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Israel military says another soldier killed in south Lebanon

The Israeli army announced on Sunday the death in combat of a soldier in south Lebanon.

“Sergeant Moshe Yitzchak hacohen Katz, aged 22, from New Haven, Connecticut, a soldier of the 890th battalion, Paratroopers Brigade, fell during combat in southern Lebanon,” a military statement said.

Five Israeli soldiers have now been killed in fighting in south Lebanon since Hezbollah began launching rocket attacks against Israel on 2 March to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader.

UAE air defence responding to missiles and drones, ministry says

The United Arab Emirates defence ministry on Sunday said its air defence system was actively responding to missiles and drones, as Iran pressed strikes in the Gulf a month into the regional war.

“UAE Air Defences system(s) are actively engaging with missiles and UAV threats,” the ministry posted on X, adding that the “sounds heard across the country are the result of ongoing engaging operations”.

Two of Aluminium Bahrain’s employees were wounded in an Iranian attack on its facilities over the weekend, Bahrain state media reported on Sunday.

Since the Middle East war erupted at the end of February, Bahrain and other Gulf countries have been regularly targeted by Iranian missile and drone strikes in retaliation for the US-Israeli campaign, now in its second month.

“The safety and security of (Aluminium Bahrain’s) people remain its top priority and the Company confirms that two of Alba’s employees sustained minor injuries,” the company said in a statement carried by the official Bahrain news agency.

It did not give details on the nature of Saturday’s strike or the extent of the damage.

Alba, one of the world’s largest aluminium producers, said it was assessing the impact on its operations and would issue further updates when available.

Kuwait military responding to missile and drone attacks

Kuwait’s military said on Sunday it was responding to “hostile missile and drone” threats.

“The general staff of the Kuwaiti Armed Forces confirms that any explosions that may be heard are the result of air defense systems intercepting hostile targets,” it said in a post on X.

It comes after Kuwait International Airport was targeted by drone attacks on Saturday that caused significant damage to its radar system but resulted in no casualties, state news agency KUNA reported, citing the country’s Civil Aviation Authority.

The authority’s spokesperson later said the attacks were carried out by Iran, its proxies and the armed factions it supports.

Zelenskyy drums up defence agreements with Gulf states on countering missiles and drones

Ukraine and Qatar signed a defence agreement on Saturday that included cooperation on countering threats from missiles and drones, the Gulf state’s government said, as Iran presses an aerial campaign against its neighbours.

Earlier on Saturday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy – during a previously unannounced flurry of visits to Gulf nations – said his country and the United Arab Emirates had agreed to cooperate on defence, after Iran targeted countries in the area in retaliation for US-Israeli strikes. Ukraine also signed an air defence agreement with Saudi Arabia during Zelenskyy’s visit to the kingdom earlier this week.

“We are talking about a 10-year cooperation. We have already signed a relevant agreement with Saudi Arabia, we have just signed a similar agreement with Qatar, also for 10 years, we will sign one with the Emirates,” Zelenskyy told reporters at a briefing.

Ukraine has quickly grown into one of the world’s leading producers of cutting-edge, battle-tested drone interceptors that are cheap and effective. They are playing a key part in its defence against Russia’s full-scale invasion, which began on 24 February 2022.

In return for its aid to Gulf countries, Ukraine is seeking more high-end air-defence missiles that they possess and that Kyiv needs to counter Russia’s attacks. Last week Zelenskyy said that Ukraine was looking into whether it could play a role in restoring security in the strait of Hormuz.

Read more in our latest Ukraine war briefing:

No Kings protests around the world – in pictures

Millions of people protested against the Trump administration in thousands of No Kings rallies across the US and around the world on Saturday.

The protesters decried the US president’s aggressive deportation efforts, the war in Iran and other policies, venting their anger at what they see as his authoritarian bent and law-trampling governance.

Here are some pictures from the rallies around the world.

Macron says Iraq must not be drawn into ‘escalation’ of Middle East war

Every effort must be made to avoid Iraq being sucked up into an escalation of the Middle East war, French president Emmanuel Macron said earlier today after speaking to head of the country’s autonomous Kurdistan region, Nechirvan Barzani.

Macron posted his message on X after a deadly strike in northern Iraq against the former paramilitary group the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), and the drone strike on Barzani’s home.

“Everything must be done to avoid Iraq being drawn into the current escalation,” he said.

