UN urges Israel, Iran to stop attacks

DMW on heightened alert, vows assistance to affected OFWS

- BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS and AARON RECUENCO

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Israel and Iran to halt their attacks on one another, while calling for diplomacy.

"Israeli bombardment of Iranian nuclear sites. Iranian missile strikes in Tel Aviv. Enough escalation. Time to stop. Peace and diplomacy must prevail," Guterres wrote on X on Saturday.

Iran launched retaliatory missile strikes on Israel into Saturday morning, killing at least three people and wounding dozens, after a series of blistering Israeli attacks on the heart of Iran's nuclear program and its armed forces.

Israel's assault used war-planes, as well as drones smuggled into the country in advance, to assault key facilities and kill top generals and scientists. Iran's UN ambassador said 78 people were killed and more than 320 wounded in the attacks.

Israel said the barrage was necessary before Iran got any closer to building an atomic weapon, although experts and the US government have assessed that Tehran was not actively working on such a weapon before the strikes. It also threw talks between the United States and Iran over an atomic accord into disarray days before the two sides were set to meet Sunday.

Damage to Iran's ballistic missile arsenal

Satellite images analyzed Saturday by The Associated Press began to confirm some of the damage sustained by Iran's ballistic missile arsenal by the Israeli assault on the country.

Images from Planet Labs PBC taken Friday showed damage at two missile bases, one in Kermanshah and one in Tabriz, both in western Iran.

At Kermanshah, where the base is up against a mountainside, burns could be seen across a wide area after the attack. In Tabriz, images showed damage at multiple sites on the base.

Iran has not acknowledged the damage, though it reported on Israeli strikes in the area.

Top Sunni university condemns Israel's attack