TEHRAN, March 1 (Xinhua) -- The U.S.-Israel joint attack on Iran entered its second day on Sunday, with Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei confirmed dead along with several other senior officials.
Iran confirmed early Sunday that Khamenei was killed in U.S.-Israeli airstrikes the previous day. "Iran's leader attained martyrdom while carrying out his duties at his office," reported Iran's Nour News, affiliated with the country's Supreme National Security Council.
The attack also resulted in the deaths of Khamenei's daughter, son-in-law, grandchild, and one of his daughters-in-law, according to the report.
Several senior Iranian officials, including Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Abdolrahim Mousavi, Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh, Secretary of the Defense Council Ali Shamkhani, and Mohammad Pakpour, chief commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), were also killed in the strike.
The death toll from Saturday's strike on a girls' elementary school in Iran's southern province of Hormozgan has risen to 148, with 95 people wounded, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday.
In retaliation, Iran launched a series of counterattacks against Israeli and U.S. targets across the region, with explosions reported in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, among other countries.
On Sunday, Iran's IRGC said it had carried out strikes on U.S. military bases as well as Israeli military facilities in the West Asia region. In a statement published by its official outlet Sepah News, the IRGC said a new wave of large-scale missile and drone attacks against Israel and U.S. bases was conducted with "strength" Sunday morning.
Air raid sirens sounded across Israel in the morning after Iran launched several waves of missile barrages toward Tel Aviv and other areas. Israel's state-owned Kan TV reported that fragments of one of the missiles fell in an agricultural field in the north, while fragments from intercepted missiles landed in Jerusalem and the nearby Mateh Yehuda Regional Council. No casualties were reported, Israel's Magen David Adom emergency service reported.
In Dubai, UAE, authorities announced that debris from intercepted drones had fallen near two residential homes, injuring two people. Earlier in the day, four staff members at Dubai International Airport were hurt in an "incident" at one of the concourses, according to Dubai Airports.
In Oman, two drones targeted the Port of Duqm on Sunday, about 550 km south of Muscat, injuring one worker, the Oman News Agency reported, citing a security source.
In support of Iran, an Iraqi Shiite militia calling itself the "Guardians of Blood" and affiliated with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq -- an umbrella organization for Iraqi Shiite militias -- said Sunday that its fighters had deployed "a squadron of drones" targeting U.S. bases in Erbil, located in Iraq's northern semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
A statement by the group provided no further details on the targeted sites and reported no casualties. However, the Kurdish media network Rudaw reported a large plume of smoke rising over Erbil following the early Sunday strike.
On Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian extended condolences over Khamenei's death, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
He said in a message that the assassination of Iran's highest-ranking political official by the "sinister axis" of the United States and Israel on Saturday was a clear declaration of war against Muslims, especially Shiites, across the world.
Pezeshkian stressed that Iran considers exacting revenge on those responsible for the "historic crime" as both its duty and legitimate right and will do its utmost to that end.
Yemen's Houthi group also mourned Khamenei's death on Sunday, saying his blood would "fuel the course of confrontation with the unjust and aggressors."
Al-Masirah TV, the group's official broadcaster, aired a statement issued by the political bureau of the Houthis, extending condolences "to the Iranian people and government and to the Islamic nation over the martyrdom of the revolution's leader, Imam Ali Khamenei." ■
