Israel’s launch of air attacks against Iran on Friday prompted Tehran to fire a wave of retaliatory strikes on Israel, and some Iranian ballistic missiles have pierced through Israel’s missile defence systems and hit key targets.

Israel’s escalating attacks have killed more than 240 people, including 70 women and children, in Iran. In retaliation, Iran has fired about 400 missiles and hundreds of drones, killing at least 24 people in Israel, wounding hundreds and forcing Israelis across the country to take cover in bomb shelters.

Some Iranian strikes have hit residential areas in central Israel, causing heavy damage. Israel’s fortified military headquarters in Tel Aviv, the Kirya, was also hit although damage was limited there.

On Tuesday, Iran said it hit a military intelligence centre and a Mossad spy agency operations planning centre, breaching Israel’s advanced missile defence systems – some of the most advanced in the world.

In recent history, Israel has successfully intercepted most aerial attacks coming its way through these systems, such as its signature Iron Dome.

So how are Iranian missiles making it past Israel’s air defences?

What is Israel’s Iron Dome?

While the Iron Dome is at the heart of Israel’s air defences, it is only a part of a larger system, comprising “the lowest level of these multitiered, integrated air defences,” said Alex Gatopoulos, Al Jazeera’s defence editor.

The Iron Dome detects an incoming rocket or missile, determines its path and intercepts it. Israel said the Iron Dome is 90 percent effective. It became operational in 2011 after it was developed to counter rocket attacks during the war with Hezbollah in 2006.

Gatopoulos explained that the Iron Dome was designed to intercept low-level rockets that larger systems would not be able to detect.

Israel also has the Barak-8 surface-to-air missile system, which intercepts medium-range missiles; the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, which intercepts short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles; and the David’s Sling, which intercepts medium- to long-range missiles.

What is Israel’s defence against Iranian missiles?

The Israeli missile defence systems use the Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 interceptors to intercept long-range missiles, such as Iranian missiles fired in the current conflict.

The main contractor for the Arrow project is state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, and Boeing is involved in making the interceptors.

The Arrow-2 is designed to intercept incoming missiles at slightly higher altitudes within and outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

Besides using air defence systems, Israel also carries out air-to-air missile defence, which involves the use of aircraft, such as combat helicopters or fighter jets, to destroy drones heading towards Israel.

How do air defence systems work?

Israeli air defence systems are made of three components: a radar system, a command and control centre, and a launcher with interceptor missiles.

An incoming enemy missile is tracked on the radar, which alerts the control centre to assess which targets to engage. The launcher normally sends out two interceptor missiles for one incoming enemy missile, Marina Miron, a postdoctoral researcher at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera.

All air defence systems are equipped with a limited number of interceptor missiles, and the exact number of interceptor missiles in Israel’s air defence systems is unknown to the public.

Has Iran broken through Israeli air defences?

On Saturday, an Israeli military official said its defence systems had an “80 or 90 percent success rate”, emphasising that no system has a perfect rate, the Reuters news agency reported without naming the official.

This means that some Iranian missiles had pierced the fortifications.

How has Iran managed to break through?

While we do not know exactly how some Iranian missiles made it past Israeli air defence systems, there are a few possible ways Iranian drones and missiles managed to avoid interception.

Exhausting interceptor missiles

One way Iran possibly evaded Israeli air defences is by exhausting Israel’s interceptor missiles.

“No system shoots down 100 percent [missiles] anyway,” Miron said, adding: “You cannot shoot down more missiles if you only have a limited number of interceptors.”

Hypersonic missiles

Gatopoulos said Iran has hypersonic missiles, a direct reaction to evolving and maturing ballistic missile defences. This is because one way to evade an air defence system is to use missiles that fly faster, giving the air defence system less time to react.

Miron said hypersonic missiles are difficult for air defence systems to intercept even if they are detected by radar.

Some hypersonic missiles are also equipped with a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), a warhead attached to a missile that can manoeuvre and glide at speeds five times faster than the speed of sound. In Iran, the Fattah-2 uses the HGV. “It looks like a normal missile with a craft attached to the end of it,” Gatopoulos said.

He explained that besides travelling faster, HGVs also zigzag and do not move on a predictive path like regular ballistic missiles. Such quick, erratic movements evade air defence systems, which are designed to predict the path a missile will take.

Cruise missiles

Cruise missiles can also change their trajectory and become difficult to intercept, Miron said.

