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US, Iran exchange blows in rekindled Middle East war
The United States struck Iran and Tehran hit back at US allies in the Gulf on Thursday, as the foes battled over the vital Strait of Hormuz in the renewed Middle East war despite a call from mediator Pakistan to resume talks.
The rekindled fighting came a month after the signing of a preliminary deal that aimed to end the conflict, which broke out in late February with massive US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
On Thursday, Tehran warned it would target infrastructure across the region if US President Donald Trump followed through on a threat to attack power plants and bridges in Iran.
That followed a fresh exchange of strikes between the two countries, with Iran's Revolutionary Guards saying they struck a US airbase in Jordan with ballistic missiles in response to what they described as an American attack near a children's cancer hospital in the Islamic republic.
State media said the hospital in Ahvaz, in the southwest, was evacuated following US airstrikes on the area, with the patients transferred to other medical centres.
Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei slammed the attack as "barbaric".
Hani, a 34-year-old teacher from Ahvaz, said the strikes were "very intense", adding: "My hands are shaking. There were at least 11, 12 explosions. My ears are exploding."
The US military's Central Command (CENTCOM) said its forces hit Iranian military targets in multiple locations including coastal Bandar Abbas to "degrade Iran's ability to threaten innocent mariners" in the Strait of Hormuz.
Earlier strikes had targeted coastal defence and cruise missile sites on Greater Tunb Island in the Gulf, CENTCOM added.
Iranian state news agency IRNA said a projectile struck parts of Semnan airport in the north, without injuring anyone. It also reported explosions elsewhere in the country, including Lorestan in the west, while air defences were triggered in parts of Tehran.
Soon after, US allies in the Gulf began responding to attacks, with Kuwait saying it intercepted Iranian drones and Bahrain sounding air raid sirens.
Iranian news agencies later reported that the United States launched strikes around Iran's Gulf island of Qeshm near the Strait of Hormuz.
- 'No reason to adhere' -
The strait has been at the heart of the recent fighting and is crucial to global oil and gas flows.
Iran blockaded the Hormuz strait after the war erupted and has been using the waterway for leverage against its foes for months.
It was briefly reopened after the US-Iran deal in June, but Tehran said last week it would be closed again "until the US ends its aggression".
The United States has also reimposed a blockade of Iran's ports.
Pakistan's foreign office spokesman, Tahir Andrabi, said Islamabad would "continue to encourage all sides to end violence and resume technical-level talks" under the memorandum of understanding it helped mediate last month.
But Iran's top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has warned that a deal "only has meaning when its clauses are valid and being implemented".
"If Iran is not to derive any benefit from the memorandum of understanding, we have no reason to adhere," he said.
Trump threatened to hit Iranian power plants and bridges unless Tehran returned to the negotiating table.
"Next week it gets really bad for them," he told Fox News.
On Thursday, the spokesman for Iran's military headquarters said that if the US followed through on its threats, "all infrastructure in the region" would be "crushed under the steel blows" of Iran's armed forces.
- 'Gesture of goodwill' -
Iran's Guards said US forces had "used airbases located in Jordan to target various parts" of the Islamic republic and that its aerospace force had responded by "launching two waves of missile strikes" on a base in the country.
Iran's military separately said it targeted US facilities in Jordan with drones.
Earlier, the US military said one of its aircraft fired on and disabled an empty oil tanker that was trying to break the naval blockade of Iran's ports.
In Iraq, Kurdish forces said the US-led coalition downed eight explosive-laden drones over Erbil, the capital of the northern Kurdistan region, where AFP journalists heard explosions and saw smoke near the US consulate.
Trump said Wednesday that an American citizen -- identified by her lawyer as Dena Karari -- had left Iran in "good condition" after being detained there since December 2024.
He said the US appreciated "this gesture of goodwill by Iran".
Since last week, renewed US attacks have killed at least 30 people in Iran, government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said.
F.Gallego--HdM
