DUBAI/Washington/Tehran – Gulf hostilities flared again on Wednesday as Iranian attacks on Kuwait killed one person and injured at least 63 and damaged the international airport.
Kuwait said it suspended commercial flights after an Iranian drone attack heavily damaged the country’s airport, hours after Iran and the United States traded missile strikes in the region.
The strikes came as semiofficial Iranian news agencies said Tehran had stopped communicating with mediators about extending a ceasefire in the war with the US and Israel. US President Donald Trump disputed that claim and said talks were continuing.
India’s foreign ministry on Wednesday condemned the Iranian attack on Kuwait International Airport, which killed an Indian national.
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.”
Later, Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry said at least one person was killed and others wounded. Kuwait says that its territory and airspace were not used to attack “any country,” denying Iranian claims that the United States launched strikes from there.
The denial comes as Kuwait summons Iran’s charge d’affaires, with Deputy Foreign Minister Hamad Suleiman Al-Mashaan issuing “Kuwait’s categorical rejection of the use of its territory or airspace in any hostile acts against any country, emphasizing that the false Iranian claims are baseless and do not rely on evidence,” a ministry statement says.
The airport only reopened on Monday after closing in February due to the Iran war. State media reported that Kuwait Airways was suspending its operations until further notice.
In a post on X, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said: “Any hostile act will be met with an immediate, decisive response.”
“Our Armed Forces are conducting self-defense strikes on sites the U.S. is permitted to use to attack civilian shipping and violate the ceasefire,” he said.
The post included a video of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying that U.S. allies in the region, such as the UAE and Kuwait, have been “very cooperative.”
Earlier Wednesday, the U.S. military said it had carried out a new round of “defensive strikes” in southern Iran, targeted missile launch sites and Iranian boats seeking to lay mines, and conducted strikes near the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had targeted the headquarters of the US 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 US firing a missile into the engine room of an oil tanker that was trying to reach Iran despite the US blockade.
“We had previously warned that in case of aggression, the response would be different and more severe, and we acted accordingly,” the IRGC said in its statement.
US Central Command said it responded with strikes on an Iranian military ground control station on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s Fars and Tasnim news agencies, both believed to be close to the IRGC, 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.
Kuwait’s military said they had tracked and intercepted 13 hostile ballistic missiles and 17 hostile drones in Kuwaiti airspace since dawn on Wednesday, with debris falling in several residential areas.
They added that Iran had targeted civilian and vital facilities, including Kuwait International Airport, killing an Indian expatriate, wounding several people and causing significant material damage.
