The latest Iranian missile barrage sparked a wave of explosions across Tel Aviv as firefighters worked to contain a blaze at a residential building near Israel’s commercial hub on Friday.

– Iran Guards say targeted Israel’s Ben Gurion airport with missiles
– Trump says not currently mulling US troops in Iran
– Fresh Israeli strikes on Lebanon as PM warns of ‘looming humanitarian disaster’
– UN demands swift probe into Israeli strikes on Lebanon
– 67 Kuwait army personnel injured in Mideast war
– Qatar says its naval forces were in Bahrain buildings targeted by Iran
– US says it has sunk more than 30 Iranian ships

The blasts came after Israel expanded its campaign against Hezbollah, vowing retribution against the Tehran-backed group for joining the conflict following the killing on Saturday of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Israeli police warned residents Friday about the threat of cluster bombs fired by Iran, after saying at least one such munitions had hit the country in Tehran’s barrages.

Police had said Wednesday that bomb disposal experts found evidence of cluster munitions after incoming missiles from Iran were detected.

In a separate incident AFP footage from Thursday evening showed a swarm of flaming projectiles falling in the darkened sky over central Israel.

Police did not comment on the sighting, but a military expert who reviewed the footage for AFP identified them as a part of a cluster bomb.

Iran’s state broadcaster said Tehran had fired missiles ‘against targets in the heart of Tel Aviv,’ after Israel’s military said it was working to intercept incoming Iranian fire late Thursday.

AFP journalists in Tel Aviv heard two near-simultaneous waves of explosions reverberating across the city.

Rocket trails also lit up the sky in Netanya, a city north of Tel Aviv on Israel’s Mediterranean coast.

After the barrage, Israel’s emergency services, the  Magen David Adom, said its teams had visited several reported impact sites but that there were no casualties.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had targeted Israel’s Ben Gurion airport and an air force base in the area.

‘The heavy Khorramshahr-4 missiles carrying one-tonne warheads were launched at dawn today …  toward the heart of Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion airport and the base of the Israeli air force’s 27th squadron located at the airport,’ the Guards said in a statement carried by Tasnim news agency.

Iranian state television reported a fresh drone strike on a ship in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, resulting in a fire, on the seventh day of the war with the US and Israel.

The television channel did not specify the type of vessel or its provenance. Earlier, an Iran military spokesman said a US oil tanker was ‘on fire’ after having been targeted by Iranian forces.

Fresh strikes rocked Iran and Lebanon Friday as Israel and the United States stepped up their attacks in the sprawling Middle East war, with powerful explosions shattering the skies of Tehran.

The war, now entering its seventh day, has dragged in global powers, upended the world’s energy and transport sectors, and brought chaos to even usually peaceful areas of the volatile region.

It has spread to Lebanon whose prime minister warned of an impending humanitarian disaster as tens of thousands fled heavy strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Internet coverage in Iran running at about one per cent, according to monitor group Netblocks, limiting information about the impact of the war on ordinary Iranians.

At least 217 people have been killed and 798 wounded in Lebanon since the start of a new war between Israel and Hezbollah on Monday, Lebanon’s health ministry announced Friday.

The previous toll from the ministry, published Thursday evening, was 123 dead and 683 wounded.

The United Nations demanded swift investigations into fatal Israeli strikes across Lebanon to decide if they complied with international law.

‘Lebanon is becoming a key flashpoint,’ UN rights chief Volker Turk told reporters in Geneva.

‘I call for an immediate cessation of hostilities.’

In Tehran, worshippers gathered for the first Friday prayers since the start of the war that killed Khamenei on the first day.

Online footage shared by Iranian media showed crowds of men and women dressed in black, some carrying Iranian flags, streaming to an open space outside the Grand Mosque of Imam Khomeini in the capital.

In the background of one video, a man speaking through a loudspeaker mourned the late supreme leader.

‘We bear witness that he was the embodiment of piety and guardianship in our time,’ he said as some worshippers seated on prayer rugs wept.

Friday morning’s strikes on Tehran followed warnings from Israel and the US they were escalating attacks.

‘We are now moving to the next phase of the operation,’ Israel’s military chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir said in a televised statement.

‘We have additional surprises ahead which I do not intend to disclose,’ he added.

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth also announced ‘firepower over Iran and over Tehran is about to surge dramatically’.

President Donald Trump said it would be a ‘waste of time’ to send ground troops into Iran, but has insisted he would ‘have to be involved’ in choosing Iran’s next leader.

According to Iran’s health ministry, US and Israeli strikes on the country have killed 926 people, a number AFP could not independently verify.

Iran has launched missile and drone attacks at Israel and the Gulf since the war began. In Israel, at least 10 people have been killed, according to first responders there.

The US military has reported the deaths of six of its personnel since the war began Saturday.

Kuwait’s defence ministry said that 67 army personnel have been injured since the beginning of Iran’s retaliation campaign — the highest number by far of any Gulf military.

‘Sixty-seven Kuwaiti military personnel have been injured’ since the beginning of the attacks, according to Colonel Saud Al-Atwan, the defence ministry spokesman.

Kuwait had identified and ‘dealt with’ 212 ballistic missiles and 394 drones since Saturday, he added.

Kuwait also has the highest death toll in the region so far, with eight out of 13 people killed in the Gulf having died in the tiny country.

This includes four US service members and two Kuwaiti army personnel as well as two civilians.

Qatar said its naval forces were inside buildings targeted by Iran in Bahrain overnight, though they were unharmed, after Manama reported attacks on residential buildings and a hotel.

‘The State of Qatar strongly condemns the Iranian attack targeting buildings in various parts of the Kingdom of Bahrain, housing members of the Qatari Emiri Naval Forces participating in the Unified Maritime Operations Centre of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s Unified Military Command,’ the foreign ministry said in a statement.

‘The Qatari Emiri Naval Forces personnel present in the targeted buildings are safe and unharmed,’ it added.

Earlier on Friday, Bahrain said Iran had struck a hotel and two residential buildings in the capital Manama, correcting a previous announcement that two hotels and one residential building were hit.

The attack came a day after an Iranian missile strike sparked a blaze at Bahrain’s main state-owned oil refinery, as Tehran pressed attacks across the Gulf.

‘Iranian aggression targeted a hotel & 2 residential buildings in Manama,’ Bahrain’s interior ministry posted on X, reporting ‘no loss of life’.

It said the attack sparked a fire in one of the residential buildings, which had been extinguished.

Drones hit an airport and oil facilities in southern Iraq on Friday, while in the north strikes and explosions mainly targeted Iranian militants.

In Iraq’s southern Basra province, ‘a drone crashed into the cargo terminal at Basra airport,’ a security official said.

Two others hit a US company in the Burjesia oil complex, and a fourth struck the Rumaila oil field, where energy major BP operates, the official added, without being able to identify the perpetrators.

The United States has sunk more than 30 Iranian ships during the on-going war, while ballistic missile and drone attacks by Tehran’s forces are down substantially, a top US military officer said Thursday.

‘We’re now up over 30 ships (sunk), and in just the last few hours, we hit an Iranian drone carrier ship, roughly the size of a World War II aircraft carrier. And as we speak, it’s on fire,’ Admiral Brad Cooper told a news conference.

EU chiefs will hold talks with Middle East leaders by video-link on Monday on the war in the region, a spokesperson for the European Council president said.