Iran’s government fears armed Kurdish groups in northern Iraq could be sent in through its own Kurdish region, which is in the west, on the border with Iraq.

Police in Tel Aviv have dispersed a large number of people who gathered earlier to protest against the US-Israeli war on Iran, in what is believed to be the largest demonstration against the war in Israel since it began on 28 February.

Haaretz reported that rallies took place in around 20 cities across Israel, including Jerusalem and Haifa.

Police later dispersed the demonstrators, with officers claiming they were violating the country’s home front command guidelines.

“The police violently dispersed 1,500 protesters against the war and against the government,” Alon-Lee Green, co-director of the Jewish-Palestinian activist group Standing Together, said in a post on X.

The police’s actions “won’t stop us,” he said. “We will continue to fight to stop the eternal war and to bring down the government of death.”

Here are some pictures from the protest.

US Central Command, the Department of Defense’s command overseeing the US’s war on Iran, said on Saturday that US forces have struck over 11,000 targets since the US began its bombing campaign.

In a post on the social media platform X, US Central Command also included information about the types of US assets participating in the US-Israel war on Iran that began in 28 February. It includes a series of air, sea and land assets, such as fighter jets, bombers, aircraft carriers and missile systems.

The social media post also said that intelligence sites, control centers, missile sites and military support infrastructure have been targeted. However, on the day the bombing campaign began, the US bombed a school in Iran, killing at least 175 people, mostly children.

At least 47 people have been killed in Lebanon over the past 24 hours, the country’s health ministry has said.

Officials in Beirut said 112 had also been wounded as Israel’s bombardment continues.

At least 1,189 people have now been killed and 3,427 wounded since Israel’s renewed offensive began on 2 March.

As of Saturday morning, about two dozen injuries to US service members have been reported following the Iranian strike on a Saudi airbase that houses US warplanes on Friday, and the New York Times hears that most of them are traumatic brain injuries.

The paper cites a US official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, who cautioned that the numbers could go up as more troops come forward to report traumatic brain injury symptoms caused by the explosions.

At least two service members were seriously injured in the attack on the Prince Sultan airbase, and two aircraft significantly damaged, including a refuelling tanker, the NYT reports, citing multiple US officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Estimates of the damage differed, and an earlier account given to the New York Times said both damaged aircraft were refuelling planes.

The UAE has intercepted 20 ballistic missiles and 37 drones on Saturday, its defence ministry has said.

It added that the country’s air defences have now intercepted 398 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles and 1,872 drones since the start of “the blatant Iranian aggression”.

The defence ministry said the attacks have led to 11 deaths, including three military personnel.

As we reported earlier, six people were injured after a missile was intercepted in the capital, Abu Dhabi.

US Central Command has dismissed claims by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that Iranian forces attacked several locations in Dubai hosting more than 500 US forces and caused “heavy losses”.

“No US personnel have been attacked in Dubai,” Centcom said in a post on X, accusing Tehran of “manufacturing lies”.

It comes after, as we reported earlier, Kyiv denied Iran’s claims to have targeted and destroyed a Ukrainian anti-drone system depot in the UAE, calling it a “lie” and “disinformation”.

“This is a lie, we officially refute this information. The Iranian regime often conducts such disinformation operations – and in this it is no different from the Russians,” the Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson, Georgiy Tykhym, said.

Iran fired six ballistic missiles and 29 drones at Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan airbase on Friday, injuring at least 15 troops, including five seriously, the Associated Press news agency reported, citing sources who were not authorised to speak publicly.

It is reported to be the second direct strike to hit the base during the conflict, after five US air force refuelling planes ​were struck and ‌damaged in an attack earlier this month.

The entry of the Houthis, who control Yemen’s most populous areas, poses a direct threat to the Bab al-Mandab strait at the southern end of the Red Sea, a second major choke point in the supply chain of energy supplies and other trade in and out of the Middle East.

With Iran’s near total closure of the Hormuz strait, the gateway to the Gulf, a shutdown of the Bab al-Mandab, located between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, would amplify the already grave impact of the war on the global economy, and could also reignite a Saudi-Yemen conflict, which caused huge humanitarian suffering for seven years before a 2022 truce.

Since the US-Israeli attack on Iran on 28 February, Saudi Arabia has been able to divert some of its oil exports by pipeline to the Red Sea. Saudi commentators have said that if this route was also threatened, Riyadh could also enter the war directly.

