Iran retaliates with 100 drones; Khamenei warns Israel over strikes

Mangalore Today News Network

Tehran, June 13, 2025: Iran fired more than 100 drones towards Israel at 06:00 BST on Friday, hours after Israel bombed "dozens" of sites in the Islamic Republic, including its nuclear facilities, and killed senior military commanders and scientists.

Israeli army spokesperson Effie Defrin said in a statement that "all [aerial] defence arrays have been operating to intercept the threats.

"This is a different event to what we’ve experienced thus far, and we’re expecting difficult hours," he added.

Videos posted on social media appeared to show Iranian drones in the skies above Iraq, apparently en route to Israel.

According to estimates, the drones could take several hours to reach Israel.

Both Iraq and neighbouring Jordan announced that they had closed their airspace as a precautionary measure, after Israel’s strikes on Iran.

The flight-tracking website Flightradar24 showed the skies over both countries virtually empty at around 06:30 BST (08:30 local time).

Israel launched a major attack on Iran in the early hours of Friday, claiming it had taken the action because the Islamic Republic had begun to build nuclear warheads.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attack was aimed at "rolling back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival," adding that it would take "many days."

"We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme," Netanyahu said in a recorded televised address.

"We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear weaponisation programme. We targeted Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz. We targeted Iran’s leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb. We also struck at the heart of Iran’s ballistic missile programme."