TEL AVIV/DUBAI – Israel and Iran launched fresh attacks on each other overnight into June 15, as US President Donald Trump said the conflict could be easily ended while warning Tehran not to strike any US targets.

Israeli rescue teams combed through the rubble of residential buildings destroyed in the strikes, using torches and sniffer dogs to look for survivors after at least seven people were killed, including children, the authorities said.

Tehran has called off nuclear talks that Washington had said were the only way to halt Israel’s bombing, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacks so far were nothing compared with what Iran would see in the coming days.

“If we are attacked in any way, shape or form by Iran, the full strength and might of the US Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before,” Mr Trump said in a message on Truth Social.

“However, we can easily get a deal done between Iran and Israel, and end this bloody conflict.”

Mr Trump gave no details of any possible deal.

Iran said 78 people were killed on the first day of Israel’s campaign on June 13 and scores more on the second day, including 60 when a missile brought down a 14-storey apartment block in Tehran, where 29 of the dead were children.

The Shahran oil depot in Tehran was targeted in an Israeli attack, Iran said, but added that the situation was under control.

A fire erupted after an Israeli attack on an oil refinery near the capital, while Israeli strikes also targeted Iran’s Defence Ministry building, causing minor damage, the semi-official Tasnim News Agency said on June 15.

In Israel, the latest wave of Iranian attacks began shortly after 11pm on June 14 (4am on June 15, Singapore time), when air raid sirens blared in Jerusalem and Haifa, sending around a million people into bomb shelters.

On June 15, at around 2.30am local time, the Israeli military warned of another incoming missile barrage and urged residents to seek shelter.

By 3.30am, at least four people were killed and 36 reported injured in multiple overnight missile attacks. Israeli media published an image of a 10-storey residential building, reportedly in central Israel, showing extensive damage after a strike.

The ambulance service said at least seven people were killed overnight, including a 10-year-old boy and a woman in her 20s, and more than 140 were hurt in multiple attacks.

Israeli media said at least 35 people were missing after a strike hit Bat Yam, a city south of Tel Aviv. A spokesperson for the emergency services said a missile hit an eight-storey building there, and while many people were rescued, there were fatalities.

It was unclear how many buildings were hit overnight.

So far, at least nine people in Israel have been killed and over 300 others injured since Iran launched its retaliatory attacks on June 13.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said its missiles and drones targeted Israel’s energy infrastructure and facilities for fighter jet fuel production. The elite force warned Tehran’s attacks will be “heavier and more extensive” if Israel continues its hostilities.

Mr Trump had warned Iran of worse to come but said it was not too late to halt the Israeli campaign if the Iranians accepted a sharp downgrading of their nuclear programme.

A round of US-Iran nuclear talks due to be held in Oman on June 15 was cancelled, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi saying the discussions could not take place while Iran was being subjected to Israel’s “barbarous” attacks.

In the first apparent attack to hit Iran’s energy infrastructure, Tasnim News Agency said Iran partially suspended production at the world’s biggest gas field after an Israeli strike caused a fire there on June 14.

The South Pars field, offshore in Iran’s southern Bushehr province, is the source of most of the gas produced in the country.

Fears about potential disruption to the region’s oil exports had already driven up oil prices 9 per cent on June 13 even though Israel spared Iran’s oil and gas on the first day of its attacks.

Iranian General Esmail Kosari said on June 14 that Tehran was reviewing whether to close the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic trade route.

Growing fears

Tehran launched its own retaliatory missile volley on the night of June 13, killing at least three people in Israel.

With Israel saying its operation could last weeks, and Mr Netanyahu urging Iran’s people to rise up against their Islamic clerical rulers, fears have grown of a regional conflagration dragging in outside powers.

B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organisation, said on June 14 that instead of exhausting all possibilities for a diplomatic resolution, the Israeli government had chosen to start a war that puts the entire region in danger.

Tehran has warned Israel’s allies that their military bases in the region would come under fire, too, if they helped shoot down Iranian missiles.

However, 20 months of war in Gaza and a 2024 conflict in Lebanon have decimated Tehran’s strongest regional proxies – Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon – reducing its options for retaliation.

Israel sees Iran’s nuclear programme as a threat to its existence and said the bombardment was designed to avert the last steps to production of a nuclear weapon.

Tehran insists the programme is entirely civilian and that it does not seek an atomic bomb. However, the UN nuclear watchdog reported it this week as violating obligations under the global non-proliferation treaty. REUTERS