US and Israel launch strikes against Iran
The United States and Israel launched a wave of strikes against targets in Iranian cities on Saturday, triggering explosions and columns of smoke in the capital Tehran.
Iran responded by launching retaliatory missile attacks, according to the Israeli military, as US diplomats in the Gulf and Israeli civilians were ordered to seek shelter.
Smoke was rising over Tehran's Pasteur district, site of the home of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and there was a huge security deployment in the capital.
Witnesses told AFP correspondents they had heard at least three blasts in the area.
The attacks came after US President Donald Trump expressed frustration at Iran's stance in negotiations over its nuclear and missile programmes.
Trump said Washington's goal was "eliminating imminent threats" from Iran, and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the operation was to remove an "existential threat".
"The United States' military began major combat operations in Iran," Trump said in a video message posted on his social media site while he spent the weekend at his Florida golf club.
- 'Totally obliterated' -
"We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally, again, obliterated. We're going to annihilate their navy," Trump said.
He offered the Iranian military "immunity" should they surrender, or "certain death" if not, and told Iranians the "hour of your freedom is at hand", urging them to rise up and "take over your government".
Israel's Netanyahu echoed this call, telling Iranians that the time had come to "cast off the yoke of tyranny".
Iranian state television reported that President Masoud Pezeshkian was "safe and sound", while the Fars news agency said "seven missile impacts were reported in the Keshvardoost and Pasteur districts" of Tehran.
"I saw with my own eyes two Tomahawk missiles flying horizontally toward targets," an office worker told AFP on condition of anonymity. "At first we heard a dull noise and thought it was a fighter jet."
In Tehran, AFP journalists heard blasts and saw smoke rising over the city centre. The health ministry said ambulances had been dispatched but there was no immediate confirmation of casualties.
Iran, Iraq and Israel all closed their airspaces to civilian traffic once the strikes were underway, and US embassies in the Gulf urged American citizens to take shelter.
Blasts were heard over Jerusalem after air raid sirens sounded, with the military reporting that "an additional barrage of missiles was launched towards the State of Israel" and .
Sirens also sounded in Bahrain, home to a US fleet, and in the Jordanian capital Amman, with Jordan's air force saying it was conducting an operation "to defend the kingdom's skies".
With the strikes underway, the exiled son of Iran's last shah voiced confidence in victory against the Islamic republic.
"We are very close to final victory. I want to be by your side as soon as possible so that together we can take back and rebuild Iran," Reza Pahlavi, who lives in the Washington area, said in an online video address.
- Jerusalem talks -
Trump had ordered the biggest military build-up in decades in the Middle East, with the world's largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, approaching the coast of Israel.
After the United States and Iran held talks in Geneva this week, Trump said on Friday that the cleric-run state was "not willing to give us what we have to have".
The strikes come weeks after Iranian authorities killed thousands of people as they crushed mass protests, according to rights groups.
Iran agreed to restrictions to low-level enrichment in a 2015 deal that Trump ripped up during his first term in office.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to Israel for talks on Iran on Monday, the State Department said. In a rare break from decades of precedent, the top diplomat will travel without reporters on his plane.
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