23:40 Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said US and Israeli strikes damaged about 43,000 residential and commercial units in Iran.
She added that the damaged structures included 36,469 residential units and 6,179 commercial facilities, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
The US-Israeli war has also taken a heavy toll on women, with 223 women and girls killed and 2,129 others wounded since 28 February, Mohajerani said.
She did not provide an overall death toll, but authorities have previously reported that around 1,300 people have been killed.
23:20 Israel informed the US this week that it is running critically low on ballistic missile interceptors as the conflict with Iran continues, Semafor reported, citing US officials familiar with the matter.
The US has been aware of Israel’s low capacity for months, the report said, adding that it is not running low on interceptors of its own.
“We have all that we need to protect our bases and our personnel in the region and our interests,” a US official told the outlet, adding that Israel is “coming up with solutions to address” their shortage.
22:45 Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they had launched a missile salvo at US forces stationed at a major base in Saudi Arabia's Al-Kharj.
The Guards said the base was being used to equip "F-35 and F-16 fighter jets and is the storage place for fuel tankers."
While there has been no immediate confirmation of the attack from Saudi Arabia, the kingdom's defence ministry said earlier it intercepted six ballistic missiles headed towards Al-Kharj.
22:30 Hezbollah said it was engaged in "direct clashes" with Israeli occupation forces in the southern Lebanese town of Khiam late in the day.
In a statement, it said the clashes were ongoing, having started at 9:20 pm (19:20 GMT) and involved "light and medium weapons as well as rocket-propelled projectiles."
It said it had also targeted Israeli troops in three border villages.
A protester holds a banner reading "No war Lebanon" during a march against the Middle East's war, triggered by the joint US-Israeli strikes alongside a rally against racism, fascism, and state violence, in Paris on March 14, 2026. AFP
22:00 Trump renewed his call for other nations to help secure the Strait of Hormuz and said the US will coordinate with them amid the US-Israeli war on Iran.
“The United States of America has beaten and completely decimated Iran, both militarily, economically, and in every other way, but the Countries of the World that receive Oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage, and we will help – A LOT,” the US president wrote in a Truth Social post.
“The US will also coordinate with those Countries so that everything goes quickly, smoothly, and well. This should have always been a team effort, and now it will be – It will bring the World together toward Harmony, Security, and Everlasting Peace!" he added.
21:30 Three members of the Kuwaiti army sustained minor injuries when two drones struck the Ahmed Al-Jaber air base, a Defence Ministry spokesperson said. Kuwait’s air defence system intercepted another three drones, while two drones fell outside what the ministry described as “the threat area” and posed no danger.
Earlier in the conflict, three US fighter jets were mistakenly downed by friendly Kuwaiti fire during an Iranian attack. Kuwait was also the site of a drone strike that killed six US soldiers at a command centre.
Meanwhile, the Emirati Defence Ministry reported that nine ballistic missiles and 33 drones were fired toward the United Arab Emirates. Since 28 February, a total of 1,600 drones, 294 ballistic missiles, and 15 cruise missiles have been launched at the country, causing six deaths and 141 injuries.
Bahrain’s Defence Ministry said Iran launched 10 drones and three missiles, bringing the total fired at the kingdom during the two-week conflict to 124 missiles and 203 drones.
21:20 Abbas Araqchi, the Iranian foreign minister, claimed in an interview with MS Now (formerly MSNBC) that the US attacked Kharg Island and Abu Musa Island with low-range artillery from two locations in the UAE, Ras Al-Khaimah and a place “very close to Dubai,” calling that dangerous and saying Iran “will try to be careful not to attack any populated area” there.
21:15 Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called for neighbouring countries to expel US forces from the Middle East.
The US security umbrella in the region "has proven to be full of holes and inviting rather than deterring trouble," the top diplomat posted on X, adding that Iran called on its neighbours "to expel foreign aggressors."
He also noted Trump’s message earlier urging other countries to send warships to help secure shipping in the Strait of Hormuz off Iran, and described the president as “begging.”
Earlier, Araghchi addressed in an interview with MS Now (formerly MSNBC) the situation in the Strait of Hormuz: “It is only closed to the tankers and ships belonging to our enemies, to those who are attacking us and their allies.”
Nearly all shipping is still avoiding the Strait of Hormuz, however, due to security concerns.
Araghchi also dismissed claims that Iran’s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, is seriously injured.
“They will see soon that there is no problem with the new supreme leader,” Araghchi said. “He is performing his duties according to the constitution, and he will continue to do that.”
20:45 US citizens should leave Iraq immediately, the US embassy in Baghdad said in an updated security alert, following an overnight missile attack on the embassy’s building in the wee hours of the day.
