Iran's intelligence minister Esmail Khatib killed in air strike

Esmail Khatib, Iran's intelligence minister, has been killed, according to Iran's state media. Masoud Pezeshkian said the "cowardly assassination" had left Iran "in deep mourning," after Israel said on Wednesday it had killed Khatib in an air strike. This comes a day after Israel announced it had killed Iran's top security official, Ali Larijani, and head of the paramilitary Basij force, Gholamreza Soleimani, in strikes.

Since the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war on February 28, multiple senior Iranian officials and commanders have been killed in efforts by Israel and the US to weaken the regime's leadership. In a post on X, Pezeshkian extended his condolences to the Iranian people over the officials' deaths, adding he was "certain their path will continue more steadfastly than before". Earlier on Wednesday, Israel's defence minister Israel Katz announced that Khatib had been "eliminated" in an Israeli strike on Tehran. Khatib was appointed as Iran's defence minister by the late former president, Ebrahim Raisi, in 2021. He was sanctioned by the US Treasury for his role as head of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence for "engaging in cyber-enabled activities against the United States and its allies" in 2022.

Large crowds gathered in central Tehran on Wednesday for the funerals of Larijani, Soleimani, and the 84 sailors killed when the US sank an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka earlier this month. More than 1,300 people have been killed in Israeli and US strikes on Iran since the start of the war, including 226 women and **204