Iran targeted Tel Aviv with missiles carrying cluster warheads in what it said was retaliation for Israel’s assassination of Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani, Iranian state television reported on Wednesday.
The attack overnight on Tuesday killed two people in a neighbourhood close to densely populated Tel Aviv, where there are also key military facilities, bringing the death toll in Israel from the war to at least 14.
A statement by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps read on state TV said weapons used included Khorramshahr 4 and Qadr missiles, both with multi-warheads.
Israel alleged that Iran had repeatedly used cluster warheads, which disperse into multiple smaller explosives mid-air and spread over a wide area, making them difficult to intercept.
In Iran, a projectile hit an area near a nuclear power plant on Tuesday evening but caused no damage or injuries, Iran told the International Atomic Energy Agency. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi reiterated his call for maximum restraint during the conflict to avoid the risk of a nuclear accident.
Israel and the U.S. have said preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapons programme was one of the goals of the attacks they launched more than two weeks ago, which killed the country’s supreme leader and many other top officials.
The Iranian government on Tuesday confirmed the killing of Mr Larijani, the most senior figure targeted since the U.S.-Israeli war’s first day, when an Israeli strike killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, which Mr Larijani led as secretary, said Mr Larijani’s son and his deputy, Alireza Bayat, were also killed in an Israeli attack on Monday night.
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has rejected proposals conveyed to Iran’s Foreign Ministry for “reducing tensions or ceasefire with the United States”, said a senior Iranian official who asked not to be identified.
Mr Khamenei, attending his first foreign-policy meeting since his appointment, said it was not “the right time for peace until the United States and Israel are brought to their knees, accept defeat, and pay compensation”.
The official did not clarify whether Mr Khamenei, who has not yet appeared in photos or on TV since being named last week to replace his slain father, had attended the meeting in person or remotely.
Iran had executed a man convicted of spying for Israel, the Iranian judiciary’s media outlet Mizan said on Wednesday.
The man, identified as Kurosh Keyvani, had been convicted of providing Israel’s spy agency Mossad with pictures and information about sensitive locations in Iran, it said.
In Lebanon, an Israeli airstrike hit Beirut’s Bachoura neighbourhood in the centre of the city on Wednesday, a Reuters witness said. Loud explosions were heard in the area after the Israeli military warned residents to evacuate a building ahead of the strike.
The attack was part of a broader wave of Israeli strikes on Lebanon on Wednesday, including raids on other parts of the Lebanese capital, as well as southern and eastern areas of the country, signalling an intensification of Israel’s campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah.
(Reuters/NAN)