Iran fired “hundreds of various ballistic missiles” towards Israel late on Friday, in what the Islamic Republic called the beginning of its “crushing response” to Israeli attacks.
“Moments ago, with the launch of hundreds of various ballistic missiles toward the occupied territories, the operation of decisive response to the savage attack of the Zionist regime has begun,” Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, reported.
Bright orange flashes illuminated the sky over Tel Aviv as Israeli air defence systems appeared to down some of the incoming missiles.
Still, fires and plumes of smoke could be seen in areas of Tel Aviv, whilst explosions were also reported in Jerusalem.
The head of Israel’s emergency services told reporters that seven people were “lightly and moderately injured” following a strike that hit on the border of Tel Aviv and the city of Ramat Gan in Israel.
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The retaliatory battack came after Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Israel’s deadly attacks on his country would “bring it to ruin”.
“The armed forces of the Islamic Republic will inflict heavy blows upon this malevolent enemy,” Khamenei said in a televised speech.
Earlier on Friday, Iran fired more than 100 drones towards Israel, hours after Israel bombed “dozens” of sites in the country, including its nuclear facilities, and killed senior military commanders and scientists.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attack was aimed at “rolling back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival,” adding that it would take “many days”.
“We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme,” Netanyahu said in a recorded televised address.
“We targeted Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz. We targeted Iran’s leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb. We also struck at the heart of Iran’s ballistic missile programme.”
Iranian media reported that explosions were reported in Natanz, the capital Tehran, and elsewhere; and that the head of the Revolutionary Guard, Hossein Salami, had been killed, as well as six scientists, including Fereydoun Abbasi and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi.
Abbasi was the head of the Atomic Energy Organisation from 2011 to 2013 and survived an assassination attempt in 2010. Tehranchi was a theoretical physicist. Both men appeared to have been targeted in their homes.
Iranian state television also reported that children had been killed in at least one of the air strikes, on a residential area of Tehran.
