Israel on Friday targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities, ballistic missile factories and military commanders, with Tehran vowing revenge.
Iranian media and witnesses reported explosions including at the country’s main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, while Israel declared a state of emergency in anticipation of retaliatory missile and drone strikes.
The United States says it has no part in the operation as the attack comes ahead of US and Iranian officials’ talks on Sunday.
Israel’s army had earlier said Iran launched about 100 drones toward Israel following a wave of Israeli air strikes across the Islamic republic.
Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards corps said its top commander, Hossein Salami, was killed and state media reported the unit’s headquarters in Tehran had been hit.
Several children had been killed in a strike on a residential area in the capital, it said.
“We are at a decisive moment in Israel’s history,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a recorded video message.
“Moments ago Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival. This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a statement that Israel had “unleashed its wicked and bloody” hand in a crime against Iran and that it would receive “a bitter fate for itself”.
An Israeli military official said Israel was striking “dozens” of nuclear and military targets including the facility at Natanz in central Iran. The official said Iran had enough material to make 15 nuclear bombs within days.
The United States said it had no part in the operation, which raises the risk of a fresh escalation in tensions in the Middle East, a major oil producing region.
Alongside extensive air strikes, Israel’s Mossad spy agency led a series of covert sabotage operations inside Iran, Axios reported, citing a senior Israeli official. These operations were aimed at damaging Iran’s strategic missile sites and its air defence capabilities.
At least six nuclear scientists were killed in Israel’s attacks, media outlets in the Islamic republic reported.
The UN nuclear watchdog said that Iranian authorities told it that no increase in radiation levels have been observed at the Natanz uranium enrichment site following Israeli strikes.
It added that Iran’s only nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr had not been targeted.
Israeli military Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said tens of thousands of soldiers had been called up and “prepared across all borders”.
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