Thank you for reading our rolling live coverage of the conflict in the Middle East. We’re concluding this live blog here, but our coverage continues in a new blog, which you can read now here.
As we head into the Australian night, here’s what we covered today.
- Challenges continue for people trying to leave the Middle East via airports. Dubai’s international airport briefly suspended all operations on Saturday night, after an Iranian missile hit the world’s busiest transit hub.
- Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian apologised for Iran’s attacks on regional countries. In a recorded statement on Iranian television, he said that Tehran would halt them and suggested they were caused by miscommunication in the ranks. He blamed the killing of the country’s supreme leader and other top officials for what sounded like a loss of command and control in the armed forces in recent days.
- Not long after this, Qatar said it had intercepted another missile attack.
- Israeli warplanes have hammered Beirut and Tehran across the day. The death toll has continued to rise on Saturday with at least 1230 people killed in Iran, more than 200 in Lebanon and around a dozen in Israel, according to officials. Another 22 people have been reported killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon in the past 24 hours. At 7.20pm, Israel said it had begun another round of strikes in Tehran and Isfahan.
- Two officials familiar with US intelligence said Russia had provided Iran with information that could help Tehran strike American warships, aircraft and other assets in the region.
- US President Donald Trump’s administration approved a new $151 million arms sale to Israel after Trump said he would not negotiate with Iran without its “unconditional surrender”. Pezeshkian rejected this idea in his televised statement, saying it was a dream the US would take to their graves.