Iran launches a missile attack on Israel, but the Israeli military says there were no casualties

Sirens blared across Israel and loud bangs were heard late Tuesday after Iran launched a missile attack on the country. A U.S. defense official said the United States intercepted some of the missiles to help defend Israel.

“The IDF does and will do everything necessary to protect the civilian population of the State of Israel,” the Israeli military said in a statement, warning people in the country to stay in shelters.

“The explosions you hear are caused by interceptions or falls [of missiles]. “The air defense system constantly detects and intercepts threats,” the IDF said.

In Tel Aviv, the rockets seemed to come in waves, each one beginning with wailing sirens, loud bangs, and then silence until the next siren wail.

The situation was similar in Jerusalem. Retired San Francisco trauma surgeon Bill Schecter said he got an alert on his phone and went to the emergency shelter at his apartment building.

“We heard several bangs. “I suspect it was the Iron Dome that fired missiles,” Schechter said, referring to Israel’s defense systems. “There were two waves. One where we heard popping noises. Then it became quiet and we came out. We then heard another series of bangs and had to return to the bomb shelter.”

After about 45 minutes, the IDF said it was safe for people across Israel to leave shelters, and spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the military had “detected no further air threats from Iran.”

Hagari said Israel’s missile defense systems had conducted “a large number of intercepts” and that although some of the Iranian weapons had landed and investigations were ongoing, the IDF was “not aware of any casualties.”

He urged people to remain vigilant.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations issued a statement confirming the attack on Israel and indicating that the direct attack had ended.

“Iran’s legal, rational and legitimate response to the Zionist regime’s terrorist attacks – which targeted Iranian nationals and interests and violated the national sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran – was duly implemented,” the Iranian statement said . Iran supports many proxy groups in the region, and it was not clear whether any of those groups would launch further attacks on Israel after the Iranian missile barrage.

Iranian state television claimed victory after the attack, saying many missiles penetrated Israel’s defense systems and hit their targets, although there was little evidence to support those claims.

While the Iranian missiles did not appear to cause any casualties, Israeli police said two gunmen opened fire on members of the public on a Tel Aviv street shortly before the missiles were fired. The Associated Press quoted police as saying Six people were killed in the attack before the two suspects were neutralized.

The explosions from the Iranian missile attack came just hours after a senior White House official told CBS News that the United States had signs that Iran was preparing a ballistic missile attack on Israel. Israeli officials said the warning had been communicated to them.

Iran last fired a volley of ballistic missiles at Israel in Aprilin retaliation for an Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital that killed several senior Iranian military commanders.

Iran fired more than 300 missiles and drones into Israel in that attack in April, but Hagari said at the time that virtually all of the weapons were intercepted before they entered Israeli territory, and he reported that only one military base was hit by the few missiles that were fired did so, suffered minor damage to land within the country. A 10-year-old girl was “severely injured” by shrapnel from an intercepted rocket, but the IDF reported no further casualties.

U.S. officials told CBS News earlier Tuesday that Iran had been prepared to attack Israel again at short notice since early August, when Tehran threatened retaliation Assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

An Iranian diplomatic source told CBS News on Tuesday that the country’s leadership is “under intense pressure to take action” against Israel amid escalating attacks on its close ally Hezbollah, but they expect an Iranian attack on Israel would be of limited scope. Iran portrayed its missile attack on Israel not as a response to Israel’s operations against Hezbollah, but to the assassination of senior Iranian military officials earlier this year.

The Iranian attack came a day after Israel announced the start of a “limited, localized and… targeted ground attacks“against the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

President Biden has repeatedly called for a ceasefire as the firestorm between Israel and Hezbollah escalated for weeks on the border with southern Lebanon. White House, State Department and Pentagon officials have all highlighted the risks of an all-out war between Israel and Lebanon’s well-armed Iranian proxy group, warning that it could lead to a widespread regional conflict.

On September 30, Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters that the deployments of a number of American units already in the Middle East would be extended and that the forces replacing them would instead overlap. That includes F-16, F-15E, A-10 and F-22 fighter jets as well as the personnel who operate the planes, she said, adding “a few additional thousand” to U.S. troops in the region. would equal.

U.S. defense officials told CBS News on Tuesday that there is now more U.S. military capability in the region, including 40,000 American troops, than when Iran launched its missile attack on Israel in April.

Iran supports a range of groups across the regionincluding Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Tehran describes these groups as a “resistance front” against Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory, while Israel describes them as an axis of evil with the ideological goal of wiping the Jewish state from the map.

Hezbollah calls its rocket and drone attacks on Israel legitimate support and defense of Palestinians in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and the Houthis have cited the same justification for their months-long attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea.

One of the biggest risks for the US is that Iran’s proxy groups – including smaller militias based in Iraq and Syria – will attack American forces in the region in retaliation for Washington’s support of Israel. They have already done this since October 7, firing missiles and drones at US bases more than 165 times. Most attacks cause little or no damage, but a drone attack on a U.S. outpost in Jordan in January that was claimed by an Iranian-backed group in Iraq killed three US soldiers and dozens wounded.

Ahead of the Iranian missile attack, the IDF tightened domestic security precautions in large parts of the country on Tuesday. Among the new measures announced by the IDF’s Homefront Command was limiting the number of people allowed to gather publicly in northern Israel, near the border with Lebanon.

Emmet LyonsEleanor Watson, Charlie D’Agata and Margaret Brennan contributed to this report.