Israel-Iran conflict escalates as strikes kill IRGC intelligence chief, death toll rises

The death toll in Iran and Israel continues to rise as both countries launch airstrikes. Kamil Karamali on the concerns for civilians.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Israel and Iran traded more missile attacks Sunday despite calls for a halt to the fighting, with neither country backing down as their conflict raged for a third day.

Iran said Israel struck its oil refineries, killed the intelligence chief of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and hit population centers in intensive aerial attacks that raised the death toll in the country since Israel launched its major campaign Friday to 224 people. Health authorities also reported that 1,277 were wounded, without distinguishing between military officials and civilians.

Israel, which has aimed its missiles at Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program and military leadership, said Iran has fired over 270 missiles since Friday, 22 of which slipped through the country’s sophisticated multi-tiered air defenses and caused havoc in residential suburbs, killing 14 people and wounding 390 others.

In an indication of how far Israel was seemingly prepared to go, a U.S. official told The Associated Press that President Donald Trump nixed an Israeli plan to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who serves as a religious authority and commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

Israel, the sole though undeclared nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, has said this attack -- its most powerful ever against Iran -- was to prevent the country from developing a nuclear weapon.

The latest round of talks between the U.S. and Iran on the future of Tehran’s nuclear program had been scheduled Sunday in Oman but were canceled after Israel’s attack.

Iran turns metro stations, mosques into bomb shelters

Claiming to operate almost freely in the skies over Iran, Israel said its attacks Sunday hit Iran’s Defense Ministry, missile launch sites and factories producing air defense components.

Iran also acknowledged Israel had killed three more of its top generals, including Gen. Mohammad Kazemi, the Revolutionary Guard intelligence chief.

But Israeli strikes have increasingly extended beyond Iranian military installations to hit government buildings including the Foreign Ministry and several energy facilities, Iranian authorities said, most recently sparking huge fires at the Shahran oil depot north of Tehran and a fuel tank south of the city.

Those new targets Sunday, coming after Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars, the world’s largest natural gas field, raised the prospect of a broader assault on Iran’s heavily sanctioned energy industry that remains vital to the global economy and markets.

Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh and other Iranian diplomats shared photos of the Foreign Ministry’s offices and library laid to waste by flying shrapnel.

Iran’s state TV broadcast footage of a dust-covered man carrying a baby away from the ruins of a residential building and a woman covered in blood making panicked phone call from the site of an Israeli missile strike in downtown Tehran. The spokesperson for Iran’s Health Ministry, Hossein Kermanpour, said 90% of the 224 people killed were civilians.

The Washington-based rights advocacy group, called Human Rights Activists, reported a far higher death toll in Iran from Israeli strikes, saying the attacks have killed at least 406 people and wounded another 654. Iran routinely has undercounted casualties in recent crises, such as the 2022 mass demonstrations over mandatory hijab laws after the death of Mahsa Amini.

State TV reported that metro stations and mosques would be made converted into bomb shelters beginning Sunday night. Tehran residents told of long lines at gas stations and cars backed up for hours as families fled the city.

Traffic police closed a number of roads outside the city to control congestion. Energy officials on state TV sought to reassure the jittery public there was no gasoline shortage despite the long lines.

Iranian state-linked media acknowledged explosions and fires stemming from an attack on an Iranian refueling aircraft in Mashhad deep in the country’s northeast. Israel described the attack on Mashhad as the farthest strike it has carried out in Iranian territory.

The death toll rises in Israel

Air raid sirens sounded across Jerusalem and major Israeli cities, sending Israelis scrambling to bomb shelters in the seaside metropolis of Tel Aviv and the northern port city of Haifa.

The Israeli military reported that almost two dozen Iranian missiles had slipped through the vaunted Iron Dome aerial defense system and struck residential areas.

Early Sunday, Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service reported that at least six people, including a 10-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl, were killed when a missile smashed into a high-rise apartment in Bat Yam, a coastal city south of Tel Aviv.

Daniel Hadad, a local police commander, said 180 people were wounded and seven missing in Bat Yam. Residents appeared dazed, staggering through the rubble of their homes to retrieve personal belongings while rescuers sifted through twisted metal and shattered glass in their search for more bodies.

Another four people, including a 13-year-old, were killed and 24 wounded when a missile struck a building in the Arab town of Tamra in northern Israel, emergency authorities said, while a strike on the central city of Rehovot wounded 42 people.

The Weizmann Institute of Science, a center for military and other research also in Rehovot, reported “a number of hits to buildings on the campus” and said no one was harmed.

An oil refinery was damaged in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, the firm operating it said. Israel’s main international airport and airspace was closed for a third day.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said if Israeli strikes on Iran stop, then “our responses will also stop.”

Netanyahu says conflict could result in regime change in Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brushed off urgent calls by world leaders to de-escalate.

In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, he said regime change in Iran “could certainly be the result” of the conflict. He also claimed, without providing evidence, that Israeli intelligence indicated Iran intended to give nuclear weapons to Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Iran has always said its nuclear program was peaceful, and the U.S. and others have assessed that it 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.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive nuclear talks, said Washington remained committed to the negotiations and hoped the Iranians would return to the table.

The region is already on edge as Israel seeks to annihilate the Palestinian militant group Hamas, an Iranian ally, in the Gaza Strip, where war still rages after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel.

`Many months’ to repair nuclear facilities

In Iran, satellite photos analyzed by AP show extensive damage at Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz. The images captured Saturday by Planet Labs PBC show multiple buildings damaged or destroyed. The structures hit include buildings identified by experts as supplying power to the facility.

U.N. nuclear chief Rafael Grossi told the Security Council that the above-ground section of the Natanz facility was destroyed. The main centrifuge facility underground did not appear to be hit, but the loss of power could have damaged infrastructure there, he said.

Israel also struck a nuclear research facility in Isfahan. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said four “critical buildings” were damaged, including an uranium-conversion facility. The IAEA said there was no sign of increased radiation at Natanz or Isfahan.

An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity Sunday in line with official procedures, said it would take “many months, maybe more” to restore the two sites.

Jon Gambrell, Natalie Melzer and Tia Goldenberg, The Associated Press

Melzer reported from Nahariya, Israel, and Goldenberg from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran; Sam Mednick and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.