“Americans face a risk of kidnapping, and US individuals have been directly targeted. Iran-aligned terrorist militias may hinder the Iraqi authorities’ ability to respond effectively in emergencies,” the embassy said.
“US citizens should leave Iraq immediately. US citizens who choose to remain in Iraq are encouraged to reconsider their decision given the significant threat posed by Iran-aligned terrorist militias.”
Armed groups and officials in Iraq have said at least 37 people have been killed in the country since the start of the US-Israeli war on 28 February.
Pro-Iran armed factions and security sources say 32 of their fighters were killed in strikes they blame on the United States and Israel.
Meanwhile, Iran has carried out multiple airstrikes against Kurdish Iranian rebels and US bases in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
The Iraqi army has condemned airstrikes on its territory and maintained that it opposes any attempt to drag the country into the conflict.
People take part in a funeral procession of members of pro-Iran armed factions in Al-Qaim, a border town in western Iraq near Syria. Pro-Iran armed factions and security sources say 32 Iran-backed fighters were killed in strikes they blame on the United States and Israel. AFP
20:00 Two Indian-flagged tankers carrying liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) have safely passed through the Strait of Hormuz, a Delhi official said.
“They crossed the Strait of Hormuz early morning safely and are en route to India,” said Rajesh Kumar Sinha, India’s special secretary of the Ministry of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways.
It marks a rare exception after Iran effectively blocked traffic through the key oil route since the conflict began.
The tankers Shivalik and Nanda Devi are expected to arrive in the next couple of days, the Associated Press news agency reported.
The safe passage of the two Indian vessels followed talks between New Delhi and Tehran in recent days. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar posted on social media earlier this week that he held talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
19:35 At least 15 people were killed when a strike by Israel and the US hit a factory in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, the semi-official Fars news agency said.
There were workers inside the factory, which produces heaters and refrigerators, when the strike hit, Fars reported.
US-Israeli coalition warplanes bombard the city of Isfahan, Iran. Photo courtesy of Quds news.
19:25 President Donald Trump's administration has rebuffed efforts by Middle Eastern allies to start diplomatic negotiations aimed at ending the Iran war that started two weeks ago with a massive US-Israeli air assault, according to three sources familiar with the efforts who spoke to Reuters.
Iran, for its part, has rejected the possibility of any ceasefire until US and Israeli strikes end, two senior Iranian sources told Reuters, adding that several countries had been trying to mediate an end to the conflict.
Oman, which mediated talks before the war, has tried multiple times to open a line of communication, but the White House has made clear it is not interested, according to two sources, who, like others in this story, were granted anonymity to speak freely about diplomatic matters.
A senior White House official confirmed to Reuters that Trump has rebuffed those efforts to start talks and is focused on pressing ahead with the war to further weaken Tehran's military capabilities.
"He's not interested in that right now, and we're going to continue with the mission unabated. Maybe there's a day, but not right now," the official told Reuters.
Egypt, which was involved in mediation before the war, has also tried to reopen communications, according to three security and diplomatic sources. While the efforts do not appear to have made progress, they have secured some military restraint from neighbouring countries hit by Iran, according to one of the sources who spoke to Reuters.
A US Air Force (USAF) B-1 Lancer bomber jet takes off at RAF Fairford in south-west England. AFP
19:20 In comments on his Truth Social app, Donald Trump said “many countries” would send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, without providing details on which countries would do so.
He said he hoped the UK, China, France, Japan, South Korea, and others would send ships to the area.
19:00 When the US-Israeli war on Iran erupted in late February 2026, the confrontation quickly expanded beyond the skies and waters of the Gulf.
Almost immediately, it entered another arena: the opinion pages of the Arab press. Across influential Gulf newspapers, Asharq Al-Awsat, Al-Ittihad, Al-Bayan, Al-Khaleej, and Okaz, columnists and political commentators began dissecting the conflict and debating its broader meaning. Their commentary has moved well beyond battlefield updates, focusing instead on the strategic, political, and economic consequences of the war for the Middle East.
Ezzat Ibrahim, Editor-in-Chief of Ahram Online and Al-Ahram Weekly, looked at: How Gulf commentators are reading the Iran war.
18:30 In Western capitals, wars in the Middle East are often presented through the language of security, deterrence, and strategic necessity.
Government officials defend military actions as responses to threats, while traditional media outlets relay official briefings and battlefield updates. Yet beneath this familiar pattern, a different conversation has been unfolding across Western media and digital platforms.
Over the past few years, and especially during the latest regional confrontations, a growing number of influential Western commentators have begun openly questioning the logic and consequences of repeated military campaigns involving Israel and its regional adversaries. What makes this development notable is not merely the criticism itself, but the diversity of the voices involved.
