Morning Update

Good morning readers, 

Israel launched a series of strikes on Iran early on Friday, targeting the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities and killing one of its top generals.

Here are the latest updates:

• Iranian media reported explosions in Natanz, Tehran and several other cities, with state television broadcasting images of smoke and fires billowing from buildings

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacks were aimed at "rolling back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival," adding that it would take "many days.  

  "We struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear enrichment programme," Netanyahu said in a recorded televised address.

• The commander of Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, General Hossein Salami, and the deputy commander in chief of the armed forces, General Gholamali Rashid, were among those killed, Iran's state media said

• Iranian media also reported that two scientists, who it named as Fereydoun Abbasi and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, were killed

• Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Israel would face a "severe punishment" over the strikes, and confirmed the killings of the military officials and scientists