Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service coming to you live from London. I'm Julian Warwick.

It was at about Hubbard's 3 in the morning in Iran when explosions were reported in the capital Tehran.

In Israel, people were woken at around the same time by air raid sirens and emergency phone alerts.

All of this signalled the start of a major Israeli attack on Iran, targeting the Israelis say the heart of the country's nuclear program.

The sound of Israeli military jets taking off to strike Iran that was from a video released by the Israeli army. Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the strikes

would continue for as many days as it takes.

Moments ago, Israel launched Operation Rising

Lion, a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel's very survival.

This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat. We struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear

enrichment program. We struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear weaponization program. 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

program. So the Israelis say they struck, quote, dozens of military targets, including nuclear

targets in different areas of Iran. There were multiple blasts seen at what is thought to be a ballistic

missile site in Perensha, in western Iran.

Well, the strikes also killed Hussein Salami,

chief of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

That's a powerful branch of the country's armed forces and other senior military figures and nuclear scientists.

Iranian state media reported those deaths. It also said

civilians, including children, were among those killed, reports which as yet haven't been

independently verified. In an immediate response, Iran launched a counterattack of more than a hundred

drones towards Israel, which the Israelis say were all intercepted.

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