War in the Middle East: latest developments

Here are the latest main events related to the war in the Middle East:

Spain will send its most advanced frigate to protect Cyprus after a drone strike on a British base on the Mediterranean island sucked it into the Middle East war, the defence ministry said on Thursday.

The "Cristobal Colon" will join French aircraft carrier "Charles de Gaulle" and Greek navy ships to "offer protection and aerial defence" and "support any evacuation of civilians", the ministry said in a statement.

Israel's military said in a statement Thursday it had "just begun a large-scale wave of strikes against infrastructure of the Iranian terror regime across Tehran".

Iranian news agency Tasnim and local media reported several explosions had been heard in Tehran Thursday morning.

Another round of explosions were heard over the Qatari capital Doha Thursday, AFP journalists reported, describing a column of black smoke rising on the horizon.

Qatar's defence ministry said its military was working to intercept an incoming missile attack.

Iran said Thursday it had targeted the headquarters of Kurdish forces in Iraqi Kurdistan with three missiles, following strikes on Kurdish regions in both Iran and Iraq.

The strikes killed a member from an exiled Iranian Kurdish group, according to a representative.

Lebanese state media said an Israeli strike had killed a senior Hamas official Thursday, the first reported targeted killing of a member of the Palestinian militant group since US-Israeli strikes on Iran triggered regional war.

Wassim Atallah al-Ali and his wife were killed when an "enemy drone targeted their home" in Beddawi, a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli, the National News Agency (NNA) reported.

Azerbaijan on Thursday summoned Iran's envoy after two people were wounded in drone hits on an airport and near a school in the exclave of Nakhichevan, and said the attack "will not go unanswered".

Iranian Foreign Minister Abas Araghchi accused the United States of committing an atrocity by sinking an Iranian navy ship off Sri Lanka.

"Mark my words: The US will come to bitterly regret precedent it has set", he posted on X.

A second Iranian warship was heading towards Sri Lanka's territorial waters Thursday, a minister told parliament.

Iran hit a US oil tanker with a missile Thursday, "in the north of the Persian Gulf" and set it on fire, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said in a statement reported by state television.

The incident has not been independently confirmed.

Iran's internet is "around 1 percent of ordinary levels" with a communication blackout sparked by the war with Israel and the United States entering a fifth day, monitor Netblocks said Thursday.

Telecoms users were threatening legal action against users trying to connect, it added.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Thursday that "military assets" had been deployed to the Middle East as a contingency plan.

While Albanese did not elaborate, local outlet SBS News reported they were planes.

Iran launched a fresh round of missiles at Israel earlier Thursday, said the Israeli military and Tehran's state media.

Explosions were heard in Jerusalem after warnings of incoming Iranian missile fire, according to AFP journalists.

An air strike hit the Hezbollah stronghold of south Beirut early Thursday, after an Israeli warning to residents.

Israeli strikes along Beirut's airport highway killed three people, Lebanon's health ministry said.

A "large explosion" hit a tanker in the waters off Kuwait, causing an oil spill, British maritime security agency UKMTO said.

"The Master of a tanker at anchor, reports witnessing and hearing a large explosion on the port side then seeing a small craft leave the vicinity" off the Gulf state's Mubarak Al-Kabeer area, the agency posted on X.

Qatar has begun evacuating residents of its capital living near the US embassy as a precautionary measure, the interior ministry said, after Iranian strikes.

Britain's Defence Minister John Healey is due in Cyprus later Thursday, after a drone strike on a UK air base on the Mediterranean island, a defence source tells AFP.

Italy will send air defence assistance to Gulf countries hit by Iranian strikes in retaliation for US-Israeli attacks, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Thursday.

© Agence France-Presse