Iran has cruise missiles in its arsenal, such as the Hoveyzeh missile, and has used such missiles against Israel. While these missiles are slower than ballistic missiles, they fly like pilotless planes, low and steady, sneaking past air defences.

What are other ways air defence systems can be challenged?

Another way air defence systems can be tested is by overloading their systems by tricking them with decoys of drones and missiles, Miron added.

“It shows up as a threat on the radar, but in actuality, it’s not. And usually such decoys are used … to empty the interceptor missile reserve so that the actual missiles and drones can get through.”

Miron added that some missiles are also equipped with radar suppression technologies that make them undetectable for air defence systems.

Could Iran or Israel run out of missiles?

Gatopoulos explained that the conflict between Iran and Israel is “attritional” at the moment.

On Monday, Israel claimed dominance over Iranian skies. However, the shortest distance between Iran and Israel is 1,000km (620 miles). “It is a long way for Israeli planes to go unfuelled,” Gatopoulos said.

“You can loiter there, but only up to a certain amount of time,” he added. He explained that while the US could possibly help Israel with air-to-air refuelling, adding external tanks on planes makes them lose stealth properties.

Gatopoulos added that this raises questions of how many missiles Iran has to continue the conflict of attrition as Israeli planes patrol and try to destroy any mobile launchers and how many interceptors, Arrow-2 and -3 especially, Israel has that it can keep firing.

Controversial Kenyan televangelist Gilbert Deya, who claimed he created miraculous pregnancies, has died in a road crash.

Police told local media that Deya died on the spot on Tuesday evening after his vehicle was involved in an accident with a university bus and another vehicle near the town of Kisumu in western Kenya.

At least 30 other people were reportedly injured, including a person identified as his wife and a passenger in his vehicle, and 15 students in the bus.

Deya, who ran a church in London, rose to infamy in the early 2000s, following his claim that he could help infertile couples conceive “miracle” babies through prayer.

Investigations later linked his church to an alleged child-trafficking ring, leading to his arrest and extradition from the UK eight years ago after a decade-long legal battle.

He was acquitted of the charges in 2023 due to insufficient evidence.

On Wednesday, Siaya County Governor James Orengo said he had learnt with “deep sorrow and regret of the passing on of Bishop Gilbert Deya”.

He confirmed that the “horrific” road accident had involved a vehicle belonging to the county.

Photos shared online showed the mangled wreckage of one of the vehicles, which was completely shattered in the accident.

A former stonemason-turned evangelist, Deya moved from Kenya to London in the mid-1990s, where he founded Gilbert Deya Ministries, a registered charity with branches across the UK and Africa.

He was known for his charismatic preaching style and claimed to have been consecrated as an archbishop by a US evangelist in 1992.

His ministries later faced multiple investigations by the UK authorities for alleged mismanagement and legal violations, including selling olive oil which were falsely claiming to have healing properties.

He was once described by UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, then an MP, as a “modern-day snake-oil salesman who has conned and betrayed his vulnerable congregation”.

At his church, desperate women, some past their menopause and others who were unable to conceive, would be convinced that they would become pregnant through prayer.

But the babies were always “delivered” in backstreet clinics in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. The prosecution said the babies were stolen from poor Kenyan families.

In 2011, his then wife Mary Deya was jailed after being found guilty of stealing a baby from the main referral hospital in Nairobi and falsely stating she had given birth to the baby.

Deya would later tell a court that they had divorced after she had been charged, saying she had “tarnished” his name.

Recent videos from the YouTube page of Gilbert Deya Ministries appear to show him announcing that he has a new wife, Diana Deya.

When the televangelist was asked in a BBC investigation in 2014 how the alleged “miracle” children had different DNA to that of their alleged parents, he said it was “beyond human imagination”.

“It is not something I can say. I can explain because they are of God and things of God cannot be explained by a human being,” he said.

After his acquittal in 2023, Deya continued with his religious outreach programmes until his death, reportedly at 72.

Israel’s largest attack ever against Iran has targeted nuclear and military facilities, gas and oil depots and the government-run broadcaster. More than 200 people have been killed and hundreds more injured.

Here is what is known about the damage to Iran’s strategic infrastructure so far.

Nuclear facilities

Israel launched its most recent attack against Iran last Friday with waves of coordinated airstrikes hitting nuclear sites and killing much of the country’s military chain of command, along with several nuclear scientists.

Iran’s nuclear industry is well established, with over 30 facilities spread over the country, and some buried deep underground.

