US launches ‘heavy’ strikes on Iran after attempted attack on American troops

The US military says it has completed a “heavy wave” of strikes against Iran in retaliation for Tuesday’s attempted ballistic missile attacks on American forces.

Centcom said it hit “dozens” of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets in response to Iran’s firing on US bases in Jordan and at ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian state media said the latest strikes had killed three people, including a two-year-old child, on Qeshm island, while other locations were also hit in the south and west of the country.

The latest hostilities come on a week that has seen the conflict expand, with the first publicly announced joint US-Saudi strikes targeting Iranian proxies in Iraq.

Iran and the US have engaged in escalating strikes and counter-strikes since a ceasefire in April, aimed at pausing the months-long war, fell apart in June.

The US has blockaded Iranian ports and bombed Iranian sites, while Iran has fired missiles and drones at US assets in countries across the Middle East and targeted shipping in the economically important Strait of Hormuz, connecting the Gulf and Arabian Sea.

On Wednesday, news outlet Axios cited an unnamed US official as saying that Trump had met Saudi defence minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, who had conveyed that Saudi Arabia wants to de-escalate tensions. The BBC has contacted the White House for comment.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian government said a fire at a port on Wednesday had been caused by a drone attack. Egypt, a US ally, has not previously been directly attacked during the war.

The US-Iran conflict has reignited after several days of relative calm.

For days, both sides halted strikes as talks apparently restarted in hopes of some type of diplomatic solution. Trump called them “very friendly negotiations”, though Tehran denied any discussions were happening.

But following the Iranian missile attack on a US base in Jordan on Tuesday, Trump vowed to retaliate, telling reporters at the White House: “We’re going to be hitting them very hard because it’s our turn to hit them. They know it’s coming. They asked us not to do it.”