The warning came on the fourth day of the conflict, when the Israeli military claimed it had achieved air superiority over the Iranian capital and could fly over the city without facing major threats. The military has issued similar evacuation warnings for civilians in parts of Gaza and Lebanon ahead of strikes.
“At this time, we can say that we have achieved full aerial superiority over Tehran’s skies,” said military spokesperson Brigadier General Effie Defrin.
The military said it had destroyed more than 120 surface-to-surface missile launchers in central Iran, a third of Iran’s total.
It also said fighter jets had struck 10 command centres in Tehran belonging to Iran’s Quds Force, an elite arm of its Revolutionary Guard that conducts military and intelligence operations outside Iran.
Israeli strikes “amount to a deep and comprehensive blow to the Iranian threat,” Defrin said.
Iran, meanwhile, announced it had launched some 100 missiles and vowed further retaliation for sweeping attacks on its military and nuclear infrastructure that have killed at least 224 people in the country since Friday.
One missile fell near the American consulate in Tel Aviv, with its blast waves causing minor damage, US Ambassador Mike Huckabee said on X.
He added that no American personnel were injured.
Israel said so far 24 people have been killed and more than 500 injured as Iran launched more than 370 missiles and hundreds of drones .
The latest conflict began when Israel launched an assault on Iran’s top military leaders, uranium enrichment sites and nuclear scientists that it said was necessary to prevent its longtime adversary from getting any closer to building an atomic weapon .
Iran maintains that its nuclear programme is peaceful, and the US and others have assessed that Tehran has not pursued a nuclear weapon since 2003. But the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly warned that the country has enough enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs if it chooses to do so.
Iran has retaliated by firing waves of ballistic missiles at Israel. The back-and-forth has raised concerns about all-out war between the countries and propelled the region, already on edge, into even greater upheaval.
Powerful explosions, likely from Israel’s defence systems intercepting Iranian missiles, rocked Tel Aviv shortly before dawn on Monday, sending plumes of black smoke into the sky over the coastal city.
Authorities in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva said that Iranian missiles had hit a residential building there, charring concrete walls, shattering windows and ripping the walls off multiple apartments.
The Israeli Magen David Adom emergency service reported that two women and two men, all in their 70s, and one other person were killed in the attacks that struck four sites in central Israel.
During an earlier barrage of Iranian missiles on central Israel on Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran will stop its strikes if Israel does the same.
But after a day of intensive Israeli aerial attacks that extended targets beyond military installations to hit oil refineries and government buildings, the Revolutionary Guard struck a hard line on Monday, vowing that further rounds of strikes would be “more forceful, severe, precise and destructive than previous ones.”
Health authorities also reported that 1,277 were wounded in Iran. (AP)
