Iran and Israel launched new missile strikes at each other on Wednesday as the air war between the two longtime enemies entered a sixth day.
The Israeli military said two barrages of Iranian missiles were launched toward Israel in the first two hours of Wednesday morning. Explosions were heard over Tel Aviv.
Israel told residents in a southwestern area of Tehran to evacuate so its air force could strike Iranian military installations.
Iranian news websites said Israel was attacking a university linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the east of the capital.
Iranian news websites said Israel was also attacking a university linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the country’s east, and the Khojir ballistic missile facility near Tehran, which was also targeted by Israeli airstrikes last October.
Meanwhile, explosions were heard in Tehran early on Wednesday as intense Israeli airstrikes again targeted Iran’s capital in a conflict that a human rights group said had killed at least 585 people across Iran and wounded 1,326 others.
Iran has not been publishing regular death tolls during the conflict and has minimized casualties in the past. Its last update, issued on Monday, put the death toll at 224 people killed and 1,277 others wounded.
Iran has retaliated against Israel’s airstrike campaign by launching some 400 missiles and hundreds of drones at Israel. So far, 24 people have been killed in Israel.
Meanwhile, Iran’s police forces intercepted 14 drones and identified hostile drone-producing workshops and drone-carrying vehicles across various provinces, police spokesperson Saeed Montazerolmahdi said on Wednesday according to the Iranian Labour News Agency.
Two flights from Larnaca, Cyprus, landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport on Wednesday morning, airport spokesperson Lisa Dvir said, marking the first flights to bring Israelis abroad back home since the Israel-Iran conflict began.
Footage showed the first plane gliding down the tarmac after landing in Tel Aviv.
Israel’s minister of transportation, Miri Regev, greeted the captain in the airport’s control tower.
“We are waiting for you here with great anticipation,” she told her in Hebrew. “Very excited, first rescue flight.”
Israel closed its airspace to commercial flights because of the multiple volleys of ballistic missiles launched toward the country each day by Iran.
Tens of thousands of Israelis are stranded abroad, according to Israeli media reports.
Chinese authorities are advising all their citizens still in Iran to leave as quickly as possible, citing the “increasing scale and intensity of the Iran-Israel conflict” and the possibility that land borders may soon be closed.
No figures on the number of Chinese nationals in the country were given in the notice issued online Tuesday by the Chinese embassy.
The two countries have long maintained strong trade ties, with China a major buyer of Iranian crude oil and Iran an importer of Chinese consumer goods.
Addresses were given in the notice for the Razi crossing with Turkey, the Nordooz crossing with Armenia, the Astara crossing with Azerbaijan and the Bajgiran crossing with Turkmenistan.
Agencies
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