Israel and Iran traded more missile attacks on 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 two other generals and hit population centres in intensive aerial attacks that raised the death toll in the country since Israel launched its major campaign on 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 programme and military leadership, said Iran has fired over 270 missiles since Friday, 22 of which slipped through the country’s sophisticated multi-tiered air defences 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 US official told The Associated Press that President Donald Trump nixed an Israeli plan to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all major policies, serves as commander-in-chief of the armed forces and controls the powerful Revolutionary Guard.
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 Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.