Middle East crisis live: US launches new round of airstrikes to ‘swiftly punish’ Iran after American troops killed

Fresh attack comes after Iran’s supreme leader warned Washington would pay for ‘seeking to escalate’ the conflict

• Two US troops killed and one missing in Jordan after Iranian attacks

The US military said it launched new airstrikes against Iran to “swiftly punish” the country’s Revolutionary Guard for an attack in Jordan that killed two American service members, left one missing and four requiring hospitalisation.

Speaking to the New York Post, the US president, Donald Trump, described the deaths as a “shame”. “They did it because they don’t want to see Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said of the troops. “And it just shows you how bad (the Iranians) are,” he added.

The two US troop deaths on Friday were its first from direct Iranian fire since the opening days of the war. US defence secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X: “Their sacrifice only stiffens our resolve.”

Iran appeared to target Saudi Arabia as ​well as other US Gulf allies and Jordan on Saturday after US attacks on Iranian bridges, power facilities ‌and other infrastructure.

Mojtaba Khamenei said US actions had shown that Trump’s signature was “utterly worthless and devoid of credibility”, warning of “even heavier costs and further humiliation” for ‌the US, in a statement carried by the ‌official social media accounts of Iran’s supreme leader and state media.

The American deaths brought the number of US service members killed since the war began to 16, while more than 430 have been injured. Iran’s health ministry said on ‌Saturday that 50 people had been killed ​and more than 500 injured in US strikes ​on the country over the past three weeks.

In Iraq, a base near Irbil of the Kurdistan Freedom party, an Iranian Kurdish dissident group, was struck by a drone early on Sunday, wounding eight of its members, according to a military official with the group.

The most significant damage from Iranian strikes on Saturday occurred in Kuwait, where a water desalination plant and an oil facility were hit, according to the Kuwait authorities and the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation. It was the second attack against a desalination plant in two days in the tiny nation that depends on desalination for 90% of its drinking water.

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