Air attack completed on Saturday morning hit missile and drone manufacturing sites, says IDF

Israel has said it has launched direct airstrikes against military targets in Iran, a retaliation that could bring the Middle East closer to a full-scale regional war.

The Israel Defense Forces said it had completed its air attack on Saturday morning, hitting missile and drone manufacturing sites and aerial defences in several areas in Iran. Israel’s public broadcaster said three waves of strikes had been carried out.

Iranian air defences said that Israel attacked military targets in the provinces of Tehran, Khuzestan and Ilam and that “limited damage” was caused to some locations.

Footage broadcast by local media showed air defences continuously firing at apparently incoming projectiles in central Tehran, without saying which sites were coming under attack.

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Saturday’s attacks were widely expected as a retaliation to a missile barrage launched by Iran on 1 October in which an estimated 180 ballistic missiles were fired towards Tel Aviv and military bases. Tehran said the unprecedented salvo was carried out in support of its Lebanese ally Hezbollah after Israel’s ground invasion, as well as in response to the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s leader, in the Iranian capital in July.