Iranian state media confirmed that Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in US-Israeli airstrikes.
“To Allah we belong and to Him we shall return,” said Tasnim, Iran’s semiofficial state media, on Saturday evening, after reporting that several members of the leader’s family had been killed.
Hours earlier, President Donald Trump announced that Khamenei, 86, had died, describing him as “one of the most evil people in History.”
A senior Israeli government source previously toldThe Independent that the clerical ruler — who has overseen Iran’s transformation into one of the Middle East’s dominant powers since 1989 — was killed in a strike that flattened his compound.
It comes after Trump announced that the U.S. and Israel had begun “major combat operations” in Iran in order to dismantle the nation’s nuclear program and decapitate its leadership.
At least 108 people were killed in a strike on a girls’ primary school in southern Iran, most of whom were children, the local governor said. The Iranian Red Crescent says at least 201 were killed in the US-Israeli strikes, according to Iranian media.
Iranian forces retaliated by bombarding U.S. and Israeli military bases across the Middle East, including in Dubai and Qatar, prompting fears of a broader conflict. Iranian officials have characterized the strikes on them as illegal and called for the U.S. and Israel to be held accountable.
At least 115 killed in southern Iran after US- Israel strike
In southern Iran, at least 115 people were reported killed when a girls' school was struck in the US-Israeli attack, and dozens more were wounded, the local governor told Iranian state TV.
US Central Command spokesperson Capt Tim Hawkins said he was "aware of reports" that a girls' school was struck and that officials were looking into them.
Iran's state news agency IRNA said at least 15 people were killed in the southwest, quoting the governor of the Lamerd region, Ali Alizadeh, as saying a sports hall, two residential areas and a hall near a school were hit.
Flights across the Middle East were disrupted, and air defence fire thudded over Dubai, the United Arab Emirates' commercial capital.
Shrapnel from an Iranian missile attack on the UAE capital killed one person, state media said.
Namita Singh1 March 2026 04:43
Tensions soared in Middle East as US built up military forces
Tensions have soared in recent weeks as the Trump administration built up the largest force of American warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades.
The president insisted he wanted a deal to constrain Iran's nuclear program while the country struggled with growing dissent following nationwide protests.
Though Donald Trump had pronounced that the Iranian nuclear program was obliterated in strikes last year, the country was rebuilding infrastructure that it had lost, according to a senior US official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss Trump's decision-making process.
The official said intelligence showed that Iran had developed the capability to produce its own high-quality centrifuges, an important step in developing the highly enriched uranium needed for nuclear weapons.
Iran responded to the latest strikes by launching missiles and drones toward Israel and targeting US military installations in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. The Israeli military said Iran fired dozens of missiles at Israel, with many intercepted.
The Magen David Adom rescue service said on Saturday night that a woman in the Tel Aviv area died after being wounded in an Iranian missile attack.
At least three explosions were heard on Saturday evening near the Intelligence Ministry building in northern Tehran, witnesses said, adding that air defence systems had begun operating there. Israel's military said it had begun new strikes against missile launchers and aerial defence systems in central Iran.
Namita Singh1 March 2026 04:37
US-israel strikes on Iran were planned for months, officials say
The joint US-Israel operation, which officials say was planned for months, took place on Saturday during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan and at the start of the Iranian workweek.
It followed stilted negotiations and warnings from Donald Trump, who last year trumpeted his administration's success in incapacitating the country's nuclear program but nonetheless cast the latest round as necessary to head off its potential resurgence.
About 12 hours after the attacks began, the US military reported no US casualties and minimal damage at the American bases despite "hundreds of Iranian missile and drone attacks".
It said targets in Iran included Revolutionary Guard command facilities, air defence systems, missile and drone launch sites, and military airfields.
Israel, for its part, said it had killed the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the country's defence minister, as well as the secretary of the Iranian Security Council, a close adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Khamenei "was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do," Trump said.
"This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country."An Iranian diplomat told the United Nations Security Council that hundreds of civilians were killed and wounded in the strikes. Iran retaliated by firing missiles and drones toward Israel and at US military bases in the region, and exchanges of fire continued into the night.
Iranian state media reported that a strike on a school in southern Iran’s Hormozgan province killed at least 108 people, most of them pupils, according to the Iranian Red Crescent and local authorities – and that at least 201 people have been killed across 24 provinces in a wider wave of US-Israeli attacks, with hundreds more injured.
Some of the first strikes on Iran appeared to hit near the offices of Khamenei, the second leader of the Islamic Republic who succeeded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Israeli officials confirmed the death, followed by Trump.
Democrats decried that Trump had taken action without congressional authorisation. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the administration had briefed several Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress in advance.
