key facilities and kill top generals and scientists – a barrage it said was necessary before its adversary got any closer to building an atomic weapon. Iran retaliated Friday by unleashing scores of ballistic missiles on Israel, where explosions flared in the skies over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and shook the buildings below. “We will not allow them to escape safely from this great crime they committed,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a recorded message in which he vowed revenge. An Associated Press reporter saw smoke rising in Tel Aviv after an apparent missile strike. A Tel Aviv area hospital stated they were treating 15 injured civilians. US ground-based air defence systems in the region are helping to shoot down Iranian missiles, said a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the measures.

Israel’s ongoing airstrikes and intelligence operation and Iran’s retaliation raised concerns about all-out war between the countries and propelled the region, already on edge, into even greater upheaval. Israel had long threatened such a strike, and successive American administrations had sought to prevent it, fearing it would ignite a wider conflict across the Middle East and possibly be ineffective at destroying Iran’s dispersed and hardened nuclear programme. But a confluence of developments triggered by Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack – plus the re-election of US President Donald Trump – created the conditions that allowed Israel to finally follow through on its threats. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the US was informed in advance of the attack. (Jamaica Gleaner)