Middle East rocked by a second day of bombing

Donald Trump said yesterday he was prepared to talk to what was left of the Iranian leadership in the wake of the killing of the country's supreme leader in airstrikes aimed at overthrowing the regime.

- Julian Borger Jason Burke Jerusalem

Smoke rises above Tehran yesterday after Iran's capital was hit again in US and Israeli attacks

(Fatemah Bahrami/Anadolu Getty Images)

Trump was speaking as a second day of intense US-Israeli bombing of Iranian cities and Tehran's missile counterattacks sent tremors through the region and the global economy.

Oil prices jumped 10% to $80 a barrel for Brent crude with predictions that the continuing war could soon drive it up to $100, after attacks on two ships largely choked off tanker traffic through the strait of Hormuz out of the Gulf.

Amir-Saeid Iravani, the Iranian ambassador to the UN, told an emergency security council meeting on Saturday that hundreds of civilians had been killed or injured in the US-Israeli strikes. He said they had deliberately attacked civilian neighbourhoods in multiple cities.

The death toll is expected to climb after a second day of bombing. Iranian state media said 165 people had been confirmed dead in a bomb attack on a girls' primary school in the southern city of Minab on Saturday.

Among the dead was the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had ruled the country since 1989 and was the primary target of an initial Israeli strike on Saturday morning. According to several US reports, the CIA had been tracking Khamenei for months. The New York Times reported it had tipped off Israel when the leader convened a meeting of top defence aides at his compound in Tehran, triggering a decision to strike.

Israel's Channel 12 television reported that the Israeli army had employed a ruse to put the Iranian leadership off its guard. On the morning of the operation, army officers were asked not to park their cars in their usual spaces, to avoid detection by Iran's spies.