Iran exchanges missiles with Israel overnight

Iran and Israel targeted each other with missiles and air strikes early Saturday, after Israel launched its largest air offensive against its arch-foe in a bid to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.

Air raid sirens were heard across Israel, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, forcing residents to rush to shelters as successive waves of Iranian missiles spread across the sky and Israeli interceptors scrambled to intercept them.

A man and a woman were killed in Israel and dozens more were injured when a rocket landed near their homes. Rescuers were searching the rubble of apartment buildings that collapsed in Rishon Lezion, a city outside Tel Aviv, A2 reports.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Saturday that the Iranian leadership had crossed a red line by shooting civilians and would "pay a high price for this."

A missile fired from Yemen by the Iran-backed Houthi militia killed five Palestinians, including three children, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Elsewhere in Iran, several explosions were heard overnight in the capital Tehran. The Fars news agency said two shells hit Tehran's Mehrabad airport. Iran's UN envoy Amir Saeid Iravani said 78 people, including senior military officials, were killed in Israel's attacks on Iran and more than 320 were wounded, most of them civilians.

Tehran launched a wave of airstrikes on Saturday after two barrages on Friday evening, Fars reported. One of the waves targeted Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial hub, before dawn on Saturday, with explosions heard as far away as Jerusalem, witnesses said.

Meanwhile, Iran has called talks between Iran and the US in Oman, scheduled for Sunday, now "meaningless," according to an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman. "The other side (the US) has acted in a way that makes dialogue meaningless," the spokesman said. "You cannot claim to want to negotiate while simultaneously dividing the work by allowing the Zionist regime (Israel) to attack Iranian territory."

The U.S. military helped shoot down Iranian missiles heading toward Israel on Friday, two U.S. officials said. The Israeli military said Iran fired fewer than 100 missiles on Friday and that most were intercepted or failed to land. (A2 Televizion)