At least nine people were killed in an Iranian strike on central Israel on Sunday, Israeli medics said, as Tehran pledged a heavy response to the killing of former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
An Iranian ballistic missiles attacked Beit Shemesh, with footage showing extensive damage to a bomb shelter. More than 20 others were injured in the attack – the largest one since the outbreak of this war.
Israeli politicians widely welcomed the assassination of Iran’s former supreme leader whose hawkish rule and bitterly anti-Zionist rhetoric loomed large over life in Israel for decades.
Mr Khamenei, along with about 40 other senior Iranian commanders, was killed in less than a minute in a massive wave of opening strikes on Saturday morning, Israel’s military spokesman said.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps on Sunday said it had launched the biggest offensive in its history in retaliation for the killing of Mr Khamenei, warning it would target Israel and US bases in the region.
Throughout the two and a half years since the October 7 attacks, Israel has launched a massive range of operations across the Middle East to target senior enemies. Mr Khamenei’s killing is, however, the first time the country has assassinated the leader of a state. Saturday’s broader operations were the largest mission ever flown by the Israeli air force.
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrated Israel “cutting off the head of the snake” in response to Mr Khamenei’s assassination. “In the end, these Nazis want to destroy all of us – right, left, secular, religious – they don't care, they want to eliminate all of us, and we are eliminating them one by one,” he wrote in a post on X.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid congratulated the military on the “elimination” of Mr Khamenei. “Let all our enemies know that this will be the fate of anyone who tries to threaten Israel's existence. He who devised the ‘plan of destruction’ was destroyed himself,” he wrote in a post on X.
Israel’s tiny Jewish left wing also welcomed the assassination, even though earlier they had been one of the only political blocs questioning the bellicose nationalism of most Israeli politicians, and whether Mr Netanyahu and Mr Trump had a strategy in what could turn into a massive open-ended war.
“Eliminating Khamenei is a dramatic and significant step,” said Yair Golan, leader of The Democrats.
“On this day, I also want to send a message of hope to the Iranian people: You have been freed from a cruel tyrant who oppressed you for decades, and a genuine opportunity for freedom and a gateway to a better future have now opened,” he wrote on X.
The decisive rhetoric and calls for unity match what appears to be, as usual, a country rallying round the flag in wartime. But, on the ground, there are signs that people are still concerned.
At the site of one of the few missile impacts that Israel says has hit the country, in downtown Tel Aviv, crowds of neighbours, rescue workers and soldiers gathered in a chaotic scrum. Global media was also gathered as it was the site where a Filipino domestic worker looking after an elderly woman in the building was killed in the blast.
A crater, four metres wide and about three metres deep, was at the centre of the scene. The building closest had its entire front ripped off. Trails of wires and scraps of torn clothes were flapping in the wind. Filming and interviews were interrupted by yet another round of warning sirens. Most Iranian missiles appear to have been intercepted, but the scene was a reminder that for the few that get through, the results can be terrible.
In the underground car park of a nearby apartment block, most of the people sheltering were stoic, but one woman was crying hysterically as the sound of a missile interceptor soared overhead, a bottle of water in her trembling hand.
This is an expensive part of Tel Aviv, but the crowd sheltering were diverse. Richer residents looked far more shocked than the group of Arab workers on site to clear the area, who spent most of the time joking with one another. Just as soon as the all clear was given, phones lit up again with a new round of alerts.
This round of interception booms was far louder than the last. Whether this rate of fire will carry on remains to be seen, as the US and Israel carry out their massive strikes on Iran, but, for now, for the people in Israel running to the shelters several times a day, there are no answers.
