THE United States bombed Iran for a twelfth consecutive night early yesterday, and Iranian forces struck back across the Gulf, hitting American installations in Kuwait and Jordan and setting a tanker ablaze in the Strait of Hormuz.
US Central Command said it concluded the latest round of strikes at 2.30am GMT, listing maritime capabilities, missile and drone storage, coastal surveillance and air defences among its targets, without saying where in Iran they lay.
A local official told the Mehr news agency that American missiles landed near a passenger terminal at Shalamcheh, close to the Iraqi border.
Two people were killed, Khuzestan’s deputy governor told state broadcaster IRIB, and 11 were reported wounded.
At least three cities in Khuzestan were struck overnight, among them Ramshir, where an asphalt plant was reported hit.
Explosions were heard at Sirik, overlooking the strait, and at Jask, and a missile came down outside Andimeshk.
A substation beside Bushehr’s nuclear plant was hit, cutting power for hours. Two naval search and rescue vessels were badly damaged in Hormozgan.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had ‘attacked and destroyed a large warehouse of military equipment, a Patriot missile defence system, and a hangar of American MQ9 drones’ at Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait.
Addressing Kuwaitis, it said: ‘So it is America that has violated your territorial integrity and sovereignty, not us. We are attacking lands occupied by the American army, an army that knows nothing but crime.’
In Jordan it said it had ‘destroyed a radar of the American THAAD missile defence system with lightning strikes’.
‘A Patriot system and a C-RAM radar were also targeted and destroyed, and the fuel tanks of the American base were set on fire,’ it said, adding that ‘a large helicopter equipment warehouse and a helicopter repair and maintenance shed were also set on fire and destroyed’.
At sea, the IRGC said an explosion set a tanker alight after it tried the southern route off Oman, and two other vessels turned back.
All three were acting under American orders, it said, and had ‘intended to pass through the mine-laid route south of the Strait of Hormuz’.
‘Any ship that is deceived by America and intends to pass through without coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran will suffer the same fate.’
The UK Maritime Trade Operations Centre reported a ship hit 70 nautical miles off the Saudi coast, with a fire on board and no mention of casualties.
In the Red Sea, the Ansarallah said they hit two Saudi tankers, the Encelia and the Layla, with cruise and ballistic missiles and drones.
The Saudi news agency confirmed the Encelia was struck.
They called it ‘siege for siege’, saying Riyadh had besieged Yemen for 12 years and that Yemen would now answer in kind.
