Israel launched fresh strikes on Iran and Lebanon, where state media reported a residential building was hit on Wednesday, as Iran’s Guards said they had sealed off one of the world’s most vital shipping routes for energy.

Governments scrambled to evacuate citizens stranded in the Middle East, where Iran expanded a retaliatory missile and drone barrage on the fifth day of a war that sent stocks sinking.

With global energy prices already on the rise over the expanding war, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said it has ‘complete control’ of the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial chokepoint into the Gulf.

But Donald Trump said the US had ‘knocked out’ Iran’s navy, along with its air force and radar systems, and that the US Navy was ready to escort tankers through the waterway through which one-fifth of global seaborne oil pass.

The US military said it has hit nearly 2,000 targets since first launching deadly strikes with Israel on Iran on Saturday that killed Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran’s official IRNA news agency said Wednesday that US-Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,000 people nationwide since Saturday.

AFP was not in a position to independently verify the toll.

‘During the military aggression… 1,045 of our dear military personnel and civilians’ were killed, IRNA said, citing a statement from Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs.

Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani said that US president Donald Trump had dragged the American people into ‘an unfair war’ with Iran.

‘Mr. Trump, with Netanyahu’s clownish antics, dragged the American people into an unfair war with Iran,’ Larijani posted on X.

Israeli media said the military was planning ‘at least one or two more weeks of operations in Iran, during which it aims to hit thousands more Iranian regime targets,’ the Times of Israel reported after a briefing to the nation’s military reporters.

Earlier the Israeli military said it had begun a fresh wave of strikes on Tehran, as an AFP journalist reported a  fresh explosion in the northeast of the Iranian capital.

The army said it had struck ‘dozens’ of targets, including security command centres in Tehran and a missile facility in Isfahan in western Iran, and had shot down an Iranian fighter jet over the capital.

Israel kept up the bombardment, with its military announcing a ‘broad wave of strikes’ after midnight across Iran, which in the hours before had launched three waves of missile barrages at Israel.

Saudi Arabia intercepted a drone attack in targeting its massive Ras Tanura refinery, the defence ministry said, following an earlier hit on the complex along its Gulf coast this week.

‘Initial estimates indicate that the attack was carried out by a drone and did not result in any damage,’ the ministry said in a statement posted on X.

Saudi Arabia said it intercepted two cruise missiles, while drones struck near the US consulate in Dubai, starting a fire, and against the US military base at Al-Udeid in Qatar.

The UAE’s defence ministry said its air defences ‘successfully engaged with 3 ballistic missiles and detected 129 drones, of which 121 drones were intercepted’.

Qatar’s military said it had been targeted at dawn by 10 drones and 2 cruise missiles from Iran, with all of the projectiles intercepted by its forces.

Sirens wailed in Jerusalem after the Israeli military said it had detected missiles launched from Iran at Israel.

Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan warned his Iranian counterpart in a phone call that ‘any steps that could lead to the spread of conflict should be avoided’, a ministry source said, after NATO defence systems shot down a missile launched from Iran heading toward Turkey.

NATO condemned the ‘targeting of Turkey’, but a Turkish official later said it appeared the missile was aimed at a base in Cyprus but veered off course.

Spain’s prime minister defiantly posted ‘No to the war’, deepening a rift with the US after Madrid refused to allow  the use of its bases to attack Iran and Washington threatened to cut off all trade.

Spain’s Socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez had already angered Trump with a series of other policies.

Sanchez has refused to join NATO allies in a pledge to boost defence spending to five per cent of GDP as demanded by Trump, and has fiercely criticised Israel’s war in Gaza.

Trump lashed out at Sanchez’s government on Tuesday, calling Spain a ‘terrible’ ally and threatening to sever all trade with Spain.

The United States encouraged all Americans to leave the region if they can find commercial flights, even though air travel has been severely disrupted, while governments including Britain and France sent in chartered flights to get citizens out.

The war took a growing toll on Lebanon, where Iran-backed group Hezbollah has launched drones and rockets at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Ali Khamenei in the US-Israeli opening strikes.

Early Wednesday, the Israeli military called on residents to leave 16 towns and villages in southern Lebanon, in an ‘urgent warning’ before using force against Hezbollah militants.

Lebanese state media said Israeli attacks on a building killed four in Baalbek in Lebanon’s east, far from the border, as well as a Beirut hotel in an area so far spared the violence.

In Aramoun and Saadiyat — two towns south of Beirut and outside the Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds — the health ministry said Israeli strikes killed six people and wounded eight. It cautioned that this was a ‘preliminary toll’.

It was not immediately clear what was targeted in these towns or in Baalbek, and there was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which earlier announced ‘broad-scale strikes’ against Hezbollah.

The US military targeted ballistic missiles and ‘all the things that can shoot at us’ in its attacks on Iran since Saturday, said Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command.

‘These forces bring a massive amount of firepower, representing the largest build-up by the US in the Middle East in a generation,’ he said in a video message, describing the first day’s barrage as bigger than the so-called ‘shock and awe’ against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003.

Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have urged Iranians to rise up but Trump said regime change was not the goal.

The assault came weeks after Iranian authorities clamped down on mass protests, killing thousands.

The United States and Israel have received lukewarm support, with Western nations limiting involvement to helping Gulf states and repatriating citizens.

The US military began naming the first of six troops who have been killed. In Israel, nine people died Sunday when a missile hit the town of Beit Shemesh.

At least eight people have died across the Gulf.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 52 people in Lebanon, according to the government, while the United Nations said that more than 30,000 people were displaced.

World Health Organisation chief Tedros Ghebreyesus said among those killed in Lebanon were three paramedics.