Tehran: Israeli strikes killed the intelligence chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, as the Islamic republic on Monday defied threats from US President Donald Trump to devastate civilian infrastructure if it does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The Guards posted on Telegram on Monday that their intelligence chief Majid Khademi had been killed "at dawn" in US-Israeli strikes.
Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz said his country's military had been behind the strike, saying that it had been a response to Iran's attacks on civilian areas in Israel.
Katz called Khademi "one of the direct perpetrators of these war crimes and one of the top three officials in the organisation", and said of Iran's leaders: "We will continue to hunt them one by one."
In an attack on Trump, Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, posted on social media that "our whole region is going to burn because you insist on following (Israel Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu's commands."
In Tehran, many residents seemed outwardly indifferent to Trump's invective, with young Iranians exercising, flying kites and holding picnics in a large park in the city's west on Sunday.
Gulf nations reported a wave of fresh strikes from Sunday to Monday, with Kuwait saying six were hurt in an attack on a residential area.
The United Arab Emirates also said on Monday that its air defences were responding to a missile and drone attack, and that one person was injured in an industrial area of Abu Dhabi.
The Israeli military and medics said a missile fired from Iran hit a residential building in the northern city of Haifa.
Firefighters said two people had been killed and two more were missing under the rubble.
In Iran, local media reported several attacks on residential areas over Tehran on Monday, while the state broadcaster said that gas outages hit parts of the capital after a strike on a university. — AFP
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