Fight on all fronts as airstrikes drag 13 countries into escalating Middle East war

Israel bombarded Lebanon on Monday after calling Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem “a marked target”, expanding conflict across the region as it fights on two fronts.

Israeli forces pounded targets in Lebanon including Beirut, after Hezbollah, the Tehran-backed armed Shiite Muslim movement fired rockets towards Israel in retaliation for the death of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran’s own retaliation resulted in fresh explosions in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Bahrain.

Cyprus was also dragged into the war, when Britain’s Royal Air Force base Akrotiris was hit by an Iranian drone strike, while Oman was also targeted for the first time.

The UK Defence Ministry said no injuries were reported and measures were implemented to protect personnel in the region.

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the UK had since accepted a US request to use British bases for defensive strikes against Iranian missiles in storage depots or launchers.

In Kuwait, several American warplanes crashed but their crew survived, in what the US later said was friendly fire.

“Authorities immediately initiated search and rescue operations, evacuating the crews and transporting them to a hospital for medical evaluation and treatment”, a defence ministry spokesman said in a statement.

Remarkable footage of what appears to be a US fighter jet crashing in Kuwait emerged.

The phone vision shows a jet engulfed in flames spiralling downward before what appears to be a pilot parachuting to the ground.

Iran’s army said that it had targeted the US Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait as well as vessels in the Indian Ocean.

“Missile units of the army’s ground and naval forces operating from various locations targeted the US Ali Al Salem air base in Kuwait as well as enemy vessels in the northern Indian Ocean over the past hours,” the army said in a statement.

It added that “15 cruise missiles” were used in the attacks.

Sirens sounded in Kuwait City after the latest attacks.

“There is a continuing threat of missile and UAV attacks over Kuwait. Do not come to the embassy. Take cover in your residence on the lowest available floor and away from windows. Do not go outside,” the embassy said.

“US embassy personnel are sheltering in place.”

While, at the time of going to print, there were no casualties in Kuwait the Pentagon had earlier confirmed that three US military personnel had been killed in Operation Epic Fury — the attack on Iran that launched the war — and that five had been injured in the Middle East.

They had died in Kuwait on Saturday but no further detail was released about the injured.

“Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends,” Mr Trump said. “But America will avenge their deaths and deliver the most punishing blow to the terrorists who have waged war against, basically, civilisation.”

“It won’t be difficult.

“We have tremendous amounts of ammunition.

“It’s a big country, it’ll take four weeks — or less.”

He also said any and all remaining Iranian warships would soon be sunk.

“They will soon be floating at the bottom of the sea,” Mr Trump, pictured left, said.

“Other than that, their navy is doing very well.”

Israel’s military said it was carrying out simultaneous strikes in Iran and Lebanon, warning Lebanese militant group Hezbollah it would “pay a heavy price” for opening fire on Israel.

“Even at this moment, hundreds of air force aircraft are striking simultaneously in Lebanon and Iran,” military spokesman Brig-Gen. Effie Defrin said during a televised briefing.

“Hezbollah opened fire last night. It knew exactly what it was doing.

“We had warned it — and it will pay a heavy price.”

The Israeli Defence Force added that it had struck a senior Hezbollah operative in Beirut and that it had singled out Qassem — a Lebanese Shia cleric who became Hezbollah’s secretary-general in 2024.

“A short while ago, the (Israeli military) precisely struck a senior Hezbollah terrorist in Beirut,” the military said.

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz said on X that Qassem was now “a marked target for elimination”.

Explosions rocked Beirut before dawn and southern Lebanon residents fled after the Israeli military announced it was striking both parts of the country.

In the city of Sidon, cars of families escaping from further south packed roads with many vehicles seen with mattresses tied to the roof.

Hezbollah, which was weakened by an earlier Israeli offensive, said it had fired rockets and drones at Israel “in retaliation for the pure blood” of Khamenei — the first time it has claimed such an attack since a November 2024 ceasefire agreement after a year of war between them.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, whose government has pushed for Hezbollah’s disarmament, called Monday’s rocket fire “irresponsible”.

Such action “endangers Lebanon’s security and safety, and gives Israel pretexts to continue its attacks on it”, Mr Salam said on X.

Strikes on Lebanon have killed at least 31 people and wounded 149, the Lebanese health ministry said

In Israel, an Iranian missile attack killed at least nine people and injured dozens more in the central city of Beit Shemesh, after a death the previous day near Tel Aviv.

Three people were also injured on one of the main roads of Jerusalem.

While many in the Iranian diaspora cheered Khamenei’s death, anger was seen on the streets of Iran’s neighbour Pakistan where officials said 17 people were killed and protesters tried to storm the US consulate in Karachi.

Iran’s first retaliatory strikes on Saturday hit all the Gulf states apart from mediator Oman. But Oman’s commercial port of Duqm was hit by two drones on Monday injuring a foreign worker, the Oman News Agency said.

Three ships were also attacked in the Strait of Hormuz after Iran had previously declared the strategic waterway was closed, sending global oil prices soaring.

The Revolutionary Guards claimed to strike the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, but the Pentagon said the “missiles launched didn’t even come close.”

Ali Larijani, the head of Tehran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Iran “will not negotiate with the United States. Trump plunged the region into chaos with his ‘delusional fantasies’ and now fears more American troop casualties.”