Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is likely dead according to Israeli media reports.
There are growing indications that he was killed or at least very badly hurt in an Israeli strike earlier today, Channel 12 said citing unnamed Israeli sources.
Officials had earlier reported that the strikes had caused ‘very significant harm’ to the leadership of the Iranian regime and its military commanders including the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard
IRGC commander General Mohammad Pakpour is also said to have been ‘eliminated’ in strikes targeting the capital, Tehran, according to Israeli assessments.
The Mail Online reports: Officials had earlier reported that the strikes had caused ‘very significant harm’ to the leadership of the Iranian regime and its military commanders.
Khamenei has not been heard from since the US and Israel launched their dual attack on Iran on Saturday morning.
Israeli sources said today that President Donald Trump specifically targeted Iran‘s supreme leader in its first wave of joint missile strikes with Israel.
The initial blasts are believed to have taken place close to the offices of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the capital, Tehran.
The results of the strikes are unclear, an Israeli official said, with earlier reports suggesting that the supreme leader had been moved out of Tehran to a secure location.
Both Khamenei’s palace and compound in Tehran are reported to have been completely destroyed in today’s operation.
Video footage from Tehran shows smoke billowing into the sky above the compound this morning, which is understood to be used as his official residence in the Iranian capital.
Screams and giggles could be heard ringing out from a nearby rooftop as onlookers watched the blast. ‘Oh my God they hit it. They struck it. Oh my God,’ one woman shouts.
It comes after it was reported that the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and ‘architect’ of the regime’s brutal crackdown against protesters is already said to have been killed in the strikes.