Middle East crisis liveUS-Israel war on Iran US targets Iran in ninth night of strikes in wake of US troop deaths – Middle East crisis live Preliminary deal aimed at ending the war has collapsed as US and Iran fight to break deadlock over strait of Hormuz US says another service member killed as Israel warns Tehran’s attacks coming close LIVE Updated 18m ago Adam Fulton Mon 20 Jul 2026 02.01 BSTFirst published on Mon 20 Jul 2026 01.01 BST Share Key events 17m ago Trump says US hitting Iran 'very hard' 40m ago Trump says US hitting Iran 'very hard' 1h ago Opening summary: US says it is launching ninth night of strikes on Iran A man carries his bicycle in front of a monument depicting the fist of the late Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on Sunday.
The US military says it is beginning its ninth night of strikes on Iran, with an interim deal aimed at ending the war appearing to have all but collapsed.
“The strikes will continue degrading Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the strait of Hormuz,” US Central Command said on X on Sunday.
The attacks on Sunday come after a US service member was killed in Iraq the previous day during a “controlled detonation” of a downed Iranian drone, according to the US military, and two American troops were killed in Jordan on Friday.
An Iranian bridge linking Bandar Abbas and Kehuristan is seen on Sunday in Iran’s Hormozgan province after US strikes.
Iranian authorities said the US carried out attacks on 95 locations across 12 cities over the previous 10 days.
In other key developments: Bahrain’s interior ministry said overnight to Monday that its air raid sirens had sounded.
“Citizens and residents are urged to remain calm and head to the nearest safe place,” it said on X.
Bahrain, host of the US Fifth Fleet, has been targeted by Iranian strikes in recent days.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Monday it launched a “surprise attack” on an enemy command centre in Syria, in a statement reported by state news agency Irna.
They attack was “in revenge for the blood of martyred soldiers of Iranshahr”, a city in south-east Iran, Irna said on Telegram.
Iran said it targeted two US bases in Kuwait in response to more than a week of intensifying attacks, which Tehran says have hit transport and infrastructure sites, including an under-construction nuclear power plant.
Kuwait and Bahrain have borne the brunt of attacks by Iran on its Gulf neighbours since hostilities resumed this month despite a ceasefire and memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran.
Jordan also reported intercepting missiles, a day after the US military said the two service members were killed there Friday and another had gone missing in action as they “defended against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks”.
US Central Command’s announcement that a service member died in northern Iraq during the controlled detonation of an unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian drone brought to 17 the confirmed number of American military fatalities since the war began.
Iran’s health ministry said on Saturday that 50 people had been killed and more than 500 injured in US strikes on the country over the past three weeks.
Key events 17m ago Trump says US hitting Iran 'very hard' 40m ago Trump says US hitting Iran 'very hard' 1h ago Opening summary: US says it is launching ninth night of strikes on Iran More now on Donald Trump saying the latest US strikes on Iran were being carried out in honour of US service members killed in recent days.
“We hit them very hard again tonight, and we did that in honour of the probably three, it’s probably three great patriots,” Trump told reporters as he returned to Washington after the World Cup final.
The US president said “we feel very badly” when asked about the military fatalities, adding that those who died were fighting so that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”, in comments cited by the AFP news agency.
As mentioned, one American service member was killed in Iraq during the “controlled detonation” of a downed Iranian drone on Saturday and two were killed in Jordan in an Iranian attack on Friday, according to the US military.
Donald Trump is saying the US is hitting Iran “very hard” to honour the American service members who have been killed in recent days.
We’ll bring you more on his reported comments soon.
Kuwait’s army said earlier that its air defences were responding to hostile drones from Iran, while in Bahrain the interior ministry also said earlier that air raid sirens had sounded there.
Tehran has previously retaliated against US attacks with strikes at American-allied countries around the Middle East.
The Israeli military says sirens sounded a short time ago in the southern Israeli areas of Kfar Aza and Sa’ad but it had been determined to be from a “false identification”.
The IDF posted the announcement on Telegram.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency said it had received a report of an incident 8 nautical miles (14.8 km) north-west of Oman’s Kumzar, where information from a verified source indicated that a vessel was on fire.
UKMTO, cited by Reuters, said the cause of the fire had not been verified.
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of developments in the Middle East.
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