Iran attacks Israel with over 300 drones, missiles: What you need to know

Iran has launched a massive aerial attack on Israel, two weeks after a deadly strike on its consulate in Syria.

WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL AND WHEN?

Iran’s massive aerial attack marks the first direct strike by Iran on Israeli territory from Iranian soil. Iran called the attack Operation True Promise.

The attack began on Saturday about 20:00 GMT. It lasted about five hours, according to United States officials.

During the attack, explosions were heard in cities across Israel, including Tel Aviv. The explosions were also heard in Jerusalem, and air raid sirens sounded in more than 720 locations as Israeli forces sought to shoot down the projectiles.

Israel’s chief military spokesman, Daniel Hagari, said Iran’s attack involved more than 120 ballistic missiles, 170 drones and more than 30 cruise missiles, according to a report by The Associated Press news agency.

The Israeli military also said the vast majority of the projectiles were intercepted outside the country’s borders with help from the US, the United Kingdom and France. Jordan also shot down some of the missiles aimed at Israel as they were flying through Jordanian airspace.

Israel’s military added that a “small number of hits were identified”. In a base in southern Israel, “minor damage occurred to the infrastructure”, it said.

A seven-year-old girl was also severely injured by missile fragments while other patients sustained minor injuries and some were treated for anxiety.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Sunday that the US also intercepted “dozens” of missiles and drones launched at Israel from Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
WHERE EXACTLY DID THE ATTACKS TAKE PLACE?

During the attack, Israel’s military ordered residents in the northern Israeli-occupied Golan Heights – near the Syrian and Lebanese borders – and in the southern cities of Nevatim, Dimona and Eilat to remain near bomb shelters.
Nevatim is the site of an Israeli airbase while Dimona has a nuclear reactor on its outskirts.

Eilat is Israel’s Red Sea port, which has suffered a sharp decline in operations because of repeated attacks by Yemen’s Houthis on ships using the waterway.

WHY DID IRAN ATTACH ISRAEL?

Iran carried out the attacks in retaliation for a suspected Israeli strike that killed an Iranian military commander, Major General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, in Damascus on April 1. He was killed along with six other Iranian nationals, including another general. At least six Syrian citizens were also killed.

“It seems that Iranian leaders are determined to take action but also [be] seen to take action,” David Des Roches, an associate professor at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera.

“What that indicates to me is that there are considerations of pride and prestige that are divorced from strategy and tactical utility that may indicate a more dangerous era than we thought,” he added.

Hezbollah, a Lebanese armed group backed by Iran, and the Israeli military have been trading attacks across the Lebanon-Israel border since October 8, the day after the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel and Israel’s brutal retaliation on the besieged Gaza Strip.

On Saturday, Iranian state media announced that the armed forces had seized an Israel-linked container ship near the Strait of Hormuz.