A drone photo shows the damage over residential homes and a school at the impact site following a missile attack from Iran on Israel, in Bnei Brak, Israel June 16, 2025
June 16 — Iranian missiles struck Israel’s Tel Aviv and the port city of Haifa before dawn on Monday, killing at least eight people and destroying homes, prompting Israel’s defence minister to warn that Tehran residents would “pay the price and soon”.
Iran said its parliament was preparing a bill to leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), adding that Tehran remains opposed to developing weapons of mass destruction. Passing the bill could take several weeks.
Israel is presumed to have a sizable nuclear arsenal but neither confirms nor denies it. It is the only Middle East state that has not signed the NPT.
Israel’s military, which has gutted Iran’s nuclear and military leadership with airstrikes, said on Monday it had killed four senior intelligence officials including the head of the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence unit.
Israeli authorities said a total of seven missiles of the fewer than 100 fired by Iran overnight had landed in Israel. A military spokesman also said Israel had achieved aerial superiority over Iran and had destroyed more than a third of Iran’s surface-to-surface missile launchers.
At least 100 people were wounded in Israel in the overnight blitz, part of a wave of attacks by Tehran in retaliation for Israel’s strikes targeting the nuclear and ballistic missile programmes of sworn enemy Iran.
Iran, facing its worst security breach since the 1979 Islamic revolution, said dozens of alleged saboteurs and “spies” linked to Israel had been arrested since the start of the conflict.
Iran’s currency has lost at least 10% of its value against the U.S. dollar since the start of Israel’s biggest ever attack on its old enemy last Friday.
The dangers of further escalation loomed over a meeting of G7 leaders in Canada, with U.S. President Donald Trump expressing hope on Sunday that a deal could be done but no sign of the fighting abating on a fourth day of war.
Geopolitical stability in the Middle East has already been undermined by spillover effects of the Gaza war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas.
In total, 24 people in Israel have been killed so far in the Iranian missile attacks, all of them civilians.
The death toll in Iran has reached at least 224, with civilians accounting for 90% of the casualties, an Iranian health ministry spokesperson said.
Iran’s state media reported that the Farabi hospital and surrounding areas in the western province of Kermanshah were hit in a missile attack, causing serious material damage.
In Israel, search and rescue operations were underway in Haifa where some 30 people were wounded, emergency services said, as dozens of first responders rushed to the strike zones. Fires were seen burning at a power plant near the port.
Video footage showed several missiles over Tel Aviv and explosions could be heard there and over Jerusalem.
Several residential buildings in a densely populated neighbourhood of Tel Aviv were destroyed in a strike that blew out the windows of hotels and homes near the U.S. Embassy branch in the city. The U.S. ambassador said the building sustained minor damage, but there were no injuries to personnel.
The pre-dawn missiles also struck near Shuk HaCarmel, a popular market in Tel Aviv that typically draws large crowds buying fresh fruit and vegetables.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the latest attack employed a new method that caused Israel’s multi-layered defence systems to target each other and allowed Tehran to successfully hit many targets, without providing further details.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a statement: “The arrogant dictator of Tehran has become a cowardly murderer who targets the civilian home front in Israel to deter the IDF from continuing the attack that is collapsing his capabilities.”
“The residents of Tehran will pay the price, and soon.”
Katz later issued a separate statement saying that Israel had no intention of deliberately harming Tehran’s residents.
