US launches ninth night of strikes on Iran as it hits out at Gulf neighbours
This screen grab made on Jul 19, 2026, from handout video footage released by the US Central Command on Jul 18, 2026, shows US forces launching what the military says are precision strikes targeting Iranian military capabilities for the eighth consecutive night. New violence shook the Middle East on Jul 20, 2026, as the US announced another wave of attacks on Iran.
(Image: US Central Command via AFP)
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TEHRAN: New violence shook the Middle East early on Monday (Jul 20) as the United States announced another wave of attacks on Iran, Kuwait said it was intercepting drones and Tehran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed to have hit an “enemy command centre” in Syria.
Bahrain’s interior ministry also said that its air raid sirens had sounded and urged citizens and residents to head to “the nearest safe place”.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) late on Sunday announced it was beginning a wave of strikes on Iran for the ninth night in a row.
The attacks were aimed at “degrading Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners” in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the post on X said.
A preliminary deal aimed at ending the war has collapsed as the foes fight to break a deadlock over the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway key to the world’s oil supply.
Since the start of the war on Feb 28, Iran has struck back by targeting US allies and military assets in its own neighbourhood, and by virtually blocking the strait through which a fifth of world oil supplies transited prior to the war.
Kuwaiti air defences were “engaging hostile drone attacks following Iranian aggression”, its army said early on Monday.
“The General Staff of the Army notes that any explosions heard are a result of air defence systems intercepting the hostile attacks,” a post on the official X account of the Kuwait Army said.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Monday they had launched a “surprise attack” on an enemy command centre in Syria, in a statement reported by state news agency IRNA.
They announced “a surprise attack on the enemy special operations command centre in the Al-Tanf region of Syria in revenge for the blood of martyred soldiers of Iranshahr”, a city in southeast Iran, in an IRNA statement posted on Telegram.
Iran said on Sunday it had targeted two US bases in Kuwait in response to more than a week of intensifying attacks, which Tehran says have hit transport and infrastructure sites, including an under-construction nuclear power plant.
Jordan also reported intercepting missiles on Sunday.
CASUALTY COUNTS
The fresh rounds of violence came after a weekend in which the US announced three new US military fatalities and one service member missing in action.
Two were killed during Iranian missile and drone attacks on Jordan on Friday, while another service member died in northern Iraq during the controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian drone, CENTCOM said.
President Donald Trump said on Sunday the latest US strikes on Iran “hit them very hard again tonight” in honour of the American fatalities.
The deaths brought to 17 the confirmed number of American military fatalities since the US and Israel launched the war with a wave of strikes on Iranian targets on Feb 28.
That toll is dwarfed by Iran’s reported casualties. Its health ministry said on Friday that 50 people had been killed in recent fighting and more than 500 hurt.
The renewed violence was initially sparked by Iranian attacks on ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
Iran closed the conduit for oil and gas shipments after the war broke out, and control over it has become leverage in its negotiations with Washington, which has reimposed its own blockade on Iranian ports.
On Sunday, the Revolutionary Guards said two ships attempting to transit the strait were stopped.
“Four violating ships, with the mischief and support of American terrorists … intended to disrupt and exit the Strait of Hormuz via an unsafe route, two of which had an accident and were stopped in place,” the Guards said, adding that the other two ships abandoned their journey.
Hope for a political settlement to the war has dimmed, though mediators have attempted to bring both sides back to the negotiating table.
Iran’s central military commander, Ali Abdollahi, warned that further US aggression would face a “decisive and devastating response”, according to a statement carried by state television on Sunday.
The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said the US had attacked the unfinished Darkhovin nuclear power plant in the country’s southwest, calling it “an aggressive and brutal act contrary to international law”.
The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said it was looking into the report, noting the plant “contained no nuclear material when last visited by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency)”.
Nonetheless, IAEA director Rafael Grossi reiterated his “call for military restraint in the vicinity of all nuclear-related sites”, the agency said in a post on X.
Source: AFP/rl
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