As emergency services reported at least four people killed and scores more injured in the fourth day of open combat between the regional enemies that showed no signs of abating, Iran launched a fresh round of missile assaults on Israel early Monday, setting out air raid sirens throughout the nation.
In response to Israel’s widespread strikes on its military and nuclear facilities, which have killed at least 224 Iranians since last Friday, Iran said it has fired almost 100 missiles and promised further reprisal.
The Israeli military responded to the strikes by claiming that fighter planes had hit ten command centres in Tehran that belonged to Iran’s Quds Force, an elite branch of its Revolutionary Guard that carries out military and intelligence operations outside of Iran. The attacks brought Israel’s death toll to at least 18.
Just before daybreak on Monday, Tel Aviv was shaken by powerful explosions that sent plumes of black smoke into the sky above the coastal city. These explosions were probably caused by Israel’s defence systems intercepting Iranian missiles.
Authorities in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva said that Iranian missiles had hit a residential building there, charring concrete walls, shattering windows and ripping the walls off multiple apartments.
The Israeli Magen David Adom emergency service reported that two women and two men — all in their 70s — were killed in the wave of missile attacks that struck four sites in central Israel.
“We clearly see that our civilians are being targeted,” said Israeli police spokesman Dean Elsdunne outside the bombed-out building in Petah Tikva. “And this is just one scene, we have other sites like this near the coast, in the south.”
The MDA added that paramedics had evacuated another 87 wounded people to hospitals, including a 30-year-old woman in serious condition, while rescuers were still searching for residents trapped beneath the rubble of their homes.
“When we arrived at the scene of the rocket strike, we saw massive destruction,” said Dr. Gal Rosen, a paramedic with MDA who said he had rescued a 4-day-old baby as fires blazed from the building.
During an earlier barrage of Iranian missiles on central Israel on Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran will stop its strikes if Israel does the same.
But after a day of intensive Israeli aerial attacks that extended targets beyond military installations to hit oil refineries and government buildings, the Revolutionary Guard struck a hard line on Monday, vowing that further rounds of strikes would be “more forceful, severe, precise and destructive than previous ones.”
Health authorities also reported that 1,277 were wounded in Iran, without distinguishing between military officials and civilians.
Rights groups, like the Washington-based Iranian advocacy group called Human Rights Activists, have suggested that the Iranian government’s death toll is a significant undercount.
Human Rights Activists says it has documented more than 400 people killed, among them 197 civilians.
Israel argues that its assault on Iran’s top military leaders, uranium enrichment sites and nuclear scientists was necessary to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, and the U.S. and others have assessed that Tehran has not pursued a nuclear weapon since 2003.
But Iran has enriched ever-larger stockpiles of uranium to near weapons-grade levels in recent years and was believed to have the capacity to develop multiple weapons within months if it chose to do so.
