Iran’s new supreme leader safe despite injuries, president’s son says
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is “safe and sound” despite war injuries, said Yousef Pezeshkian, a government adviser and the son of Iran’s president, on Wednesday.
Posting to his Telegram channel, Pezeshkian said:
I heard news that Mr Mojtaba Khamenei had been injured. I have asked some friends who had connections. They told me that, thank God, he is safe and sound.
State television had called Khamenei, 56, a “wounded veteran of the Ramadan war” but never specified his injury.
The comments come amid speculation over the health and whereabouts of Khamenei, who has not engaged with the public since he succeeded his late father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, three days ago.
According to the New York Times, Khamenei was injured on the opening day of the US and Israel’s attacks on Iran, citing three Iranian and two Israeli officials who spoke anonymously.
Key events
Here are some images coming out of Lebanon this morning, where the Israeli military continues to strike the southern suburbs of Beirut as well as the capital itself.
An unknown projectile struck a bulk carrier just north of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday – not far from the strait of Hormuz, the UK Maritime Trade Operations said in a post on X.
Earlier Wednesday, unknown projectiles hit two other ships in the strategically located Hormuz, UK Maritime Trade Operations said. One caught fire, forcing its crew to evacuate, while the other sustained damage.
Air defences intercepted two drones near Dubai airport in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, injuring four, the Dubai government said on X.
Two Ghanaian nationals and one Bangladeshi national sustained minor injuries while an Indian national sustained moderate ones.
Air traffic is operating as normal.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency is reporting several attacks overnight and this morning in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli military has confirmed carrying out airstrikes this morning in the Dahiyeh area, a suburb south of Beirut, and attacking overnight what its spokesman said was a Hezbollah headquarters in Tyre.
The low-paid Filipino workers caught up in the war on Iran
Rebecca Ratcliffe
On 28 February, 32-year-old Mary Ann De Vera, a Filipino working as a carer, became the first casualty of the conflict in Israel. She was killed in Tel Aviv after being hit by shrapnel while escorting her employer, an older woman, to a shelter. Her employer survived.
The Middle East is one of the main destinations for Filipinos who work abroad, and the salaries offered in the region – in jobs ranging from domestic work and healthcare, to construction and engineering – can be many times higher those available back home. In the Philippines, those who go abroad to work are praised by politicians as modern day heroes, because of the tens of billions of dollars they remit home every year.
But such work comes at a high personal cost. They endure long periods away from children and partners, and can be vulnerable to abuse and mistreatment, especially in countries with a kafala (sponsorship) system, where workers are heavily dependent on their employers.
Over recent years, pressures have increased pressures further, with workers facing instability through the pandemic, and, for the 31,000 Filipinos based in Israel, repeated bouts of conflict.
A Sri Lankan court has ordered that the bodies of 84 sailors killed in an attack on an Iranian warship off the island nation’s coast last week be handed over to the embassy of Iran, local media reported on Wednesday.
The warship, IRIS Dena, was hit by a torpedo from a US submarine while it was returning from a naval exercise organised by India.
The court order was issued on Wednesday following a request from the Galle Harbour Police in the southern port city of Galle, the media reports said.
The bodies are currently at the morgue in Galle’s National Hospital.
Sri Lanka has also granted 30-day entry visas to 208 crew members from a second Iranian vessel who were taken in by the South Asian country after the vessel experienced engine problems in the same region, Deputy Defence Minister Aruna Jayasekera told Reuters.
Iran’s new supreme leader safe despite injuries, president’s son says
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is “safe and sound” despite war injuries, said Yousef Pezeshkian, a government adviser and the son of Iran’s president, on Wednesday.
Posting to his Telegram channel, Pezeshkian said:
I heard news that Mr Mojtaba Khamenei had been injured. I have asked some friends who had connections. They told me that, thank God, he is safe and sound.
State television had called Khamenei, 56, a “wounded veteran of the Ramadan war” but never specified his injury.
The comments come amid speculation over the health and whereabouts of Khamenei, who has not engaged with the public since he succeeded his late father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, three days ago.
According to the New York Times, Khamenei was injured on the opening day of the US and Israel’s attacks on Iran, citing three Iranian and two Israeli officials who spoke anonymously.
Second ship hit in Strait of Hormuz, crew evacuating – UK maritime agency
An unknown projectile has hit a second ship in the strategic Strait of Hormuz abutting Iran, causing a fire and forcing the crew to evacuate, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations said on Wednesday.
It has been reported that a cargo vessel has been hit by an unknown projectile in the Straits of Hormuz which has resulted in a fire onboard.
The vessel has requested assistance and the crew are evacuating, the agency said.
Earlier on Wednesday, the agency reported another attack on a container ship 25 nautical miles (29 miles) northwest of the emirate of Ras Al Khaimah.
The Master of a container vessel has reported that the vessel has sustained damage from a suspected but unknown projectile.
The extent of the damage was unknown but all crew members were safe, it said.
The Hormuz sea passage, one of the world’s most strategically important choke points, would normally have about 100 vessels a day either exiting or entering the Gulf. In response to the US and Israeli attacks, Iran has effectively shut the strait, attacking at least 10 ships which were seeking to traverse it in the early days of the crisis.
Iran launches wave of strikes, as Israel pounds Lebanon
Iran fired missiles and drones at targets across the Gulf including oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and a ship off the coast of the Emirates, while Israeli and the United States struck targets across the region on Wednesday.
