Key events
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency said it had received a report of an incident 8 nautical miles (14.8 km) north-west of Oman’s Kumzar, where information from a verified source indicated that a vessel was on fire.
UKMTO, cited by Reuters, said the cause of the fire had not been verified.
Opening summary: US says it is launching ninth night of strikes on Iran
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of developments in the Middle East.
The US military says it is beginning its ninth night of strikes on Iran, with an interim deal aimed at ending the war appearing to have all but collapsed.
“The strikes will continue degrading Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the strait of Hormuz,” US Central Command said on X on Sunday.
The attacks on Sunday come after a US service member was killed in Iraq the previous day during a “controlled detonation” of a downed Iranian drone, according to the US military, and two American troops were killed in Jordan on Friday.
The US military said carried out strikes against Iran on Saturday to “swiftly punish” the country’s Revolutionary Guard for the Jordan attack, while Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said the US would pay for trying to “escalate” the conflict.
In other key developments:
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Bahrain’s interior ministry said overnight to Monday that its air raid sirens had sounded. “Citizens and residents are urged to remain calm and head to the nearest safe place,” it said on X. Bahrain, host of the US Fifth Fleet, has been targeted by Iranian strikes in recent days.
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Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Monday it launched a “surprise attack” on an enemy command centre in Syria, in a statement reported by state news agency Irna. They attack was “in revenge for the blood of martyred soldiers of Iranshahr”, a city in south-east Iran, Irna said on Telegram.
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Iran said it targeted two US bases in Kuwait in response to more than a week of intensifying attacks, which Tehran says have hit transport and infrastructure sites, including an under-construction nuclear power plant.
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Kuwait and Bahrain have borne the brunt of attacks by Iran on its Gulf neighbours since hostilities resumed this month despite a ceasefire and memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran.
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Jordan also reported intercepting missiles, a day after the US military said the two service members were killed there Friday and another had gone missing in action as they “defended against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks”.
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US Central Command’s announcement that a service member died in northern Iraq during the controlled detonation of an unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian drone brought to 17 the confirmed number of American military fatalities since the war began. Iran’s health ministry said on Saturday that 50 people had been killed and more than 500 injured in US strikes on the country over the past three weeks.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jul/20/us-iran-war-live-updates-strikes-strait-of-hormuz-middle-east-crisis-latest-news
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