Israel launches strikes on Iran as US warns Tehran against retaliation – latest news

Two soldiers were killed in Saturday morning’s Israeli airstrikes on Iran, Iran’s official news agency IRNA reported.

“The army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in defending Iran’s security and protecting the people and Iran’s interests, sacrificed two of its fighters while countering projectiles from the criminal Zionist regime,” the statement said.

Israel’s strike on Iran was designed with the intention of minimizing casualities and keeping the impact to a level that would allow Iran to deny major damage and contain the situation, sources have told The Washington Post.

The official, who was briefed on Israel’s plans, told the paper that the strikes were a larger-scale version of the response Israel launched in April.

The Israeli military said its aircraft targeted facilities that Iran used to make missiles fired at Israel as well as surface-to-air missile sites.

There has been no immediate indication that oil or missile sites were hit – locations that would have marked a much more serious escalation.

Speaking at a press conference in Samoa, the British prime minister said: “I am clear that Israel has the right to defend itself against Iranian aggression and I am equally clear that we need to avoid further regional escalation and urge all sides to show restraint.

“Iran should not respond,” said Keir Starmer.

“We will continue to work with allies to de-escalate the situation across the region.”

Microsoft has dismissed two employees who organised an unsanctioned vigil at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, to honour Palestinians killed by the Israeli military in Gaza.

The employees, dismissed via phone call late on Thursday, hours after the vigil was held during lunch, were members of the “No Azure for Apartheid” coalition within Microsoft. The group has actively opposed the company’s provision of cloud computing services to the Israeli government. Both employees argued that the vigil mirrored other employee-led campaigns Microsoft has hosted in support of humanitarian causes.

“We have so many community members within Microsoft who have lost family, lost friends or loved ones,” said Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist. “But Microsoft really failed to have the space for us where we can come together and share our grief and honour the memories of people who can no longer speak for themselves.”

Asked for comment, Microsoft stated on Friday that it had “ended the employment of some individuals in accordance with internal policy” but declined to give specific details.

One of the dismissed employees, Mohamed, an Egyptian national, said he now faces the challenge of securing a new role within two months to retain his work visa and prevent deportation. His colleague, Hossam Nasr, explained that the vigil was aimed both to “honour the victims of the Palestinian genocide in Gaza and to call attention to Microsoft’s complicity in the genocide” due to the use of its technology by the Israeli military.

Iran will resume flights as normal from 9am, the semi-official news agency Tasnim reported this morning, following a brief suspension after Israel struck military targets in the country.

Malaysia has condemned Israel’s recent air strikes on Iranian sites, calling them a “clear violation of international law” that further destabilises an already tense region.

In a strongly worded statement, Malaysia’s foreign ministry urged an “immediate cessation of hostilities” and appealed for an end to what it described as a “cycle of violence”.

The ministry warned that Israel’s ongoing attacks against Middle Eastern countries risk edging the region closer to an expanded conflict. “Israel’s actions seriously undermine regional security,” the statement read, expressing concern over the potential for escalation.

Iraq announced the reopening of its airspace and the resumption of flights, reported state news agency INA citing the ministry of transportation, following a brief suspension which it had attributed to regional tensions.

Saudi Arabia condemned the military targeting of Iran as a “violation of its sovereignty” and international laws, urging all parties to exercise maximum restraint and calling on the international community to take action towards de-escalation and ending conflicts in the region.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken met with Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati and other regional leaders in London on Friday, pushing for renewed diplomatic efforts to end the conflict in the Middle East.

Speaking on Friday, Mr Blinken highlighted the “sense of real urgency” to achieve a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, reported the Washington Post.

He urged for “the full implementation” of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, the framework established in 2006 to end major hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. The discussions with Lebanon also focused on concerns over civilian casualties and the US’s continued support for Lebanon’s armed forces and United Nations peacekeepers, according to State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.

The talks come ahead of scheduled US-Israeli negotiations in Qatar, where Mossad director David Barnea is expected to join CIA director William J Burns and Qatari prime minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on Sunday to discuss potential ceasefire conditions.

The upcoming diplomatic push follows the recent death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, whom US officials had identified as a key obstacle in ceasefire talks.

An Israeli air strike killed at least three journalists in southern Lebanon, striking their accommodation near Hasbaiyya, an area removed from active fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah. The attack occurred at around 4am local time on Friday and killed two cameramen and a technician as they slept, with no prior warning given, according to eyewitness accounts.

Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan, reporting from southern Lebanon, described the attack as “a very serious incident”, noting that Hasbaiyya was under no evacuation orders and remained “relatively calm” until the strike. The slain journalists were identified as Ghassan Najjar, a cameraman, and Mohamed Reda, an engineer with Al Mayadeen, a pan-Arab news channel. Al-Manar TV, affiliated with Hezbollah, confirmed the third victim as its own camera operator, Wissam Qassim.

Eyewitnesses said the bungalow housing the journalists was directly hit.

Lebanon’s information minister, Ziad Makary, condemned the killing of the journalists as “a war crime”, asserting that it amounted to “an assassination, after monitoring and tracking, with premeditation and planning”.

According to Makary, 18 journalists from seven media organisations were present in the area at the time of the attack.