Middle East crisis live: US and Iranian forces race to recover missing pilot from downed jet; Israel bombards Beirut

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said it was combing an area near where plane came down in south-western Iran; Israeli military strikes ‘Hezbollah infrastructure’ in Lebanon capital

• US F-15E jet confirmed shot down over Iran as Tehran releases wreckage images

Hello and welcome to our continuing live coverage of the US-Israeli war on Iran and its impact on the region, the world and the global economy.

Iranian and American forces were racing each other early on Saturday to recover a crew member of the first US fighter jet to go down inside Iran since the start of the war.

Tehran rejected a US proposal for a 48-hour ceasefire, said Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency, citing an unnamed source. There was no immediate comment from the US. Earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that Iran had officially told mediators it was unwilling to meet with US officials in Islamabad in the coming days.

The UN force in Lebanon said a blast at one of its positions had wounded three peacekeepers, two of them seriously, in the third such incident in a week.

Israeli fire killed a man in Syria’s Quneitra province in the south near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Syrian state media said. The man was killed in an attack by “an Israeli tank”, the Sana agency said, while state TV said a car was targeted.

An Egyptian national was killed and four others wounded after a fire at a gas complex in Abu Dhabi, caused by falling debris from an intercepted attack, the government media office said. Two of the four people hurt were from Egypt, while the others were from Pakistan, it said.

Trump asked lawmakers to approve a $1.5tr defence budget for 2027 as the US faces rising costs from its war with Iran and mounting global security commitments. The proposal would lift Pentagon spending by more than 40% in a single year – the sharpest increase since the second world war.

The US embassy in Lebanon said Iran and allied groups could seek to target universities in the country, where Tehran-backed Hezbollah is at war with Israel and Israeli troops are carrying out a ground invasion.

Three tankers, including one co-owned by a Japanese company, crossed the strait of Hormuz by hugging close to Oman’s shore –a rare transit route – maritime traffic data showed on Friday.
With agencies

Continue reading...