Academic realists, libertarian commentators, progressive journalists, and independent media personalities have all entered the debate, each from a different intellectual starting point but often arriving at similar concerns about escalation, strategy, and the long-term stability of the Middle East.
Ahram Online looked at four voices in the West who oppose the war from different perspectives. Read the full article here.
18:00 The Guardian South Asia correspondent filed a report with the British media outlet on the impact of the US-Israeli war on Iran, and the Iranian retaliatory attacks on neighbouring Arab Gulf countries, on the peoples and economies of the area.
In a report from Ras Al Khaimah, Hannah Ellis-Petersen writes: "An eerie quiet hangs over Ras Al Khaimah’s industrial port. Usually, a thriving maritime hub of the United Arab Emirates, now ships stand docked and silent. Not far out along the hazy horizon, a backlog of hundreds of tankers has lined up in recent days, halted along a waterway flooded with danger."
"Any vessel heading past Ras Al Khaimah out to the Arabian Sea must traverse the world’s most treacherous strip of water for shipping today: the Strait of Hormuz. Just over 20 nautical miles from Ras Al Khaimah, two oil tankers heading for the strait were attacked by Iranian missiles this week, one catching fire."
17:30 Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli strikes have killed 826 people, including 65 women and 106 children, since the start of the war.
In a statement today, the ministry said 31 paramedics were among those killed.
Local health authorities reported this morning that an Israeli strike killed 12 medical staff at a clinic in the southern town of Burj Qalaouiya.
17:00 No one immediately claimed responsibility for the strike on the US embassy in Baghdad. The embassy complex, one of the largest US diplomatic facilities in the world, has been repeatedly targeted by rockets and drones fired by Iran-aligned groups.
There was no immediate comment from the embassy. On Friday, it renewed its Level 4 security alert for Iraq, warning that Iran and Iran-aligned armed groups have previously carried out attacks against US citizens, interests, and infrastructure and “may continue to target them.”
This video grab taken from UGC images posted on social media shows smoke billowing from the US embassy in Baghdad's fortified "Green Zone" following a reported drone strike. AFP
16:30 Iran's joint military command threatened to attack cities in the UAE, home to Dubai and one of the world's busiest airports, claiming the US used “ports, docks and hideouts” there to launch strikes on Iran's Kharg Island.
It called on people to immediately evacuate areas where it said US forces were sheltering, naming Jebel Ali port in Dubai, the Mideast's busiest, as well as Khalifa port in Abu Dhabi and Fujairah port.
Associated Press images showed smoke rising over the embassy compound in the Iraqi capital and a fire in the UAE's Fujairah port that broke out after what authorities said was a drone interception.
Clouds of dark black smoke were seen rising from the oil export terminal and surrounding industry zone in Fujairah, a key UAE port and energy hub handling around 1 million barrels per day of Murban crude.
Emirati authorities said debris from a successfully intercepted drone caused a fire, though they did not specify the exact location.
People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that loading of crude and refined products at Fujairah was temporarily halted as a precaution while damage was assessed.
A day earlier, President Donald Trump said the US destroyed military sites on Kharg Island, vital to Iran’s oil network, and warned that Iran's oil infrastructure could be next if Tehran continues to interfere with the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, where vessels are backed up and where one-fifth of global oil supplies usually transit.
Trump said US forces on Friday “obliterated” targets on Kharg Island, which is home to the primary terminal that handles the country’s oil exports.
Iran's parliament speaker had warned that such strikes would provoke a new level of retaliation.
Smoke rises from the direction of an energy installation in the Gulf emirate of Fujairah. AFP
16:00 A US official said 2,500 more Marines and an amphibious assault ship are being sent to the Middle East, adding to the military's largest buildup of warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades.
Iran continued to launch missile and drone attacks on Israel and US assets in neighbouring Gulf Arab states, while US and Israeli warplanes continued to target Tehran and other areas across Iran.
Lebanon's humanitarian crisis deepened, with nearly 800 people killed and 850,000 displaced, as Israel launched waves of strikes across the country, including the capital, Beirut.
Emergency personnel work at the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted an apartment building in the southern Lebanese town of Haret Saida, on the outskirts of Sidon. AFP
File Photo: A member of the US Air Force stands near a Patriot missile battery at the Prince Sultan air base in Al-Kharj, central Saudi Arabia. AP
15:30 Elements from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit and the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli have been ordered to the Middle East, according to the US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans.
Marine Expeditionary Units are able to conduct amphibious landings but also specialize in bolstering security at embassies, evacuating civilians, and providing disaster relief. The deployment does not necessarily indicate that a ground operation will take place.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the Marine deployment.
The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, as well as the Tripoli and other amphibious assault ships carrying the Marines, are based in Japan and have been in the Pacific Ocean for several days, according to images released by the military. The Tripoli was spotted by commercial satellites sailing alone near Taiwan, putting it more than a week away from waters off Iran.