Farea Al-Muslimi, a research fellow in Middle East and north Africa programme at the Chatham House thinktank, said: “The decision by the Houthis to join the broader Middle East conflict marks a serious and deeply concerning escalation.

“The potential impact on key commercial maritime routes, especially in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, cannot be overstated,” he added. “At the same time, vital economic and military infrastructure across the Gulf region may become increasingly exposed.”

Read the full report here:

Here are some of the latest images from around the Middle East:

The situation at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant continues to deteriorate and attacks pose a direct threat to nuclear safety, the head of Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom said after another strike near the facility.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Friday that Iran had informed it of another strike in the vicinity of Bushehr, the third such incident in 10 days, with no damage to the operating reactor and no release of radiation reported.

The Russian foreign ministry on Saturday called for “unequivocal and firm condemnation” of the attack near Bushehr.

It said:

We hope that, by receiving timely and objective information directly from the Iranian authorities about what is happening on the ground, the Director General of the IAEA will be able to convey a simple message to the aggressors immediately and unequivocally: ‘It is time for you to stop."’

One of the world’s largest shipping companies, Maersk, has suspended its operations at the port of Salalah in Oman after a drone attack.

In a statement on its website, the Danish company said:

In the early hours of Saturday 28 March 2026, a security incident occurred at the Port of Salalah in Oman. It is understood that the incident involved drone activity and explosions were also reported.

We are pleased to confirm that all Maersk crew are safe and accounted for and no Maersk vessels or cargo have been affected.

Following the incident in which a terminal crane sustained damage, the port was immediately evacuated and operations across the facility were temporarily suspended.

The Port of Salalah remains in full cooperation with relevant authorities and Maersk’s current estimate is that operations will be on hold for approximately 48 hours.

The official Oman News Agency reported this morning that the port was targeted by two drones, injuring one foreign worker and damaging one of the cranes.

This was followed by a statement from an Iran military spokesperson, claiming Iranian forces targeted a US “military support vessel” at a “considerable distance” from the Omani port. The statement added that Tehran respected “the national sovereignty of the brotherly and friendly country of Oman”.

Ukraine has denied Iran’s claim that it had targeted and destroyed a Ukrainian anti-drone system depot in the UAE, calling it a “lie” and a “disinformation”.

“This is a lie, we officially refute this information. The Iranian regime often conducts such disinformation operations – and in this it is no different from the Russians,” the Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson, Georgiy Tykhym, said, according to the AFP news agency.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have confirmed that they launched an attack on Israel for the first time since the outbreak of the Israel-US war on Iran, marking their entry to the conflict just hours after Marco Rubio said the US expected to conclude military operations within “weeks, not months”.

While Israel was again hitting targets across Iran’s capital on Saturday, it identified what it said was a missile launched from Yemen. The Houthis said the attack came after continued targeting of infrastructure in Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories, adding that their operations would continue until the “aggression” on all fronts ends.

Houthi involvement in the war could risk broadening the conflict, given their ability to strike targets far beyond Yemen and disrupt shipping lanes around the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea, which they had done in support of Hamas in Gaza after the 7 October attacks on Israel.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, after meeting G7 foreign ministers in France, Rubio – the US secretary of state – said of Iran: “When we are done with them here in the next couple weeks, they will be weaker than they’ve been in recent history.”

Read the full report here:

Iran said it has targeted a Ukrainian anti-drone system depot in the UAE which it claimed was used to assist US forces, the AFP news agency reported.

In a statement to state media, Iran’s military central operational command Khatam Al-Anbiya said: “As the hideouts of American commanders and soldiers in Dubai were targeted … a Ukrainian anti-drone system depot that was located in Dubai to assist the US military … was targeted and destroyed.”

The statement came a short time after the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced his country and the UAE have agreed to “cooperate in the field of security and defence”. You can read an earlier post on that here.

There has been no immediate comment from the UAE on the purported attack in Dubai.

Here are some images on the newswires from across the Middle East as the US-Israeli war on Iran reaches the one-month mark.

The Israeli military has issued a new order for people in several villages near the town of Tyre in southern Lebanon to flee the area and move north.

In a post of X, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, warned that seven villages need to “immediately evacuate and move north of the Zahrani river”.

Israel escalated its attacks against Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah and issued sweeping evacuation orders for areas south of Lebanon’s Litani River. In recent days, Israeli airstrikes have destroyed most of the bridges over the river, severing wide swathes of the country – including the port city of Tyre – from the rest of Lebanon.

