DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Kuwait said Wednesday it had suspended commercial flights after an Iranian drone attack hit the country’s airport, injuring a number of people hours after Iran and the United States traded missile strikes in the region.
The attacks came after Iran stopped communicating with mediators about extending a ceasefire in the war with the U.S. and Israel, according to reports Tuesday from two semiofficial Iranian news agencies. U.S. President Donald Trump disputed that claim and said talks were continuing.
Defense Ministry spokesperson Brig. Gen. Saud Abdulaziz Al-Otaibi said that “a number of hostile drones” had targeted Kuwait International Airport’s passenger building, severely damaging the building and injuring “a number of individuals.”
The airport reopened on June 1 after closing due to the Iran war.
Late Tuesday, the U.S. military said it had launched strikes on an Iranian military facility in retaliation for Iranian missiles fired at Kuwait and Bahrain. It said Iran had fired two missiles at Kuwait that fell apart en route, while U.S. and Bahraini forces intercepted missiles aimed at Bahrain. U.S. Central Command also said it had “downed multiple drones” targeting American forces in Kuwait.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it had targeted the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain and another country in its attack, without naming Kuwait. It said it launched its attack in response to the U.S. firing a missile into the engine room of an oil tanker that was trying to reach Iran despite the U.S. blockade.
“We had previously warned that in case of aggression, the response would be different and more severe, and we acted accordingly,” the Guard said in its statement.
Central Command said it responded with strikes on an Iranian military ground control station on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian news agencies report pause in communication with mediators
Iran’s Fars and Tasnim news agencies, both believed to be close to the Guard, reported that Iran’s negotiators have stopped communicating with ceasefire mediators as tensions flared in Israel’s separate but related fight against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
A regional official involved in the mediation, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks, told The Associated Press that Iran had not communicated at all on Tuesday after saying that a ceasefire needed to be enforced in Lebanon for negotiations to continue.
Trump called reports of a cessation in talks “false and erroneous.”
“The conversations between us have been going on continuously, including four days ago, three days ago, two days ago, one day ago and today,” Trump said in a social media post. “Where they lead, one never knows, but as I told Iran, ’It’s time, one way or another, for you to make a Deal.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not address the reported cutoff in communications as he testified at a congressional hearing in Washington. Instead, he sounded an optimistic note about the nuclear dimension of the negotiations, while cautioning that there’s no guarantee of reaching “a deal that’s acceptable.”
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz in New York and Aamer Madhani and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.
