The US military says it has carried out a “heavy wave” of strikes against Iran in retaliation for Tuesday’s attempted ballistic missile attacks against US forces.
Centcom said it hit “dozens” of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets in response to Iranian fire on US bases in Jordan and on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian state media said the latest strikes killed three people, including a two-year-old child, on the island of Qeshm, while other locations were also hit in the south and west of the country.
The latest hostilities come a week that has seen the conflict expand, with the first publicly announced joint US-Saudi strikes targeting Iranian proxies in Iraq.
Iran and the United States have engaged in an escalation of strikes and counterattacks since a failed ceasefire in April, aimed at ending the months-long war, which collapsed in June.
The United States has blocked Iranian ports and bombed Iranian sites, while Iran has fired missiles and drones at U.S. assets in Middle Eastern countries and targeted shipping in the economically important Strait of Hormuz, linking the Gulf and the Sea of Oman.
On Wednesday, the media outlet Axios quoted an unnamed U.S. official as saying that Trump had met with Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, who told him that Saudi Arabia wanted to ease tensions. The BBC has contacted the White House for comment.
Separately, the Egyptian government said a fire at a port on Wednesday was caused by a drone attack. Egypt, an ally of the United States, was never directly attacked during the war.
The American-Iranian conflict has resumed after several days of relative calm.
For days, both sides ended strikes as talks have apparently resumed in hopes of some sort of diplomatic solution. Trump called them “very friendly negotiations,” although Tehran denied any discussions.
But following an Iranian missile attack on a U.S. base in Jordan on Tuesday, Trump vowed to retaliate, telling reporters at the White House: “We’re going to hit them really hard because it’s our turn to hit them. They know it happens. They asked us not to do it.”
The latest wave of US strikes began at 8:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday (01:00 a.m. BST Thursday) and lasted about an hour, with Centcom calling them a “powerful response to yesterday’s attempted Iranian attacks against US forces based in the Middle East.” All Iranian missiles were intercepted, Centcom said.
The US attack targeted “military command centers, missile and drone installations, coastal surveillance and defense sites, and maritime capabilities,” Centcom wrote after the strikes ended.
Iran’s Irib news agency reported that the islands of Qeshm and Abadan, both central to the oil industry, were among the affected areas.
“An American attack on a residential house in the Chah Tangu district of Qeshm killed three members of a family: the father, the mother and their 2-year-old child,” Fars reported, citing the Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences.
A man in his 30s living in the south of the island told BBC Persian that he was heading to Tehran because “things are getting more dangerous here.”
“Our internet situation is a mess. The power has been out several times since this morning,” he said.
“There have been loud detonations since 3:40 this morning. We are helpless.”
At the same time, the Jordanian Armed Forces said that air defense systems managed to shoot down five Iranian missiles targeting the Kingdom’s territory on Thursday.
On Tuesday, the IRGC said it targeted a U.S. air base and command center in Jordan “in response to the aggressive acts of the child-killing U.S. military.”
He also said naval forces struck three oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz after they “ignored warnings” and took what he described as a “dangerous and illegal route” through the vital Gulf waterway.
Last Friday, Trump suspended an intensive bombing campaign that had lasted 13 consecutive nights. The United States said it targeted Iranian weapons and military sites. Dozens of people are believed to have died.
On Tuesday, Centcom said the joint US-Saudi strikes hit “several terrorist logistics and weapons sites in eastern Iraq, in strong response to more than 30 IRGC-led aerial drone attacks over the past 72 hours.”
Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias, said at least 20 of their members had been killed in US-Saudi strikes on their bases.
The Iraqi presidency said it denounced the bombing of PMF bases, calling it an “unacceptable attack and a blatant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.”
But Trump told Fox News that the strikes were “coordinated with the Iraqi government.”
Saudi Arabia, which considers itself the leading Sunni Muslim power, and Iran, the largest Shiite Muslim country, have been engaged in a struggle for regional dominance for decades.
With additional reporting by Ghoncheh Habibiazad, BBC Persian