DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United States and Iran escalated their attacks across the Middle East on Friday, trading strikes aimed at infrastructure and military targets as their battle over the Strait of Hormuz intensified. The U.S. expanded its attacks against Iran by hitting more bridges and energy sites and collapsing a tower at a key Iranian port, following through on U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to pressure Tehran to ease its chokehold on the waterway vital to world energy supplies. In response, Iran launched missiles into U.S.-allied nations in the Mideast, including Qatar, a mediator in the war, and Kuwait, where one of the desert nation’s water desalination plants was damaged. The region has endured days of back-and-forth attacks in a conflict increasingly focused on control of the strait, and the collapse of an interim ceasefire leaves no clear end in sight for the war that began more than four months ago. The U.S. Central Command said late Friday it had launched its seventh straight night of attacks aimed at degrading Iran’s military. Iranian officials say recent U.S. strikes have killed dozens of people and wounded hundreds, with new casualties reported Friday, when the U.S. military also acknowledged more injured service members. In a statement early on Saturday, the Iranian military claimed that two oil tankers exploded and caught fire as they attempted to transit a mined route in the Strait of Hormuz. It did not provide further details. Iran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic after the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28. That sent the price of oil soaring and gave Iran significant leverage in negotiations. The price of oil rose Friday above US$86 a barrel, close to its highest level in a month, as crossings through the strait fell to a three-week low, according to an international shipping tracker. In an address to the American public on Thursday evening, Trump insisted the war was going well. “We are likewise winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly,” he said. Before the war began, the U.S. had been in talks with Iran over its nuclear program. Trump now faces political pressure to bring the war to a close and avoid the kind of prolonged Middle East conflict he had campaigned against. Bridges and ‘electrical infrastructure’ hit in Iran The U.S. airstrikes hit bridges overnight into Friday in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, Iranian state television reported. The attacks hit Bandar Khamir, a city on Iran’s coast on the Strait of Hormuz. The highway and railway bridge strikes appeared aimed at cutting off Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port, from roads leading into the Islamic Republic’s central region onward to Tehran, the capital. Iran acknowledged “attacks on power infrastructure” during the U.S. airstrike campaign for the first time Friday when its Energy Ministry issued a call for people to use less power in southern provinces “experiencing extreme heat.” The ministry did not specify what was hit. Iranian authorities said at least 46 people have been killed and more than 400 wounded in recent U.S. strikes, including eight killed in a strike on a bridge Friday. U.S. officials acknowledged 13 additional U.S. service members -- 10 army soldiers and three navy sailors -- had been injured since Monday, but offered no further details. Since the war began, 14 U.S. service members have been killed and 427 wounded. Tower at key port collapses in U.S. strike Central Command said it hit dozens of military and military infrastructure targets in Friday’s airstrikes. The strikes collapsed a tower at Iran’s Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman, a key trade route for landlocked, neighbouring Afghanistan, the state-run IRNA news agency reported and the U.S. military later confirmed. Chabahar port, which Iran had been running with support from India, has been a repeated target of American airstrikes. Iran said the tower oversees commercial traffic into the port. But Central Command said it was part of a maritime surveillance network used by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard to “track and target” commercial vessels in the strait. On Friday evening Iranian state media reported explosions around Iran, including in the central and south of the country. Local authorities said the U.S attacked around Ahvaz city without elaborating. IRNA also reported the sound of explosions in Lar, Yazd and Sirik. Iran retaliates by targeting Qatar, a mediator in the war On Friday, Qatar twice warned the public to take shelter as a barrage of Iranian missiles targeted the nation. People heard explosions overhead as air defences fired to intercept the missiles. Qatar’s Interior Ministry said falling debris wounded a child. Iran also targeted Bahrain and Kuwait early Friday. In Kuwait, authorities said Iran attacked a power and water desalination plant, causing widespread damage to the station. Kuwait said it extinguished the blaze and was working to assess the damage and get the station working again. About 90 per cent of the country’s drinking water comes from desalination. A spokesman for Kuwait’s defence ministry said Iranian drone attacks on its army’s “facilities and camps” injured an unspecified number of personnel. Jordan’s military said it intercepted three incoming missiles Friday morning launched by Iran. Explosions also could be heard Friday morning in Irbil and Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region as air defences targeted incoming fire. The attack apparently targeted the Iranian Kurdish dissident group Komala, killing at least nine people and wounding others, said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons. Iran did not immediately claim the attack but has targeted Komala in the past. Also on Friday, a tanker came under attack travelling through the Strait of Hormuz taking the route closest to Oman, the British military said. The report from the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said the ship sustained minor damage without any of its crew being injured. Iran did not immediately acknowledge any attack. In recent days, it has openly targeted ships using the route, which is overseen by the U.S. military and intended to be outside of Tehran’s control. Strikes come as Iran and U.S. vie for Strait of Hormuz Iran has said the strait must be under its sole control and that vessels should pay fees to Tehran -- even though the world for decades has considered it an international waterway. Trump has returned in recent days to his threats to target Iranian power stations and bridges to try to compel Iran to loosen its hold on the strait, through which about a fifth of all oil and natural gas traded once passed in peacetime. The U.S. also reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to halt its shipments of crude oil. Crossings through the strait fell to a three-week low of just eight vessels on Thursday, according to MarineTraffic.com. A growing amount of the region’s energy is being shipped through pipelines, but not nearly enough to offset the decline in shipping through the strait. Jon Gambrell, The Associated Press Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, Annika Wolters in Rayong, Thailand, and Stella Martany in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report.