Earlier in the week, the Navy had 12 ships, including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and eight destroyers, in the Arabian Sea. Should the Tripoli join, it would be the second-largest ship behind the Lincoln there.
The total number of US service members on the ground in the Middle East is not clear. Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, one of the largest in the region, typically houses some 8,000 US troops.
File Photo: U.S. Marines with 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, assigned to Special Purpose Marine-Air Ground Task Force – Crisis Response - Central Command, board an MV-22 Osprey during a crisis response exercise in Kuwait. Photo courtesy of U.S. Marine Corps.
15:24 Explosions rang out over Jerusalem, AFP reporters heard, shortly after the Israeli military warned that it had detected incoming missiles from Iran.
15:00 The US strikes on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf targeted military sites but left Iran's oil infrastructure alone for now, Trump said on social media. But he warned that if Iran or anyone else interferes with the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, he will reconsider his decision not to “wipe out the Oil Infrastructure.”
Iran’s joint military command reiterated its threat to attack US-linked oil and energy facilities in the region if the Islamic Republic's oil infrastructure is hit.
Ebrahim Zolfaghari, spokesperson for Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, warned they will target “all oil, economic and energy infrastructures belonging to oil companies across the region that have American shares or cooperate with America.”
Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency said the US strikes caused no damage to the island's oil infrastructure. It said at least 15 explosions followed the strikes, which it said targeted an air defence facility, a naval base, the airport control tower, and an offshore oil company’s helicopter hangar.
US Central Command released a video showing the strike and saying it destroyed naval mine storage facilities, missile storage bunkers, and other military sites.
Israel earlier announced another wave of strikes in Iran targeting infrastructure, and said its air force had hit more than 200 targets in the last 24 hours.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said over 15,000 enemy targets have been struck, more than 1,000 a day since the war began.
A view of Iran's Kharg Island, which hosts the country's main crude export terminal and is responsible for the overwhelming majority of its oil shipments to the world, about 30 kilometres south of the mainland in the north of the Gulf. AFP
14:30 Over 1,300 Iranian civilians have been killed in US-Israeli strikes, and more than 10,000 injured since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran on 2 March, according to Iranian authorities.
The death toll includes at least 165 schoolchildren who were killed in a US air strike on a girls’ school on the first day of the war against Iran.
In this picture obtained from Iran's ISNA news agency last week, mourners in the city of Isfahan attend the funeral of those killed in the US-Israeli war on Iran. AFP
14:00 The Iranian Army announced that it had launched a drone operation against the intelligence organization and Unit 8200 of the Israeli army.
According to the statement, as reported by Tasnim, "as part of the drone operations that commenced in the early hours of the day, Aman (military intelligence directorate of the Israeli regime), along with the 8200 cyber operations units and data processing centers, as well as the gathering locations of several Israeli fighter jets in the occupied territories, were the targets of the drone strikes carried out by the Islamic Republic's Army."
11:00 Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas called on Iran to refrain from targeting neighbouring countries, while affirming Tehran's right to defend itself against Israel and the United States.
"While affirming the right of the Islamic Republic of Iran to respond to this aggression by all available means in accordance with international norms and laws, the movement calls on the brothers in Iran to avoid targeting neighbouring countries," the resistance movement stated.
Hamas also called on the international community to "work towards halting" the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran immediately.
Mourners carry the bodies of two Palestinian policemen killed in an Israeli military strike during their funeral in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip. AP
Hamas previously condemned the killing of Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the war as a "heinous crime," openly acknowledging his longstanding support for the Palestinian movement.
"He provided all forms of political, diplomatic, and military support to our people, our cause, and our resistance," the movement said soon after the killing of Khamenei.
The Hamas statement comes as the Israeli occupation army, in tandem with its wars on Iran and Lebanon, continued to carry out daily deadly strikes on Gaza in violation of the October 2025 ceasefire deal, killing and wounding hundreds of Palestinians.
10:00 The US embassy in Baghdad was hit by an attack on Saturday following airstrikes on the Iran-aligned group Kataeb Hezbollah in Baghdad that killed three of its members, including a commander.
A cloud of black smoke rose above the US diplomatic mission shortly after the sound of explosions on Saturday morning.
Two security officials told AFP the embassy complex was struck by a drone.
It is the second time the US embassy has come under attack in Baghdad since the start of the war.
The first airstrike hit a house in the Arasat neighbourhood, where several Iran-aligned groups have a presence. Two hours later, a second attack struck a vehicle in the Nahrawan district.
Security sources initially said two group members had been killed, including "a key figure" in the house, and another in the attack on the vehicle.
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