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BBC News with Neil Nunes.
Israel has struck Iran's state broadcaster, saying it has dismantled it, as attacks on Tehran continued deep into the night. Israel had earlier called on the residents to leave the area. The Iranian Red Crescent says more than 550 people have been killed so far. The U.S. says six of its service members have died. Bahman Kalbasi from BBC Persian reports on the attacks on Iran. "The targets that we've seen are mainly military as well as nuclear sites that we just got reports that were hit again yesterday. But they are expanding to police force headquarters and IRGC centers inside the cities. And therefore we have seen horrific images of hospitals being damaged as a result, civilians being killed." The United Arab Emirates says Iran has fired a barrage of ballistic missiles towards it, the latest attack against Gulf nations allied to the U.S., including on their oil and gas infrastructure. Pauses in production in Qatar and elsewhere have led to a sharp rise in fuel prices. Iran's Revolutionary Guard says it would not allow a single drop of oil to leave the region. Israel has also launched a fresh aerial assault on the Lebanese capital, Beirut. The IDF said it was targeting command centers and storage facilities belonging to Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran. The bombardment followed an evacuation order to everyone in Beirut's southern suburbs. Wyre Davies is in Beirut. Israel has been quite deliberately and quite methodically attacking both named individuals and Hezbollah infrastructure. And according to the Lebanese health ministry, more than 50 people have been killed today. The worrying thing for the Lebanese government and for the people of Lebanon is that this will now escalate over the next few days and weeks because Israel basically doesn't trust the Lebanese government to fully be able to dismantle Hezbollah. So Israel is gonna take it upon itself to do that job. The U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Washington hopes the Iranian people can overthrow the government in Tehran. In the meantime, he said the key objectives for the American military were to destroy Iran's ballistic missile capability. "What they are trying to do and have been trying to do for a very long time is build a conventional weapons capability as a shield where they can hide behind, meaning there would come a point where they have so many conventional missiles, so many drones, and it can inflict so much damage that no one can do anything about their nuclear program." Mr. Rubio said the U.S. did not currently envisage deploying ground forces, though he said President Trump had that option. World news from the BBC. The French President Emmanuel Macron says he will increase the country's nuclear stockpile to take account of what he called "new times." Visiting a submarine base, Mr. Macron said France would stop disclosing how many nuclear arms it has. He also said his country was ready to let allied European nations temporarily host its atomic warheads. The United States has imposed sanctions on the Rwandan army, naming some top military officials over Rwanda's role in the fighting in neighboring eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Rwanda's President Paul Kagame has frequently denied providing support for M23 rebels but his claims have been dismissed by the U.N. Here's David Bamford. Rwanda and Congo signed a peace deal in December in Washington as part of President Trump's push to broker peace in the region and attract billions of dollars in Western investment. But the fighting has spread even beyond the current front lines, with M23 acknowledging it had used drones to attack the key mining city of Kisangani. This blatant violation appears to have crossed the line with the Trump administration. Financial sanctions have been imposed directly on key Rwandan military officials and the Rwandan army in its entirety. Ecuador has announced a joint operation with the United States to combat the drug trafficking which has sparked violent gang wars. The President Daniel Noboa said regional allies were taking part in a new phase of Ecuador's war on drugs which use its ports to smuggle cocaine to international markets. Cuba has arrested 10 Panamanians accusing them of making subversive placards denouncing the island's communist regime. The Interior Ministry said they were due to be paid more than $1,000 each to take part in the operation. Cuba is on alert for a possible U.S. attack. BBC World News. |