Kuwait briefly shut the country’s main airport after Iranian drones heavily damaged it and killed one person.
The attack on Wednesday was the latest salvo in a series of back-and-forth attacks by Tehran and Washington that have tested a fragile ceasefire.
The strikes came as semi-official Iranian news agencies said the country had stopped communicating with mediators about extending a ceasefire in the war with the US and Israel.
A regional official said Tehran wanted the truce in Lebanon enforced before returning to talks. US president Donald Trump disputed that claim and said negotiations were continuing.
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Those talks have dragged on for weeks, and repeated exchanges of strikes in the Gulf region and Israel’s broadening war in Lebanon are further straining the efforts.
All the while, Iran has maintained its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz – a crucial artery for the world’s oil and natural gas – and the US has continued its blockade of Iranian ports, ensuring that global fuel prices remain high and the effects of the conflict are felt well beyond on the region.
Defence ministry spokesperson Brig Gen Saud Abdulaziz Al-Otaibi said that “a number of hostile drones” had targeted Kuwait International Airport’s passenger building, severely damaging the building and injuring “a number of individuals”.
Authorities later said one person was killed and 63 wounded, including passengers and workers. Health ministry spokesman Abdullah Al Sanad said some had suffered serious injuries. India’s embassy said the person killed was an Indian national.
Civil aviation authorities said the airport partially reopened later in the day, with Kuwait Airways flights resuming from a different terminal from the one that was hit. No other flights would be operating, they added.
The airport had only reopened on Monday after closing early in the war. State media reported that Kuwait Airways was suspending operations until further notice.
The US military said that Iran fired two missiles at Kuwait that fell apart en route, and that it had “downed multiple drones” targeting US forces in the country.
The military also said US and Bahraini forces intercepted missiles aimed at the Gulf kingdom, which is home to the US Navy’s 5th fleet. Bahrain’s defence ministry said its military had intercepted and destroyed three missiles and a number of drones fired by Iran.
The US military said it launched strikes on an Iranian military ground control station on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz in response to the attacks on Bahrain and Kuwait.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard acknowledged that it targeted the headquarters of the 5th Fleet and US military facilities in another country, but did not name Kuwait. It said the strikes were in retaliation for attacks on Qeshm Island.
“We had previously warned that in case of aggression, the response would be different and more severe, and we acted accordingly,” the Revolutionary Guard said in its statement.
A senior Emirati diplomat called on Wednesday for “a firm, unified, and cohesive Gulf position” against Iran following the attacks.
“This aggression does not target a specific state, but rather all of us,” Anwar Gargash wrote on X.
Iran’s Fars and Tasnim news agencies, both believed to be close to the Revolutionary Guard, reported that Iran’s negotiators have stopped communicating with ceasefire mediators as tensions flared in Israel’s separate but related fight against the Iranian-backed Hizbullah militant group in Lebanon.
A regional official involved in the mediation told the Associated Press that Iran had not communicated at all on Tuesday after saying that a ceasefire needed to be enforced in Lebanon for negotiations to continue.
Mr Trump called reports of a cessation in talks “false and erroneous”.
“The conversations between us have been going on continuously, including four days ago, three days ago, two days ago, one day ago and today,” Mr Trump said in a social media post. “Where they lead, one never knows, but as I told Iran, ‘It’s time, one way or another, for you to make a Deal’.”
Israeli forces have moved deeper into Lebanon than at any time in more than a quarter of a century – despite a nominal ceasefire in place between Israel and Hizbullah.
Iran insists that any larger potential truce in the war there must also quell the fighting in Lebanon.
Mr Trump could potentially push Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to halt or slow the advance of his forces, but Israel and the US maintain that the fighting in Lebanon is separate from the Iran war talks.- AP
