DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Kuwait briefly shut its main airport Wednesday after Iranian drones heavily damaged a passenger terminal building, killed one person and wounded dozens — the latest in back-and-forth attacks by Tehran and Washington that test a fragile ceasefire.
The strike again brought home the risks to residents and travelers in Gulf countries that had considered themselves relative havens before the war, now in its fourth month.
Talks have dragged on for weeks as mediators seek a more enduring truce in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Now they are further strained by Israel’s broadening war with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
A regional official said Iran wanted a separate ceasefire in Lebanon enforced before returning to talks. U.S. President Donald Trump asserted that negotiations continued.
Iran maintains its hold on the Strait of Hormuz — a crucial waterway for the world’s oil and natural gas and related products like fertilizer — and the U.S. continues its blockade of Iranian ports. Global fuel prices remain high, and the effects of the conflict are felt well beyond the region.
An Indian national is killed at Kuwait's main airport
Defense Ministry spokesperson Brig. Gen. Saud Abdulaziz Al-Otaibi said “a number of hostile drones” targeted a passenger building at Kuwait International Airport, which had opened only Monday after a months-long closure because of the war, which began Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.
India’s embassy said the person killed was an Indian national. Authorities said 63 were wounded, including passengers and workers. Health Ministry spokesman Abdullah Al Sanad said some suffered serious injuries.
Kuwait's Defense Ministry said it destroyed over a dozen missiles and a similar number of drones from Iran. The Foreign Ministry said Kuwait will “neither accept nor tolerate” the attacks and reserves the right to respond.
The airport partially reopened later, with Kuwait Airways flights resuming at a different terminal, according to civil aviation authorities. No other flights were operating.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said two Iranian missiles fell apart en route to Kuwait and that it “downed multiple drones” targeting American forces in the country.
The military also said U.S. and Bahraini forces intercepted missiles aimed at the Gulf kingdom, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th fleet. Bahrain’s Defense Ministry said its military intercepted and destroyed three missiles and a number of drones fired by Iran.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard acknowledged that it targeted the headquarters of the 5th Fleet and U.S. military facilities in another country, but did not name Kuwait.
Both the U.S. and Iran said they were retaliating for earlier attacks or attempted ones.
The U.S. military also said it launched strikes on an Iranian military ground control station on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran's Foreign Ministry condemned the U.S. strikes on the island, where it said a telecommunications tower was struck, and other previous strikes. It called them “acts of aggression” that it said violated the ceasefire.
A senior Emirati diplomat called for “a firm, unified, and cohesive Gulf position” against Iran following the attacks. “This aggression does not target a specific state, but rather all of us,” Anwar Gargash wrote on X.
Trump calls reports of cessation in talks ‘false’
Iran’s Fars and Tasnim news agencies, both believed to be close to the Guard, on Tuesday reported that Iran’s negotiators have stopped communicating with ceasefire mediators as tensions flare 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 on Tuesday after saying 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 Tuesday.
The war is increasingly tied to Israel’s war in Lebanon
Israeli forces have moved deeper into Lebanon than at any time in over a quarter-century, while Hezbollah has launched rocket and drone attacks. The declared ceasefire in Lebanon is officially in place and no side has formally withdrawn or declared it over even as attacks continue.
Iran insists that any larger potential truce must quell the fighting in Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to keep the issues separate and is under domestic pressure to strike Hezbollah as he prepares for elections this fall.
The fighting has exposed a rift between close allies Israel and the U.S., with the U.S. pushing for restraint.
In a podcast interview released Wednesday, Trump confirmed a report that he had called Netanyahu “crazy” Monday in a phone call peppered with an expletive. Trump told The New York Post’s “Pod Force One” that he was “a little bit perturbed” that Israel's fight with Hezbollah was holding back talks with Iran.
Still, Trump said his relationship with Netanyahu was solid, and “we’ve worked very well together."
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Elena Becatoros in Athens, Greece, Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi, Sam Mednick in Jerusalem, and Aamer Madhani and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.
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