The 180 missiles fired at Israel on Tuesday evening sharply escalated the conflict between the two countries and threatened to engulf the Middle East in all-out war.
Iran fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday evening, the Israeli military said, an attack that sharply escalated the conflict between Israel and Iran and threatened to engulf the Middle East in all-out war.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a statement that the missile attack had been in retaliation for the assassinations of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah; Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh; and an Iranian commander. The statement said Iran would launch more missiles if it were attacked.
Fiery balls of light could be seen falling from the sky over Jerusalem and loud explosions could be heard in Tel Aviv and other parts of Israel as air-raid sirens wailed. In Iran’s capital, Tehran, chants of “God is Great” could be heard from rooftops in several neighborhoods as supporters of the government cheered the attack, witnesses said.
Bora Erden/The New York Times
A 38-year-old Palestinian man was killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank by falling shrapnel from the missile barrage, the local governor, Hussein Hamayel, said. Two other people were slightly wounded by shrapnel in Tel Aviv, according to Israel’s emergency service. There were no other immediate reports of deaths or serious casualties.
Israel’s air defenses, with the help of Western allies, appeared to limit substantial damage from the missile attack, which ended less than an hour after it began, about 7:30 p.m., the Israeli military said. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s spokesman, said around 8:30 p.m. that Israel had not identified “additional aerial threats from Iran.”
