Tehran airstrikes kill 78, injure hundreds, Iranian media reports

Tehran
At least 78 people were killed and 329 others injured in a series of Israeli airstrikes that targeted the Iranian capital Tehran early Friday, local media reported.
“The unofficial death toll from today’s terrorist attack by the Zionist regime in Tehran province is estimated at 329 injured and 78 martyred,” the Iranian semi-official news agency Fars said.
Israel launched a large-scale attack early Friday, deploying around 200 aircraft to target Iran’s nuclear program and long-range missile capabilities. Several senior Iranian military officials and nuclear scientists were killed in the strikes.
Iran has vowed “severe punishment,” and called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to hold Israel accountable for its actions.
Killings in Tabriz
Israeli strikes on Friday killed at least eight people and wounded 12 others in Iran’s northwestern Tabriz city, airports and its surroundings, the provincial governor told Iranian news agency ISNA.
“At least eight people… were killed following the attacks of the Zionist regime,” said Majid Farshi, governor of East Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital.
Israel launched widescale strikes against Iran on Friday, saying it targeted nuclear facilities, ballistic missile factories and military commanders and that this was start of a prolonged operation to prevent Tehran from building an atomic weapon.
Iranian media and witnesses reported explosions including at the country’s main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, while Israel declared a state of emergency in anticipation of retaliatory missile and drone strikes.
Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards corps said its top commander, Hossein Salami, was killed and state media reported the unit’s headquarters in Tehran had been hit. Several children had been killed in a strike on a residential area in the capital, it said.
“We are at a decisive moment in Israel’s history,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a recorded video message.
“Moments ago Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival. This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a statement that Israel had “unleashed its wicked and bloody” hand in a crime against Iran and that it would receive “a bitter fate for itself”.
An Israeli military official said Israel was striking “dozens” of nuclear and military targets including the facility at Natanz in central Iran. The official said Iran had enough material to make 15 nuclear bombs within days.
The United States said it had no part in the operation, which raises the risk of a fresh escalation in tensions in the Middle East, a major oil producing region.