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From Muay Thai in Thailand to ice hockey in Canada, you don’t need to be a mega fan to enjoy the atmosphere at live sporting events.
An Iranian missile on Saturday hit the Israeli town of Dimona, home to a nuclear facility, in what the Islamic republic said was retaliation for strikes on its own nuclear site at Natanz.
Dimona hosts a facility just outside the main town widely believed to possess the Middle East‘s sole nuclear arsenal, although Israel has never admitted to possessing nuclear weapons.
Iran’s atomic energy organisation earlier accused the US and Israel of hitting the Natanz enrichment complex, but noted there was “no leakage of radioactive materials reported”.
The Israeli army told AFP there had been a “direct missile hit on a building” in Dimona, with Magen David Adom first responders saying their teams treated 33 people injured at multiple sites, including a 10-year-old boy in serious condition with shrapnel wounds.
“There was extensive damage and chaos at the scene,” paramedic Karmel Cohen said.
The Israeli military said that “interception attempts were carried out” after the missiles were detected.
Iranian missile struck town housing nuclear facility: Iran war shows ‘no signs of abating’
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Images shared by Israeli media showed an object hurtling out of the sky at high speed before crashing into the town.
Iranian state TV said the attack was a “response” to the earlier strike on Natanz.
Following that attack, UN nuclear watchdog chief, Rafael Grossi, had repeated a “call for military restraint to avoid any risk of a nuclear accident”.
The Natanz facility hosts underground centrifuges to enrich uranium for Iran’s disputed nuclear programme and was already damaged in last year’s June war.
Asked about Natanz, the Israeli military said it was “not aware of a strike”.
The Israeli military also said Saturday that it had struck a facility embedded within a Tehran university “utilised by the Iranian terror regime’s military industries and ballistic missiles array to develop nuclear weapon components and weapons”.
Hormuz base
Three weeks of heavy US-Israeli bombardment appear to have done little to blunt Iran’s ability to retaliate with missile and drone attacks across the region.
The United Arab Emirates said Saturday it faced aerial attacks after Iran warned it against allowing attacks from its territory on disputed islands near the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
Iran has choked off the vital waterway, which is used for a fifth of global crude trade during peacetime.
Admiral Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command, said US warplanes had dropped 5,000-pound bombs on an underground facility on Iran’s coast that was storing anti-ship cruise missiles, mobile launchers and other equipment, leaving Iran’s ability to threaten the waterway “degraded”.
“We not only took out the facility, but also destroyed intelligence support sites and missile radar relays that were used to monitor ship movements,” Cooper said in a video statement, revealing details of a strike first announced on Tuesday.
A statement from the leaders of mainly European countries, including the UK, France, Italy and Germany, but also South Korea, Australia, the UAE and Bahrain, meanwhile condemned the “de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces”.
“We express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait,” they said.
US President Donald Trump has slammed NATO allies as “cowards” and urged them to secure the strait.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran had only imposed restrictions on vessels from countries involved in attacks against Iran, and would offer assistance to others that stayed out of the conflict.
The standoff in the strait has sent crude oil prices soaring, with a barrel of North Sea Brent crude up more than 50 percent over the past month and now comfortably more than $105.
Remarkable endurance?
Analysts say Iran’s Islamic government has survived the loss of its top leaders and that its strike capacity is proving more durable than expected.
“They’re showing a lot of resilience that we didn’t perhaps expect, that the US didn’t expect, when it took this on,” Neil Quilliam of Chatham House told the London-based think tank’s podcast, adding the Islamic republic had deep roots.
Tehran, meanwhile, marked the end of Ramadan as the war was entering its fourth week.
Iran’s supreme leader traditionally leads Eid al-Fitr prayers, but Mojtaba Khamenei, who came to power earlier this month after his father Ali Khamenei was killed, has remained out of the public eye.
Instead, the head of the judiciary, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, attended prayers at central Tehran’s overflowing Imam Khomeini grand mosque.
