US aircraft carrier hit as Middle East war enters seventh day

Iran vs US – The war in the Middle East entered its seventh day on Friday. Iran claimed that missiles from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy hit the US aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln near the Strait of Hormuz.

A spokesperson for Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters told Tehran Times that the carrier was targeted about 340 km from Iran’s coast. The attack forced the carrier and its supporting destroyers to move quickly away, reportedly over 1,000 km from the area.

Earlier, Iranian state media said four ballistic missiles were fired at the ship. The US Central Command, however, said the missiles did not get close, and the carrier continued operating in the region.

New satellite images analyzed by CNN suggest that radar systems linked to US missile defenses in Jordan and the UAE may have been hit early in the conflict. Some military bases across the Arabian Peninsula show damage to radar installations, which detect incoming missiles and drones.

At Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, images show two large craters near a radar site for the US THAAD missile defense system. Each crater is about 13 feet wide, hinting that the site may have been struck multiple times.

The conflict has spread widely. Israeli forces announced a “next phase” and bombed southern Beirut. Residents fled after Israel issued an urgent evacuation warning, telling people to leave immediately.

The fighting has reached far beyond the Middle East. A US submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship near Sri Lanka, and Azerbaijan threatened retaliation after a drone hit an airport.

On the political front, US President Donald Trump rejected the idea of Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran’s late supreme leader, taking power. He called him a “lightweight” and said the US wants a leader who can bring peace to Iran. Trump also warned of possible future military action if a better alternative is not chosen.

Lebanon was pulled into the conflict when Hezbollah attacked Israel in response to Khamenei’s killing. Israel struck back with air raids and sent troops into border villages. On Thursday, it bombed southern Beirut, targeting Hezbollah infrastructure. The warning before the strikes caused mass panic, with traffic jams and residents fleeing as people fired guns in the air urging evacuation.

On a Beirut beach, hundreds of families, many of them scared and angry, milled around after leaving, having nowhere else to go.

“We fled from the suburbs, we were humiliated,” one man told AFP, declining to give his name.

Lebanese authorities say at least 123 people have been killed since Monday, with 683 wounded and at least 90,000 displaced.
On Iran’s borders, neighboring Azerbaijan warned that a drone attack on an airport “will not go unanswered”, raising fears of another country entering the war.

Iran denied being behind the strike and blamed Israel, but that did not stop Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev from accusing Tehran of “terrorism”.

Australia, meanwhile, deployed two military aircraft to the theatre, and Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said he would not rule out his armed forces taking part.

Following fresh strikes on Iran’s capital, AFPTV images showed blackened vehicles and mangled buildings, with smoke still rising from some.

“We’re going through a very important page of our history and I’m not afraid,” a 30-year-old Tehran resident told AFP. “Hope is the only thing that we have right now.”

An Iranian state-run foundation said the death toll from US and Israeli strikes on the country had risen to 1,230, a number AFP could not independently verify.

The US military has reported the deaths of six of its personnel since the war began Saturday.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi struck a defiant tone Thursday, saying Tehran had not sought a ceasefire and did not “see any reason why we should negotiate with the US”.

Regarding the possibility of a ground invasion, he told US broadcaster NBC News: “We are confident that we can confront them, and that would be a big disaster for them.”

Israel, meanwhile, said 60 percent of Iran’s missile launchers and 80 percent of its air defence systems had been destroyed.

Announcing a “next phase” in the campaign, army chief Eyal Zamir said Israel had “additional surprises ahead”.

The latest Iranian missile barrage sparked a wave of explosions across Tel Aviv, and firefighters worked to contain a blaze at a residential building near Israel’s commercial hub on Friday.

The conflict has not spared the rich Gulf monarchies, usually seen as a haven in a volatile region, as Iran has lashed out at cities and energy infrastructure.

Thirteen people, seven of them civilians, have been killed in countries around the Gulf since the war began, including an 11-year-old girl in Kuwait.

Bahrain said early Friday that Iran had targeted two hotels and a residential building in the capital Manama, but that there was “no loss of life”.

Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted three ballistic missiles launched towards an air base.

And Qatar said Thursday that it intercepted a missile attack as loud blasts, described by AFP journalists as the most intense yet, reverberated across Doha, with thick black smoke billowing across the horizon.

Falling debris from an intercepted drone injured six people in Emirati capital Abu Dhabi, officials added.

Israel said it launched a wave of strikes on Tehran early Friday, targeting “regime infrastructure” in Iran’s capital.

AFP journalists in Tehran heard loud blasts in parts of the city.

Three Australian military personnel were onboarding an American submarine that sank an Iranian navy ship off Sri Lanka this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

The personnel were on the submarine as part of training arrangements under AUKUS, a multi-decade defence pact with Britain and the United States.

previous announcement that two hotels and one residential building were hit.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said his country was in an economic “state of near-emergency” as he warned of runaway inflation.

At a military academy event, Sisi added that price-gouging traders could be tried in military courts, according to a statement from his spokesman.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi leader said in a televised speech Thursday that his group was prepared to strike at any moment.

“Regarding military escalation and action, our fingers are on the trigger, ready to respond at any moment should developments warrant it,” Abdul Malik al-Houthi said.

NATO said it has strengthened its “ballistic missile defence posture” as Iran steps up its strikes across the Middle East with a missile launched at alliance member Turkey before being shot down.

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The alliance’s 32 member states concurred with NATO commanders that the posture should remain at its “heightened level” until the threat from Iran’s “indiscriminate attacks across the region” subsided.

Sri Lanka has offloaded crew of an Iranian navy vessel and assumed control of it, a day after a deadly US submarine attack on another ship.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said his country’s navy had taken 208 sailors from the IRIS Bushehr which, like the ship torpedoed off Sri Lanka’s southern coast on Wednesday, had participated in a naval exercise in eastern India.