Tehran, Iran—Israel unleashed a new wave of attacks against Iran on Monday, targeting missile sites after Tehran carried out deadly overnight strikes and both sides threatened more devastation.
After decades of enmity and a prolonged shadow war fought through proxies and covert operations, Israel’s surprise assault on Iran last week has touched off the most intense fighting yet and triggered fears of a lengthy conflict that could engulf the Middle East.
Israel says its attacks have hit military and nuclear facilities, and killed many top commanders and atomic scientists—but a senior US official said Sunday that US President Donald Trump told Israel to back down from a plan to kill supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Residential areas in both countries have suffered deadly strikes since the hostilities broke out, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slamming Iran on Sunday for allegedly targeting civilians.
“Iran will pay a very heavy price for the premeditated murder of civilians, women and children,” he said, during a visit to the site of a missile strike on a residential building in the coastal city of Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv.
His remarks came hours after Iranian missile fire killed at least 10 people, according to authorities, pushing the death toll in Israel up to 13 since Iran began its retaliatory strikes Friday.
Iranian state television reported at least five people were killed Sunday by an Israeli strike that hit a residential building in downtown Iran.
Colonel Reza Sayyad, a spokesman for Iran’s armed forces, threatened a “devastating response” to Israel’s attacks.
“Leave the occupied territories (Israel) because they will certainly no longer be habitable in the future,” he warned in a televised address, adding shelters will “not guarantee security.”
Iran’s health ministry reported at least 224 people killed and more than 1,200 wounded in Israeli attacks since Friday.
Israel has claimed strikes as far away as Mashhad in Iran’s far east, 2,300 kilometers (1,430 miles) from Israel, while a likely Iranian drone killed a woman in Syria, a Britain-based war monitor said, in what would be the first death on Syrian soil since the current hostilities between Iran and Israel began.
The drone struck the woman’s home in western Tartus province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Israeli military said early Monday that it was striking surface-to-surface missile sites in central Iran, adding it was “operating against this threat in our skies and in Iranian skies.”
‘I will not leave’
A heavy cloud of smoke hung above Tehran after Israeli aircraft struck two fuel depots. Local media also reported an Israeli strike on the police headquarters in the city center.
“We haven’t been able to sleep since Friday because of the terrible noise,” said a Tehran resident who gave her name as Farzaneh.
“Today, they hit a house in our alley, and we were very scared. So, we decided to leave Tehran and head to the north of the country.”
Some, however, were determined to stay.
“It is natural that war has its own stress, but I will not leave my city,” Shokouh Razzazi, 31, told Agence France Presse (AFP).
AFP images from the Israeli city of Haifa, meanwhile, also showed a column of smoke rising on Sunday evening following an Iranian missile barrage.
The military said rescue teams “have been dispatched to several hit sites in Israel”, while the fire services reported rescuers heading to a building on the coast that sustained a “direct hit.”
Earlier in the day, in Bat Yam, first responders wearing helmets and headlamps picked through a bombed-out building.
“There was an explosion and I thought the whole house had collapsed,” said Bat Yam resident Shahar Ben Zion.
“It was a miracle we survived.”
