RIYADH: Israel carried out strikes against Iran early Saturday, saying it was responding to missile attacks conducted by Tehran earlier in the month.
The military announced the action on the social media platform X: “Right now the Israel Defense Forces is conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran”.
Air defense systems in Tehran could be seen shooting down projectiles over the east of the city, prompting authorities to shut down Iranian air space.
Hours later, Israel said that it had completed military actions against Iranian military targets and said its planes had returned home safely.
The attacks had been expected for weeks, after Iran struck mainland Israel on Oct. 1, and US officials said they had received advanced notice of the Israeli actions. 
The Iranians confirmed that military sites in the provinces of Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran had been struck.
In its statement, the IDF said: “The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since October 7th— on seven fronts— including direct attacks from Iranian soil. Like every other sovereign country in the world, the State of Israel has the right and the duty to respond.
“Our defensive and offensive capabilities are fully mobilized. We will do whatever necessary to defend the State of Israel and the people of Israel,” said the statement read by Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, chief spokesman of the Israel Defense Forces.

In Tehran, the Iranian capital, the sound of explosions could be heard, with state-run media there initially acknowledging at least six blasts were heard around Tehran and saying some of the sounds came from air defense systems around the city. 
A Tehran resident told The Associated Press that at least seven explosions could be heard, which rattled the surrounding area. The resident spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Iran’s state TV later said that operations at Tehran’s airports including Imam Khomeini International airport were “normal.”
“Operations at Imam Khomeini International Airport and Mehrabad Airport are normal and they continue to operate according to the schedule,” the state TV presenter said, citing the chiefs of Mehrabad and Imam Khomeini airports.
Israel’s strikes on Iran did not include attacking Iranian nuclear facilities or oil fields, and focused on military targets, NBC News and ABC News reported, citing an Israeli official.
In Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said the “targeted strikes on military targets” are “an exercise of self-defense and in response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack against Israel on October 1.”
The United States was “informed beforehand and there is no US involvement,” a US defense official told AFP, under the condition of anonymity.
The official did not say how far in advance the United States had been informed or what had been shared by Israel.

Meanwhile, Syrian state media said Israeli air strikes also targeted some military sites in central and southern Syria.
Iran has launched two ballistic missile attacks on Israel in recent months amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip that began with the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel also has launched a ground invasion of Lebanon.
The strike happened just as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was arriving back in the US after a tour of the Middle East where he and other US officials had warned Israel to tender a response that would not further escalate the conflict in the region and exclude nuclear sites in Iran.
Israel had vowed to hit Iran hard following a massive Iranian missile barrage on Oct. 1. Iran said its barrage was in response to deadly Israeli attacks against its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and it has promised to respond to any retaliatory strikes.
Israel and Iran have been bitter foes since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Israel considers Iran to be its greatest threat, citing its leaders’ calls for Israel’s destruction, their support for anti-Israel militant groups and the country’s nuclear program.
Israel and Iran have been locked in a yearslong shadow war. A suspected Israeli assassination campaign has killed top Iranian nuclear scientists. Iranian nuclear installations have been hacked or sabotaged, all in mysterious attacks blamed on Israel. Meanwhile, Iran has been blamed for a series of attacks on shipping in the Middle East in recent years, which later grew into the attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on shipping through the Red Sea corridor.
But since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, the battle has increasingly moved into the open. Israel has recently turned its attention to Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel since the war in Gaza began. Throughout the year, a number of top Iranian military figures have been killed in Israeli strikes in Syria and Lebanon.
Iran fired a wave of missiles and drones at Israel last April after two Iranian generals were killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike in Syria on an Iranian diplomatic post. The missiles and drones caused minimum damage, and Israel — under pressure from Western countries to show restraint — responded with a limited strike.
But after Iran’s early October missile strike, Israel promised a tougher response.
- With Agencies