“The atmosphere of the New Year was spreading through the city,” said Farid, an advertising executive reached by AFP through an online message.
But “the thought that some people could be dying right at the New Year dinner table was painful”, he added.
Shiva, a 31-year-old painter, told AFP that the “only common feeling these days is uncertainty”.
“The only night we felt genuinely happy was the night Ali Khamenei was reportedly killed,” she said.
Diego Garcia
Iran launched what a UK official told AFP was an “unsuccessful” ballistic-missile attack on the US-UK military base on Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean around 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) from Iran.
If the salvo had reached its target it would have been the longest-range Iranian strike yet. Before the war, according to the US Congressional Research Service, Washington was aware of Iranian missiles that could reach 3,000 kilometres.
Israel’s military chief Eyal Zamir said Iran had used a “two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of 4,000 kilometers”.
“These missiles are not intended to strike Israel,” he added in a televised statement. “Their range reaches European capitals.”
The attack “shows that they can still move these mobile launchers around, undetected, spin up and fire without being struck”, former UK Royal Navy commander and defence expert Tom Sharpe told AFP.
On Friday, the UK government said it would allow Washington to use its bases in Diego Garcia and Fairford in England to launch strikes on Iranian sites targeting the Strait of Hormuz.
The UK official confirmed that the attempted missile strike took place before this announcement.
Most of the country’s 35,000 villages, towns and boroughs elected their leaders in a first round last weekend, but the races went to run-offs in about 1,500 communes, including bigger urban centres.
The local ballots are being closely watched to gauge the mood on the ground and potential party alliances before the election of a successor to centrist President Emmanuel Macron next year, with the far right scenting its best chance yet at seizing power.
Polls are to open at 8:00 am (0700 GMT) on the French mainland, with results expected to start trickling in some 12 hours later.
French mayors: Throwing in the sash?
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“A little over a year before the presidential election, the final results of this local ballot will provide valuable insight into the mood of the French public,” Le Monde newspaper wrote in an editorial on Friday.
In Paris, the race is looking tight between leftist Emmanuel Gregoire, a former deputy of outgoing Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo, and his runner-up, right-wing ex-minister Rachida Dati.
The former justice and culture minister, a mentee of now convicted ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, hopes to seize Paris for the right after 25 years under leftist leadership to become its second woman mayor in a row.
Dati, who faces trial in September on corruption charges she denies, has boosted her chances after a centre-right candidate and a far-right hopeful dropped out.
But Gregoire had refused a helping hand from a hard-left contender who has remained in the race, splitting the leftist vote.
In recent elections, leftist and centrist parties have allied in the second round to prevent a far-right win.
But the left has been fractured since the fatal beating last month of a far-right activist blamed on fringe leftists, with the moderate left only allying with more radical politicians on a case-by-case basis.
New city for the far right?
Marine Le Pen‘s far-right National Rally (RN) party is also hoping for better scores than in previous local polls.
The RN claims that it and its allies were re-elected last Sunday in 10 communes, including the southern city of Perpignan of 120,000 inhabitants – the largest in France to be run by the far-right party.
They also won for the first time in 14 other districts.
But they are also hoping to be elected in larger areas.
Its candidate won by far the most votes in Toulon, a southern city of 180,000 residents. If captured in the run-off, it would be the largest under RN control to date.
In the southern city of Marseille, RN hopeful Franck Allisio came second last week, a single percentage point behind incumbent left-wing mayor Benoit Payan.
But the left looks likely to stay in charge, after a hard-left candidate stepped down.
In the northern port city of Le Havre, declared presidential candidate Edouard Philippe is well-placed to remain mayor.
Philippe, a centrist who as prime minister helped steer France through the start of the Covid pandemic, is seen as one of the strongest opponents to the RN’s potential presidential pick – whether three-time candidate Le Pen, 57, or her 30-year-old lieutenant Jordan Bardella.
Overall turnout for the first round stood at 57 percent – the country’s lowest in local polls bar the Covid pandemic-affected last edition in 2020.