Officials in Lebanon have said more than 1,100 people have been killed since the start of the war and more than a million have been displaced.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country and the UAE have agreed to cooperate on defence, as the Gulf nation faces continued attacks from Iran.

Zelenskyy said he met with Emirati president Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and that the two leaders agreed to “cooperate in the field of security and defence”.

In a post on X, he said:

We discussed the security situation in the Emirates, Iranian strikes, and the blockade of the strait of Hormuz, which directly affects the global oil market. For all normal states, it is important to ensure stability and protect lives amid today’s threats. Ukraine has relevant expertise in this area – our cities, unfortunately, have been under daily attack for four years of full-scale war. Ukrainians have developed an appropriate protection system that delivers a significant interception rate against enemy drones and missiles. This systematic approach and integration of experience is exactly what we are offering to our partners.

The official Abu Dhabi Media Office has provided an update on the missile attack this morning in the UAE capital, saying six people were injured, increasing an earlier casualty toll of five.

Authorities said a missile interception led to debris falling near the Khalifa Economic Zone in Abu Dhabi, close to Khalifa Port.

In a statement, the media office said: “Authorities further confirmed an additional injury as a result of the incident, to a Pakistani national, bringing the total number of injured individuals to six, with injuries ranging from minor to moderate.”

It did not say where the attack was launched from, but the country’s defence ministry said earlier that its forces were intercepting missile and drone attacks from Iran.

‘It didn’t matter whose child I rescued’: parents of Iran school bombing victims describe their worst day

When Marzieh heard the first bang, an almighty crash that rattled the room, her first thought went to her youngest son, Mohammad. He must have got out on to the balcony and discovered a new game, she thought: using all of his small might to smash its sliding doors closed. Marzieh stood up from where she was working at her sewing machine, and shouted for him to stop.

“Mum, it wasn’t me,” he called back.

Then, the second crash sounded, the force of it making the entire house tremble. Could it be the neighbours, she wondered – construction work, renovations? But even as the thought occurred, she knew it wasn’t right: their nextdoor neighbours had all left for work that morning, and only she and Mohammad were at home.

Just a few minutes earlier, at 11.17am, Marzieh had received an abrupt phone call from Mrs Mohammadian, her eight-year-old daughter Zahra’s teacher. The primary school, a few blocks away, was closing early, she said – could the family pick Zahra up? But Mrs Mohammadian hadn’t said why, swiftly concluding the message to call the next parent on her list. Marzieh rang her husband at work, who sent his brother to pick up the girls – Zahra and her cousin were in the same class.

Now, standing in the house, Marzieh felt a strange, numb feeling settle in. She looked down, and noticed she was shaking. From the street outside she could hear voices, and so Marzieh gathered up Mohammad, rushing to find her chador (veil) to leave the house. As she opened the door, the acrid smell of smoke hit her. People ran back and forth down the road. She stopped someone to ask what was happening. “War has started,” they said.

Hours before the world learned that a US missile had hit Shajareh Tayyebeh school, parents were already searching the rubble for their sons and daughters. In this exclusive report, four families describe the events of 28 February:

A drone attack at Kuwait airport has caused “significant damage” to its radar system, the state-owned Kuwait News Agency (Kuna) reported.

Civil aviation authorities confirmed there were no injuries after the airport was “subjected to several drone attacks”, according to Kuna.

The airport has been targeted several times since the onset of the Iran war, most recently on Wednesday when a drone attack on a fuel depot at the site caused a massive fire. Kuwait has blamed Iran for the attacks.

Israel carried out dawn airstrikes on several towns in southern Lebanon on Saturday, state media reported, while Hezbollah announced attacks on Israeli forces, including in Debel.

Lebanon’s state-run National news agency reported “a series of strikes” at dawn on the town of Majdal Selm, “successive strikes” on the towns of Kafra, Hanniyeh, Touline and Adloun, and several Israeli strikes on Nabatiyeh, hitting “residential and commercial buildings and a fuel station”.

The agency also reported strikes on border towns, particularly Taybeh, with “an attempt by enemy forces to advance toward the Litani area”.

Hezbollah said it had targeted gatherings of Israeli forces in Debel, a predominantly Christian border town where some people are still living.

Pakistan will host talks next week with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey on the war in the Middle East, a senior foreign ministry official told AFP on Saturday.