CAIRO: A senior United Nations official on Friday called for more international attention to “the forgotten crisis” in Sudan, where more than a year and a half of war pushed the African country to the brink of famine.
The appeal by Ted Chaiban, deputy head of the UN children’s agency UNICEF, came as the notorious paramilitary Rapid Support Forces rampaged through villages and towns in east-central Gezira province, looting and vandalizing public and private properties, according to a doctors’ union and a youth group. Dozens of people were reported killed.
Chaiban said the war, which erupted in April 2023 between the military and the RSF, created “one of the most acute crises in living memory” with more than 14 million people forced to flee their homes, making Sudan the world’s largest displacement crisis.
“We’ve never in a generation seen these types of numbers,” he told The Associated Press in an interview, referring to the displaced people, as well as the 8.5 million people who are facing emergency levels of food insecurity, and 775,000 others who are facing famine-like conditions.
“The whole country has been dislocated,” he said. “And yet, despite that, the country and the crisis is forgotten.”
The war came four years after a pro-democracy uprising forced the military’s ouster of the country’s longtime dictator Omar Al-Bashir that was followed by a short-lived transition to democracy. It has killed more than 24,000 people so far, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a group monitoring the conflict since it started.
Chaiban spoke to the AP after he and Raouf Mazou, assistant high commissioner for operations at the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, visited eastern Sudan earlier this week. They met with local authorities and visited displaced people in a sprawling camp hosting over 4,000 people in the eastern province of Kassala.
They called for unimpeded access to people in need across the country, and advocated for more global attention to what Chaiban described as “one of the critical generational crises we’re facing.”
Global attention has been shifted to the Middle East since the militant group Hamas launched its attack on southern Israel in October last year, triggering a war that has killed about 42,000 people in Gaza. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza does not differentiate between militants and civilians but say more than half of the dead were women and children. Hamas’ attack killed about 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians. Now, international efforts are focusing on the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon amid mounting concerns about a regional war between Israel and Iran.
“We have done everything to respond to the war in Gaza and the war in Lebanon. … Sudan also needs this level of attention,” he said.
The Sudanese military has been pursuing a major offensive since September to retake RSF-controlled areas in and around the capital, Khartoum. The military also earlier this month captured Jebel Moya, a strategic mountainous area in Gezira province, in a major setback for the RSF, which also lost other areas in Gezira and nearby Sinnar province.
Also in October, a top RSF commander, Abu Aqlah Keikel, the de facto ruler of Gezira province, defected and surrendered himself to the military.
Local media reported that Keikel’s surrender was a coordinated operation. The military said in a statement that Keikel had “decided to fight alongside our army, abandoning the lines of the rebels after discovering the falsehood of the claims of the terrorist Dagalo militia.”
The RSF, which is led by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, downplayed Keikel’s defection. The commander had supported the military at the beginning of the war but switched sides in August last year, according to the Sudan War Monitor, a group tracking the conflict.
RSF fighters were furious and went on a rampage through multiple towns and villages east and north of Gezira, as well as the city of Tamboul, killing dozens of civilians and displacing thousands of others.
In one town, Sariha, RSF fighters killed at least 50 people and wounded 200 others, according to the Resistance Committees, a network of youth groups tracking the war. In the village of Saqiaah, at least 12 people were killed, it said.
The Doctors’ Union in Sudan on Thursday said the RSF attacks turned areas in eastern Gezira into “a brutal war zone.”
RSF fighters have committed “systemic sexual crimes, burned houses and properties, and attacked health care facilities along with systemic looting and forced displacement,” the union said in a statement on Thursday.
The war has been marked by atrocities such as mass rape and ethnicity motivated killings. The United Nations and international rights groups say these acts amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, particularly in the western region of Darfur, which has been facing a bitter onslaught by the RSF.
The conflict pushed the country to the brink of famine, which was already confirmed in July in the Zamzam camp for displaced people, which is located about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from North Darfur’s embattled capital of Al-Fasher, according to global experts from the Famine Review Committee. About 25.6 million people — more than half of Sudan’s population — are expected to face acute hunger this year, they warned.