Live: Iran holds funeral for top military, nuclear figures killed in Israeli strikes

Hello and welcome to Middle East Eye's live coverage as we track the latest developments after Israel launched strikes against Iran three days ago, marking a major escalation in regional tensions. 

• Israel intensifies attacks on Iran, hitting Tehran and other regions for a third straight day.

• Iran’s health ministry reports 224 killed, including IRGC intelligence chief Mohammad Kazemi and two generals.

• Israeli strikes wound at least eight in Haifa and other areas, says Israel’s National Emergency Service.

• Israeli army chief vows escalation – Eyal Zamir calls the operation "historic and unprecedented", aiming to "deliver a significant blow to an existential threat".

• US stays out of conflict, says President Donald Trump: "We are not at this moment involved," but urges a swift deal.

• G7 may push for diplomacy – German Chancellor Friedrich Merz says the upcoming summit could agree on measures to de-escalate tensions.

President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he hopes Israel and Iran can broker a ceasefire but said sometimes countries have to fight it out first.

Talking to reporters as he left for the G7 summit in Canada, Trump said the US will continue to support Israel but declined to say if he asked the US ally to pause strikes on Iran.

Iran has told mediators Qatar and Oman that it is not open to negotiating a ceasefire while it is under Israeli attack, an official briefed on the communications told Reuters on Sunday, as the two foes launched fresh attacks and raised fears of a wider conflict.

"The Iranians informed Qatari and Omani mediators that they will only pursue serious negotiations once Iran has completed its response to the Israeli pre-emptive strikes," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the conflict.

Iran made "clear that it will not negotiate while under attack," the official said.

A civilian woman was killed Sunday in Syria's western Tartus province when a drone struck her home, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

It marked the first reported casualty on Syrian soil since the latest escalation between Iran and Israel began.

The Britain-based war monitor reported the death of "a woman after a drone fell on her house" in a village in rural Tartus, suggesting the drone was likely Iranian.

Since the start of the Iran-Israel escalation, AFP correspondents and residents across Syria have observed dozens of missiles flying overhead, several of them intercepted.

Four were wounded in a community in southern Israel and three were wounded in northern Israel's Haifa, after an Iranian airstrike on Sunday evening, Haaretz reported, citing emergency services.

Iran health ministry says Israeli strikes have killed 224 people since Friday.

The intelligence chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Kazemi, and his deputy were killed in Israel's attacks on Tehran on Sunday, Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency said.

Israel's military said several sites were hit by the latest Iranian missile barrage on Sunday, with firefighters reporting a residential building struck on the country's Mediterranean coast.

"Homefront Command Search and Rescue teams have been dispatched to several hit sites in Israel, following the latest barrage from Iran," the military said in a statement shortly after telling the public they could leave protected shelters.

The fire services, meanwhile, said rescuers were heading to building on the coast that sustained a "direct hit".

Russia's investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev said in a post on X on Sunday that Russia can play "a key role" in mediating the conflict between Israel and Iran.

Dmitriev was responding to a post by US President Donald Trump in which he said he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the conflict.

Iran's air defences were activated against "hostile targets" in the country's southwest on Sunday evening, the Mehr news agency reported.

"A few minutes ago, air defence systems were activated in Ahvaz at several locations to counter hostile targets," the agency reported.

Palestinian citizens of Israel are having to fend for themselves amid ongoing missile strikes by Iran, with the beleaguered community lacking access to shelters and safe rooms due to discriminatory building policies.

On Saturday, four Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed in the predominantly Arab town of Tamra, some 25km east of Haifa, after an Iranian missile unexpectedly struck their residential building.

Local residents told Middle East Eye that four Christian women from the same family were killed in the attack, including a mother and her two daughters, aged 13 and 20.

Residents said that when the Israeli government instructed Israelis to stay in protected areas as missile alerts sounded, Palestinians in Tamra decided to shelter in place - or they sought safety in groups at the homes of other family members - due to the absence of public shelters and safe rooms.

"Most homes in Tamra, and those in predominantly Arab towns, lack shelters," Muhammed Soboh, a Tamra resident, told MEE.

Read more: Iranian strikes expose lack of shelters for Palestinian citizens of Israel, residents say

Israel's military said Sunday it began striking dozens of surface-to-surface missile targets in Iran's west, as the two arch-enemies traded heavy blows for a third day.

"The (air force) began a series of strikes on dozens of surface-to-surface missile targets in western Iran," the military said in a statement.

Israel unleashed a barrage of strikes across Iran Sunday stretching from the west to Tehran and Mashhad in the east.

With no let-up in sight, Iran said it would begin opening mosques, metro stations and schools to serve as makeshift bomb shelters for civilians, as Israel kept up its withering blows.

Iranian missile fire targeting Israel killed at least 10 people overnight, according to authorities, pushing the death toll up to 13 since Iran began its retaliatory strikes Friday, with 380 reported injured.

Iranian media, citing the health ministry, meanwhile reported at least 128 killed in Israeli attacks from Friday to Saturday, including women and children, with 900 more reported injured.

Kyiv said Sunday that Iran's retaliatory attacks on Israel over its massive air strikes killed five Ukrainian nationals, including three children, in Israel's Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv,  when a missile hit a residential building in the city.

Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan told US President Donald Trump in a phone call on Sunday that Ankara was ready to play a facilitator role to resolve the nuclear dispute that led to the conflict between Israel and Iran, Erdogan's office said.

Erdogan welcomed Trump's latest statement on a possible peace between Iran and Israel, his office said, and urged his US counterpart to take "urgent action" to prevent a disaster "that could set the region on fire".

"President Erdogan hailed the recent comments by US President Trump concerning a resolution of the conflict between Israel and Iran... and stressed that urgent action is needed to prevent a catastrophe that could enflame the whole region," the Turkish presidency said in a statement.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to allow Israel to attack Iran is the worst miscalculation a US president has made since George W Bush invaded Iraq.

Bush’s decision heralded eight years of conflict in Iraq, killed at least 655,000 people, according to The Lancet, spawned an extreme group of Takfiri militants in the Islamic State group and brought a major state to the verge of collapse from which it has yet to recover 14 years on. 

Trump’s decision could yet prove to be more calamitous.

Allowing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Iran, when US envoys were engaged in negotiations with Tehran, places the US presidency on the same level of trustworthiness as Al Capone or Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

This is the way you behave if you are in charge of a drug cartel, not a global power. 

Read more: By allowing Israel to bomb Iran, Trump is pushing Tehran to go nuclear Opinion by David Hearst