US launches ninth night of strikes on Iran as it hits out at Gulf neighbours

CASUALTY COUNTS

The fresh rounds of violence came after a weekend in which the US announced three new US military fatalities and one service member missing in action.

Two were killed during Iranian missile and drone attacks on Jordan on Friday, while another service member died in northern Iraq during the controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian drone, CENTCOM said.

President Donald Trump said on Sunday the latest US strikes on Iran “hit them very hard again tonight” in honour of the American fatalities.

The deaths brought to 17 the confirmed number of American military fatalities since the US and Israel launched the war with a wave of strikes on Iranian targets on Feb 28.

That toll is dwarfed by Iran’s reported casualties. Its health ministry said on Friday that 50 people had been killed in recent fighting and more than 500 hurt.

The renewed violence was initially sparked by Iranian attacks on ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Iran closed the conduit for oil and gas shipments after the war broke out, and control over it has become leverage in its negotiations with Washington, which has reimposed its own blockade on Iranian ports.

On Sunday, the Revolutionary Guards said two ships attempting to transit the strait were stopped.

“Four violating ships, with the mischief and support of American terrorists … intended to disrupt and exit the Strait of Hormuz via an unsafe route, two of which had an accident and were stopped in place,” the Guards said, adding that the other two ships abandoned their journey.

Hope for a political settlement to the war has dimmed, though mediators have attempted to bring both sides back to the negotiating table.

Iran’s central military commander, Ali Abdollahi, warned that further US aggression would face a “decisive and devastating response”, according to a statement carried by state television on Sunday.

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said the US had attacked the unfinished Darkhovin nuclear power plant in the country’s southwest, calling it “an aggressive and brutal act contrary to international law”.

The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said it was looking into the report, noting the plant “contained no nuclear material when last visited by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency)”. 

Nonetheless, IAEA director Rafael Grossi reiterated his “call for military restraint in the vicinity of all nuclear-related sites”, the agency said in a post on X.