“We will host a quadrilateral meeting on Monday,” the official said on condition of anonymity, adding that the exact representation was not yet confirmed. They said delegations were expected to arrive in Pakistan by Sunday night.

Pakistan has emerged as a key facilitator between Iran and the US. Islamabad has longstanding links with Tehran and close contacts in the Gulf, while the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif and army chief Field Marshal Amin Munir have struck up a personal rapport with US President Donald Trump.

The US and Iraq will “intensify cooperation” to prevent pro-Iran attacks and ensure Iraqi territory is not used to launch assaults against US facilities, Washington’s embassy in Baghdad has said in a statement.

“The Iraqi and US sides decided to intensify cooperation to prevent terrorist attacks and ensure that Iraqi territory is not used as a launching point for any aggression against the Iraqi people, the Iraqi Security Forces, Iraqi strategic facilities and assets, as well as against US personnel, diplomatic missions, and the Global Coalition,” the US embassy in Baghdad said in a statement posted on X on Friday.

Updating our earlier report about an Iranian attack on an airbase in Saudi Arabia, more than two dozen US troops have been wounded in Iranian attacks on the Prince Sultan airbase in the past week, AP sources say.

Iran fired six ballistic missiles and 29 drones at the base in a Friday attack that wounded at least 15 troops, including five seriously, according to the sources who were not authorized to comment publicly. US officials initially reported that at least 10 US troops were injured, including two seriously wounded. The base had come under attack twice earlier this week.

Sirens have been sounding in Bahrain through Saturday morning, with authorities warnings of potential attacks. The country’s interior ministry has urged people to head to the nearest safe location.

Earlier in the day, the ministry said civil defence officials had extinguished a fire at a facility that had been targeted by Iran.

Bahrain has so far seen two deaths since the war began, with the most recent drone strike hitting a residential building in the capital Manama, according to the interior ministry.

A worker has been injured in a drone attack on Oman’s Salalah port while a crane suffered limited damage, Oman’s government said on Saturday.

Oman had served as a mediator between the US and Iran before the current war. But earlier this month, Oman’s foreign minister claimed the US had “lost control of its own foreign policy” and accused Israel of persuading Donald Trump’s administration to go to war with Iran.

You can read more of that background here in an earlier report by our correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Dubai.

The Guardian’s south Asia correspondent, Hannah Ellis-Petersen, is reporting that Gulf countries are worried about possible attacks by Iran-backed militias and proxy armed groups in the region. Any such attacks would further destabilise Gulf regimes and escalate the war in the Middle East.

Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have condemned Iranian attacks on their soil, including attacks carried out through Iranian proxies.

While on Wednesday, Kuwait said it had foiled a plot to kill state leaders, and arrested six suspects believed to be associated with Iran’s most powerful proxy group, Hezbollah.

Some more detail from our earlier report about the attacks on Abu Dhabi, early on Saturday.

Five people were injured as a result of debris falling from a ballistic missile interception, the emirate’s media office said.

A little more context on the Israeli army reporting a missile fired from Yemen.

If correct, that is the first time a missile has launched from Yemen since the war erupted. The launch comes hours after Iran-aligned Houthis said on Friday they were prepared to act if what the group called an escalation against Iran and the “axis of resistance” continued, but did not say what form any intervention would take.

An entry of the Houthis to the war would raise the prospects of a broader regional confrontation, particularly given the Houthis’ ability to strike targets far beyond Yemen and disrupt shipping lanes around the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea, which they had done in support of Hamas in Gaza after 7 October, 2023.

Iran’s Shi’ite allies in Lebanon and Iraq have already joined the war in the region triggered by US and Israeli strikes on Tehran four weeks ago.

Reports are coming in that Abu Dhabi is dealing with two fires near Khalifa Economic Zones Abu Dhabi, or KEZAD, started by debris falling from the interception of a ballistic missile, authorities said early on Saturday.

The report comes as the United Arab Emirates is taking a tougher line against Tehran after being dragged into the conflict between Iran, and the US and Israel.

A simple ceasefire won’t be enough, according to the Emirati ambassador to Washington. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Yousef Al Otaiba wrote:

We need a conclusive outcome that addresses Iran’s full range of threats: nuclear capabilities, missiles, drones, terror proxies and blockades of international sea lanes.

We’ll tell you more as it comes to hand.

Our picture editor has curated some of the latest images from the war in the Middle East.