Three US service members have been killed in action as part of US military operations against Iran, the US Central Command (Centcom) confirmed on Sunday, marking the first American casualties since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday.
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Five additional personnel have been reported seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury, the US military said. Several others sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions and are in the process of being returned to duty.
President Donald Trump told Fox News on Sunday that 48 leaders have been killed in US and Israeli strikes on Iran.
“It’s moving along. It’s moving along rapidly. This has been this way for 47 years,” he said. “It’s moving along rapidly. Nobody can believe the success we’re having, 48 leaders are gone in one shot. And it’s moving along rapidly.”
Trump also told CNBC that US military operations in Iran are “ahead of schedule.”
Trump said that the US has destroyed nine Iranian navy ships and largely destroyed Iran’s naval headquarters.
“I have just been informed that we have destroyed and sunk 9 Iranian Naval Ships, some of them relatively large and important,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “We are going after the rest — They will soon be floating at the bottom of the sea, also! In a different attack, we largely destroyed their Naval Headquarters.”
Centcom also confirmed that an “Iranian Jamaran-class corvette” (ship) was hit by US forces and is “currently sinking to the bottom of the Gulf of Oman.”
“As the President said, members of Iran’s armed forces, IRGC and police ‘must lay down your weapons.’ Abandon ship,” Centcom added.
Iran targeted the USS Abraham Lincoln, but the “missiles launched didn’t even come close,” according to Centcom.
“The Lincoln was not hit. The missiles launched didn’t even come close. The Lincoln continues to launch aircraft in support of Centcom’s relentless campaign to defend the American people by eliminating threats from the Iranian regime,” Centcom said.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps had earlier claimed that four ballistic missiles had targeted the ship.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the firebrand former Iranian president who gained international notoriety by calling for Israel’s erasure and denying the Holocaust, appears to have been killed in Saturday’s military strikes, according to local media.
Several Iranian outlets ran reports confirming Ahmadinejad’s death on Sunday after it had initially been reported as confirmed by ILNA, a semi-official news agency.
The report said the former president had been killed in strikes on his home in the Narmak district of Tehran. His Wikipedia page had been updated on Sunday to refer to him in the past tense and suggest he was deceased.
ILNA later retreated somewhat from its original report in a later post that was headlined “Is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad martyred?” citing an unnamed source who denied Ahmadinejad’s death “without providing further information.”
The death toll from a missile strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran has risen to almost 150, according to Iranian state media.
Mizan news agency, the official news outlet of Iran’s judiciary, reported that the number killed in Saturday’s strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab in southern Iran had risen to 148 killed, with 95 others wounded. The school appears to be the worst mass casualty event of the US-Israeli-led bombing campaign on Iran so far.
Footage from Minab shows hundreds of people gathered around the partially collapsed, smoking building, with rubble strewn across the street and men digging through it for victims. Screams can be heard in the background. In some of the images, schoolbags and textbooks are being pulled from the debris.
The school building appears to be adjacent to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps barracks.
Capt Tim Hawkins, the spokesperson for US Central Command, said the US was “aware of reports concerning civilian harm resulting from ongoing military operations. We take these reports seriously and are looking into them.”
At least nine people are reported dead and 11 are reported missing after an Iranian missile hit a residential neighbourhood in central Israel’s Beit Shemesh area — the deadliest strike in the country since the war began on Saturday.
Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) rescue service said additional teams are treating and evacuating 28 casualties to hospital including two in serious condition, two in moderate condition, and 24 in mild condition.
Workers are currently searching for people feared to be trapped under the rubble.
The IDF said the Israeli air force has launched a “new wave of strikes in the heart of Tehran” on Sunday.
Israel and the US carried out another round of heavy attacks across Iran, marking the second day of a military effort aimed at removing the country’s government. The campaign has pushed the Middle East into a broader regional confrontation with no clear end or predictable outcome.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that despite the attacks on his country, “nothing has changed in our military capability.”
He told ABC’s This Week that in only a few hours after Iran was struck, Tehran retaliated against Israeli targets and American bases “and we have continued to do so. So, our military is in place. They are capable enough to defend our country.”
When asked whether a diplomatic deal with the Trump administration was still possible, he said, “We negotiated with the United States twice in the past 12 months. And in both cases, they attacked us in the middle of negotiation. And that has become a very bitter experience for us.”
He said “a deal was at our reach, and we left Geneva happily with the understanding that we can reach a deal next time we meet.”
Trump said on Sunday that Iran’s new leadership wants to talk to him and that he has agreed, according to an interview with The Atlantic.
“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them. They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long,” Trump said from his Florida residence.
The president added that some of the Iranians involved in the previous negotiations were no longer alive. “Most of those people are gone. Some of the people we were dealing with are gone, because that was a big—that was a big hit.”
A warehouse at a French naval base was hit in a drone attack that targeted the port of Abu Dhabi. Catherine Vautrin, the French armed forces minister, confirmed the strike, writing “A hangar at our naval base, adjacent to that of the Emiratis, was struck in a drone attack that targeted the port of Abu Dhabi.”
She added: “The damage is purely material and limited. No injuries are to be regretted. The vigilance of our forces is at a maximum in the face of a situation that is evolving hour by hour.”
Britain’s defence secretary, John Healey, revealed that two missiles had been fired in the direction of Cyprus, home to two of the UK’s most strategic military facilities abroad.
“This is a really serious and deteriorating situation, (with) rising risks of increasing Iranian indiscriminate retaliatory attacks,” he said.
“We had two missiles fired in the direction of Cyprus. We don’t believe they were targeted at Cyprus, but nevertheless, it’s an example of how there is a very real and rising threat from a regime that is lashing out widely across the region, and that requires us to act.”
Cyprus’s President Nikos Christodoulides said he had spoken to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who “confirmed clearly and unequivocally that Cyprus was not a target.”
An extraordinary meeting of Cyprus’ national security council will be convened following the revelations.
NATO is continuing to closely follow developments in Iran and the region, a spokesperson for the alliance’s military headquarters said.
NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe, US General Alexus Grynkewich, “continues to speak actively and regularly with military leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, and with NATO’s secretary general.”
The top commander “has and will continue to adjust NATO’s very strong force posture to ensure the security of its 32 member nations and to defend the Alliance from potential threats, such as ballistic missiles or unmanned aerial vehicles, emanating from this or other regions.”
In reaction to the news of the three US service members killed in action, US Senator Mark Warner posted: “My deepest condolences to the families of the service members killed in action abroad. My heart is heavy thinking of their loss.”
Senator Roger Marshall posted: “Our hearts are heavy this morning as we learn of the loss of American service members overseas. We are praying for their loved ones, for the safety of those still in combat, and a swift end to this conflict.”
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