, according to the US military’s Central Command (Centcom).
In an update to X, Centcom said:
double quotation markAs of 9:30 am ET, March 1, three U.S. service members have been killed in action and five are seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury. Several others sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions – and are in the process of being returned to duty. Major combat operations continue and our response effort is ongoing.
These were the first casualties of any kind among US personnel to be announced since the US and Israel launched aerial attacks against Iran and killed its supreme leader on Saturday.
The names of the soldiers who were killed will not be released until 24 hours after their families have been notified, Centcom said.
Updated at 10.09 EST