Here is a quick summary of that activity:
Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry said early Wednesday it destroyed five drones heading toward the kingdom’s vast Shaybah oil field in the Empty Quarter desert. It added that it intercepted and destroyed two drones in the Eastern Province.
Kuwait said it downed eight drones over the tiny, oil-rich nation.
Off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, in the Strait of Hormuz, a projectile hit a container ship early Wednesday morning, while United Arab Emirates officials said early Wednesday that its air defences were working to intercept incoming Iranian fire.
Bahrain sounded sirens early Wednesday, warning of an incoming Iranian attack. The warnings came a day after an Iranian attack hit a residential building in the capital, Manama, and killed a 29-year-old woman and wounding eight people.
Israelis were repeatedly driven into bomb shelters as the military warned Iran had launched missiles toward Israel.
In Iraq, a drone hit a major US diplomatic facility, next to the Baghdad airport.
Meanwhile, Israel pounded Lebanon with a new wave of attacks, setting an apartment block in central Beirut alight. Earlier strikes in southern Lebanon killed five people in the Nabatieh district and two in the Tyre district.
The US said it had destroyed 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday.
South Korea rattled by US’s hasty redeployment of missiles to Middle East
The US has reportedly started moving parts of the US-made missile-defence system, along with other military hardware, out of South Korea for deployment in its war against Iran – a move officials are downplaying, but which has raised questions over Donald Trump’s commitment to North-east Asia.
As the Guardian’s Justin McCurry writes:
The move, reported this week, has triggered doubts over Donald Trump’s security commitment to South Korea – the US’s most important east Asian ally along with Japan – and warnings that the nuclear-armed North could seek to ramp up pressure on its neighbour. Why, critics are asking, did South Korea invest so much political capital in a defence system that could one day be removed?
Read the full report here:
Democratic senator Chris Murphy has taken to social media to accuse the Trump administration of having ‘“incoherent and incomplete” war plans.
Murphy received a closed door briefing on the war, and claimed that the administration’s war goals “DO NOT involve destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons program”.
I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can’t defend this war in public.
I obviously can’t disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are.
1/ Here’s what I can share:
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) March 11, 2026
He said the goals were “destroying lots of missiles and boats and drone factories.”
But the question that stumped them: what happens when you stop bombing and they restart production?”
Following on from our previous report about an Israeli strike hitting central Beirut – AFP has reported the seventh and eighth floors of an apartment building were destroyed, as were nearby cars.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said that “the enemy targeted an apartment in the Aisha Bakkar area” in central Beirut, a densely populated neighbourhood close to one of the city’s biggest shopping malls.
AFPTV’s live broadcast showed the sound of an airstrike followed by a fireball erupting in an apartment within a multi-story residential building.
Iran calls on regional countries and Muslims to reveal ‘American-Zionist’ hiding places
General Abolfazl Shekarchi, the senior spokesperson for Iran’s armed forces, has vowed retaliation against the US and Israel, for its “shameless and brutal crimes”, Iranian news agency Defapress reports.
Shekarchi said the US and Israel army were killing ordinary people, women and children to to their “desperation and inability to confront the armed forces”.
I tell them to expect our crushing blows in retaliation for these barbaric actions of theirs, because we will soon retaliate for these actions and inflict very fatal blows on their bodies.
Shekarchi called on regional countries to reveal where the enemy forces were hiding, to minimise harm to civilians.
I ask the Muslim people of the region and the countries of the region to show us the hiding places of the American-Zionist forces so that they are not harmed and we can accurately hit those who used the people of the region as their human shields.
Israeli strike hits central Beirut – reports
An Israeli strike hit an apartment in central Beirut on Wednesday, state media reported, the second targeting the heart of the Lebanese capital since the start of the latest war with Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said that “the enemy targeted an apartment in the Aisha Bakkar area” in central Beirut.
Mark Saunokonoko
The US military said it attacked and destroyed 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels near the strait of Hormuz amid reports that Iran has begun laying explosive devices in the strategically vital waterway.
Citing intelligence sources, CNN on Tuesday reported that Iran has laid a few dozen mines in the strait in recent days and has the capability to sow hundreds more.
About one-fifth of the world’s oil passes through the strait, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said earlier this week it will not allow even “one litre of oil” to leave the region if US-Israeli attacks continue.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump said in a post on Truth Social that “if Iran has put out any mines in the Hormuz Strait, and we have no reports of them doing so, we want them removed, IMMEDIATELY!” Less than two hours later, the US military released unclassified footage of its attacks on mine-laying vessels.
Read the full report here:
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) Centre says it has received a report of an incident 25 nautical miles northwest of the United Arab Emirates, in the strait of Hormuz.
According to the UKMTO, a container ship has sustained damage from an unknown projectile.
Crew members are said to be safe, but the extent of the damage of the vessel is currently unknown.
Maritime records show that only two vessels not linked to Iran or Russia have attempted to make the run through the strait of Hormuz since Donald Trump said he would “ensure the free flow of energy to the world.”
The Hormuz sea passage, one of the world’s most strategically important choke points, would normally have about 100 vessels a day either exiting or entering the Gulf. In response to the US and Israeli attacks, Iran has effectively shut the strait, attacking at least 10 ships which were seeking to traverse it in the early days of the crisis.