Namita Singh1 March 2026 04:16
More strikes target Iran after US-Israeli assault kills supreme leader
Israel said it has launched a further wave of strikes on Iran on Sunday, as Iranians faced uncertainty following the killing of their supreme leader in US-Israeli attacks that threatened to destabilise the wider Middle East.
US president Donald Trump said the air strikes on Iranian targets were intended to end what he described as a decades-long threat from Iran and to ensure the country could not develop a nuclear weapon. He sought to justify the move despite its apparent conflict with his stated opposition to US involvement in complex overseas conflicts.
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Israel’s military said its Sunday morning strikes targeted Iran’s ballistic missile and air defence systems. Iranian state media reported that an explosion was heard in Tehran on Sunday morning.
On Saturday, Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones in response to the initial attacks, targeting US troops in the region as well as cities in Israel and Arab countries allied with Washington, leading to widespread flight cancellations across the region.
The Pentagon said there were no US deaths or injuries, but the strikes raised concerns about new risks to Americans. A senior US intelligence official told Reuters that while the most significant threat resulting from the attack was to US military personnel in the Middle East, cyberattacks could also be directed at critical US infrastructure.
In its latest statement, the IDF said the Israeli Air Force had carried out strikes on more than 30 sites linked to what it described as the Iranian regime, including air defence systems, missile launch sites, regime facilities and military command centres across the country.
Namita Singh1 March 2026 04:08
Commercial traffic through Strait of Hormuz drops sharply
Commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz dropped sharply yesterday after US and Israeli strikes on Iran
.According to ship-tracking data from MarineTraffic, vessel movements through the strait were down about 70 per cent by late evening in Iran.
Dimitris Ampatzidis, a senior analyst at Kpler (MarineTraffic’s parent company) told the New York Times that most ships in the area had either turned back, rerouted, or begun idling in the Gulf of Oman.
Namita Singh1 March 2026 04:00
Trump says he has ‘very good idea’ who will lead Iran next phase
Donald Trump has said he believes he knows who could take charge of Iran in what he described as its “next phase”.
In an interview with ABC News, the US president indicated that he has a clear view of who might assume leadership as speculation builds about the country’s political direction.
“I have a very good idea of who will be leading Iran in the next phase,” he said.
Trump did not elaborate on the identity of any potential successor or provide further details about who he thinks could take power.
Namita Singh1 March 2026 03:53
Global shipping firm tells its vessels in the Persian Gulf to shelter
A global shipping firm has instructed its vessels inside the Persian Gulf, and bound to the Persian Gulf, to shelter, citing the rapid military escalation between the US, Israel and Iran, and restrictions on traffic through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
The company, CMA CGM, said on its website that it has suspended the passage of its vessels through the Suez Canal, a crucial waterway connecting the Red and Mediterranean seas.
"Vessels will be rerouted via the Cape of Good Hope," it said.
Namita Singh1 March 2026 03:51
Debris from aerial interception spark fire at Dubai's Jebel Ali Port
Dubai authorities say that debris from an aerial interception sparked a fire at Dubai's Jebel Ali Port, the city's main sea terminal and a major global transhipment hub.
The Dubai Media Office says emergency crews responded immediately to the blaze on one of the port's berths and were working to contain it.
The sprawling Jebel Ali, which sits between Dubai's two man-made palm-shaped islands, is the world's busiest port outside of East Asia. The best-known of those islands, the Palm Jumeirah, was also struck.
Dubai officials earlier reported that debris from an intercepted drone also caused a fire on the facade of the city's iconic Burj Al Arab hotel.
The media office also said Dubai International Airport was damaged and that four employees were injured.
Namita Singh1 March 2026 03:44
Council formed to govern Iran after Khamenei's killing
A council has been formed to govern Iran after the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
That council is enshrined in law in the Islamic Republic. It is made up of Iran's sitting president, the head of the country's judiciary and a member of the Guardian Council chosen by Iran's Expediency Council, which advises the supreme leader and settles disputes with parliament.
Iran's reformist president Masoud Pezeshkian and hard-line judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei are on it.
Iranian law says the Assembly of Experts "must, as soon as possible," pick a new supreme leader
Namita Singh1 March 2026 03:39
Senior Iranian figures reported killed in US–Israeli strikes
Iranian media outlets have reported that leading officials were killed during recent US-Israeli attacks.
The semiofficial Fars news agency, which is regarded as close to the Revolutionary Guard, citing unnamed sources reported that several members of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s family were among the killed, including a daughter, a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law and a grandchild.
State media also reported that the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and a senior security adviser were killed in the strikes. According to sources who spoke to CBS News, about 40 Iranian officials are believed to have died in the attacks.
Namita Singh1 March 2026 03:34NewerOlder