Israel's strikes on Iran draw condemnation, calls for de-escalation

The latest:

Israel unleashed pre-dawn airstrikes against military sites in Iran on Saturday.

The attack risks pushing the arch-enemies closer to all-out war at a time of spiralling violence across the Middle East, where militant groups backed by Iran — including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon — are already at war with Israel.

The early Saturday strikes on Iran were in retaliation for a ballistic missile assault on Oct. 1, Israeli officials said. Iran says the Oct. 1 volley was in itself a retaliation for Israeli killings of Hezbollah leaders and aggression in Lebanon, including the use of pagers and walkie-talkies as explosives, and the war in Gaza.

Iran had previously launched missiles at Israel in April after top Iranian officials were killed by an apparent Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic post in Syria. Israel responded to that with rockets targeting a military base in Iran.

Saturday's attack, threatened for weeks by Israel, comes as the Middle East sits on the precipice of a regional war more than a year after an Oct. 7, 2023, attack by the militant group Hamas on Israel. In the time since, Israel has launched a devastating ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and an invasion of neighbouring Lebanon, targeting militants long armed and aided by Tehran.

Lebanon's Health Ministry says more than 2,600 people have been killed and 12,200 wounded in the past year of fighting, which has driven 1.2 million people from their homes, including more than 400,000 children, according to the United Nations children's agency. Israeli strikes have killed much of Hezbollah's top leadership since fighting ramped up in September.

Israel's siege in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 people, the majority of them women and children, according to local health authorities. The Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack killed some 1,200 — mostly civilians — and saw about 250 others taken into Hamas-controlled Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Iran says four people serving in the country's military air defence were killed in Saturday's Israeli attack, adding that the strikes targeted military bases in three provinces and caused "limited damage" to radar sites, which it says are being repaired.

Israeli aircraft "struck missile manufacturing facilities used to produce the missiles that Iran fired at the state of Israel over the last year," the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said. "These missiles posed a direct and immediate threat to the citizens of the state of Israel."

The IDF added that it also "struck surface-to-air missile arrays and additional Iranian aerial capabilities, that were intended to restrict Israel's aerial freedom of operation in Iran." It offered no damage assessment.

Iran's military issued a carefully worded statement on Saturday night stating that, while it held the right to retaliate, a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon trumps any reciprocity against Israel.

It added that Israel used "stand-off" missiles over Iraqi airspace to launch its attacks and that the warheads were much lighter in order to travel the distance to the targets they struck in three provinces in Iran.

Turkey accused Israel of having "brought our region to the brink of a greater war" following its strikes on Iran.