The first strikes severely damaged Iran’s largest uranium enrichment center, at Natanz, about 140 miles south of Tehran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, initially reported that the strikes had damaged only the aboveground part of the enrichment plant. It later revised its assessment to confirm “direct impacts” on underground enrichment halls.

Satellite imagery taken two days after the strike shows the tracks of heavy machinery and piles of dirt covering craters above where the enrichment halls are believed to be built.

Iran’s most likely repository of near bomb-grade nuclear fuel is stored at a complex outside the ancient capital of Isfahan. The stockpile has so far been spared from attack, but the Israeli military struck laboratories that work to convert uranium gas back into a metal — one of the last stages of building a weapon.

As of Wednesday morning, Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear site, Fordo, remained undamaged. It was built deep inside a mountain to protect it from attack. Only the U.S. military has a bomb capable of even reaching it.

Striking Fordo is central to any effort to destroy Iran’s ability to make nuclear weapons.

The site appeared to be intact in this satellite imagery taken on June 14.

A few other important nuclear facilities remain undamaged. Among them is Bushehr, Iran’s only operating nuclear plant, and Arak, a heavily guarded complex that has long been suspected of being built to produce plutonium.

Israel also targeted at least one university associated with nuclear programs. In an image posted on social media and verified by The New York Times, black smoke can be seen billowing from the Institute of Applied Physics’s campus.

There are a few other institutions in the area that are also associated with Iranian nuclear programs, including Shahid Rajaee University and Malek Ashtar University of Technology. Both are under U.S. sanctions. American officials believe they participate in research on nuclear warhead design.

Missiles bases

Iranian missile capability was also degraded by the strikes. The Israeli military said that it had struck 12 missile launch sites and storage facilities on Tuesday alone.

Several Israeli strikes targeted a missile base in Kermanshah, where missile storage buildings can be seen with damage in a satellite image taken on June 15.

Satellite imagery also shows damage at tunnel entrances to underground missile facilities.

In addition to Kermanshah, multiple other missile facilities were hit.

Energy infrastructure

With the second-largest gas reserves in the world and the fourth-largest crude oil reserves, Iran is one of the world’s major energy producers.

Over the weekend, Israel targeted Iran’s critical energy infrastructure. It struck Tehran’s main gas depot and its central oil refinery, according to a statement from Iran’s oil ministry. The ministry said Israel had also targeted a section of one of the world’s largest gas fields.

Video posted to social media and verified by The Times shows a large fire burning at the Shahran oil depot, north of Tehran.

Other infrastructure

On Friday, Israel carried out a strike on a military airport in the northwest Iranian city of Tabriz. A video taken by a witness and verified by The Times shows large plumes of black smoke rising into the sky.

And on Monday evening, the Israeli military attacked the headquarters of Iran’s state television. A news anchor was speaking live on the air when an explosion shook the building, followed by the sound of breaking glass and screams.

Premier League champions Liverpool to play the season’s first match on August 15 when they host Bournemouth at Anfield.

A Sunday afternoon clash between Manchester United and Arsenal is the pick of the matches on the opening weekend of the English Premier League’s 2025-2026 season as Liverpool will begin their title defence by hosting Bournemouth on August 15 .

The Premier League released its fixture schedule for the new season on Wednesday, giving teams and their fans a chance to start planning less than a month since the last campaign finished.

Manchester City, who are eyeing a seventh Premier League title under Pep Guardiola, take a trip to Wolverhampton Wanderers for their season opener on August 16 .

It’s a tricky beginning for Arne Slot’s champions with a trip to Newcastle on the second weekend, followed by a home match against Arsenal – another team in the Champions League – a week later.

Arsenal, who finished second for a third straight year last season, will play Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City and Newcastle in their opening six matches.

Everton bade farewell to their longtime home at Goodison Park at the end of last season, and the first game at their state-of-the-art, 53,000-capacity stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock will be against Brighton on August 23.

Thomas Frank’s first Premier League game in charge of Tottenham will be at home to promoted Burnley on August 16. That comes three days after Frank’s competitive debut with Tottenham, the Europa League champion, against Champions League winner Paris Saint-Germain in the UEFA Super Cup.

Sunderland’s first Premier League game since the 2016-2017 season is at home to West Ham while Leeds host Everton first after returning to the top flight following a two-year absence.

The new season concludes on May 24.

The new season starts here.

2025/26 🔜 pic.twitter.com/VmoxPb8dbu

— Premier League (@premierleague) June 18, 2025