1 of 4 | Fire and smoke rise from an oil warehouse in Tehran early Sunday morning after Israel continues strikes against Iran’s nuclear and energy facilities. Photo by Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA-EFE
June 14 (UPI) — Smoke and flames filled the sky over Tehran as Israel struck oil and gas facilities in the Iranian capital and targeted more nuclear facilities during attacks that carried on into Sunday morning.
Israel attacked the Shahr Rey oil refinery in south Tehran and the Shahran fuel and gas depot in Tehran during attacks late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, The New York Times reported.
Officials with Iran’s oil ministry confirmed the attack on the Shahran depot, which has at least 11 storage tanks and is located in an affluent area Iran’s capital.
The attacks came after Iran launched several missiles into Israel.
“If [Iranian Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei continues to fire missiles at the Israeli home front, Tehran will burn,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said of the strikes.
Israeli warplanes also struck several nuclear program sites in Tehran, including experimental laboratories, The New York Times reported.
Aerial attacks exchanged over the weekend
Iran and Israel exchanged more airstrikes overnight Friday, throughout Saturday and into the overnight hours after Israel mainly attacked Iranian nuclear and military targets two days ago.
Though some missiles struck civilian populations, residents in both nations said they support their government’s airstrikes. The alternatives are worse, they say: Iran developing an atomic bomb against the Jewish state and Israel toppling the Islamic state’s government.
Late Saturday, Israel Defense Forces said its Air Force was attacking military targets in Tehran while intercepting missiles launched from Iran. Air raid sirens were activated in southern Israel, according to the IDF, and people were told to go into shelters.
The military chief spokesperson Effie Defrin said there has “a series of attacks that has not stopped for nearly 40 hours and include more than 150 targets. The focus of the attacks in the past 24 hours, Tehran,” the BBC reported.
On Saturday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned that “Tehran will burn” if drone and missile attacks continue. In a video address Saturday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “we will strike every site and every target of the Ayatollah’s regime.”
“We hit the uranium enrichment facility which is vital for the production of bombs. We also hit the leading team of scientists who lead these projects. And this will definitely set them back, and it’s possible that it will set them back for many years,” said Netanyahu, who conveyed his security cabinet.
On Saturday night, he made an appeal to Americans, saying: “Our enemy is your enemy. And by doing what we’re doing, we’re dealing with something that will threaten all of us sooner or later.
“This is what Israel is doing with the clear support of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and the American people, and many others in the world.”
On Friday night, he directly addressed the Iranian people, calling on civilians to “stand up and let your voices be heard.”
Iran’s Maj. Gen. Mohammad Pakpour said in a letter to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.
“Soon, the gates of hell will be opened upon this child-killing regime. The crime that the terrorist Zionist regime committed today in its aggression against the national security and territorial integrity of the Islamic Republic will certainly not go unanswered,” Pakpour wrote.
Situation in Iran
Israeli forces for the first time are operating freely in Tehran’s airspace, after eliminating many of Iran’s air defense systems, an Israel Defense Forces official said.
“Our Air Force pilots flew for about two and a half hours over Tehran, alongside UAVs that remain airborne 24/7, surveilling the area and concluding with attacks and intelligence gathering,” Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said in a briefing Saturday. “We’ve established aerial freedom of action from western Iran to Tehran.”
More than 70 Israeli jet fighters struck 40 targets in the Tehran area overnight, including surface-to-air missile infrastructure, Israel Air Force Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar said.
An Israeli drone struck a refinery in Iran’s South Pars in the Persian Gulf on Saturday, semiofficial Iranian Fars News Agency reported. Gas production has been suspended there, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
Smoke was also seen Saturday in Iran’s oil refinery in Abadan, off the coast of the Persian Gulf, the Jerusalem Post reported.
At least 78 people died in the Israeli strikes, including senior military officials, Iran’s UN envoy Amir Saeid Iravani said Friday. More than 320 people were injured, most of them civilians.
Iran’s Ministry of Health said a drone struck a children’s hospital in Tehran. Hospitals have been caring for more than 800 people injured in the attacks with the most civilians, Fars reported.
Israel said “over 20 commanders in the Iranian regime’s security apparatus” have been killed since the start of the attacks.
Iranian state media reported 60 people, including 20 children, were killed after an Israeli strike hit a residential building in Tehran’s Shahrak-e Shahid Chamran residential compound, while Iranian television showed workers removing debris from the site of a 14-story building.
Israel’s military said nine scientists and experts involved in Iran’s nuclear program died. Nuclear facilities in Fordow and Isfahan were not extensively damaged, the spokesperson of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said. According to the spokesperson, there is no concern for contamination.
The Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant is buried deep in the mountains near Qom in northern Iran and is one of the locations that Israel and its allies have feared Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran’s Taekwondo Federation said three of its members were killed in Israeli attacks on Tehran, which Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which lost several of its leaders during the first Israeli airstrikes,