By Marwa Rashad, Mohamed Ezz, Yasmine Ghania and Nandita Bose
LONDON/CAIRO/WASHINGTON, July 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. carried out fresh strikes in Iran on Wednesday, the U.S. military said, further intensifying a five-month-old war that was already expanding beyond its main fronts to embroil additional countries in the region.
"U.S. forces began launching strikes against Iran at 8:00 p.m. ET today (0000 GMT)," U.S. Central Command said in a statement.
"The strikes are a powerful response to yesterday's
attempted Iranian attacks on U.S. forces based in the Middle East."
Earlier on Wednesday, a drone hit a U.S.-owned gas storage tanker at Egypt's Mediterranean port of Damietta, British maritime security firm Ambrey said in an initial assessment, while U.S. and Saudi forces launched strikes against Iran-aligned groups in eastern Iraq and Iran fired missiles at U.S. troops in Jordan.
A statement from Egypt's petroleum ministry confirmed a fire at the port but made no mention of a drone attack. It was not immediately clear who was responsible.
The latest strikes in Iraq and Egypt threatened to draw more Middle Eastern countries into the conflict, after the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen last week declared a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. strikes in Iran on Wednesday followed President Donald Trump's vow earlier in the day to retaliate against Iran for firing on U.S. troops.
"So it's our turn," Trump told reporters at the White House, promising to "hit them very hard" even as he again said Washington would continue to aim for a peace deal with Tehran.
Iran confirmed overnight that it had fired on U.S. bases in Jordan and at ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and also spurned an Omani proposal to jointly manage the strait, a critical global shipping route for oil and gas.
The war began in February, when the U.S. and Israel launched a bombing campaign in Iran that Trump said would last only a few weeks. A temporary ceasefire agreement in June collapsed amid renewed fighting over the strait, which Iran says it now controls.
Oil prices shot up on Wednesday in one of the sharpest spikes of the five-month war. Brent crude futures rose more than 8% to push the benchmark well above $90 a barrel, reversing much of a plunge earlier this week when Trump had unexpectedly halted U.S. strikes.
'DEATH TO AMERICA' SHOUTED IN IRAQ
The joint U.S.-Saudi attacks marked the first time Riyadh has publicly joined strikes alongside Washington.
Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces, powerful Iran-backed paramilitary groups incorporated into the Iraqi security forces, said at least 20 members were killed and 32 wounded in U.S.-Saudi strikes targeting several bases across Iraq.
Iraqi men shouted "Death to America!" as they carried the bodies of slain fighters in body bags.
Washington and Riyadh said they struck Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq in retaliation for drone attacks on Saudi oil targets launched from Iraq.
After the joint attacks, Saudi Arabia's defense minister met with Vice President JD Vance in Washington on Wednesday to urge the Trump administration not to escalate the conflict further by attacking Yemen's Houthis and carrying out additional strikes against the Iran-aligned militias in Iraq, two sources told Reuters.
One of the sources added that such escalation would open the door to "major unknown risks." The White House and Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
U.S. officials have privately cautioned that resuming major combat operations against Iran would carry risk given the negative impact on stocks of munitions.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, estimated this week that the U.S. military has fewer than 1,000 Patriot interceptor missiles and fewer than 250 THAAD interceptors -- two key air defense systems.
Though Iran denies its forces have directed strikes from Iraqi territory, Iranian newspaper Hamshahri reported that four Iranian Revolutionary Guards advisers had been killed in the strikes on Iraq.
IRAQ'S DANGEROUS RIFT
The strikes on Iraq expose a dangerous rift in that volatile country. The Shi'ite-led government is one of the few in the world to balance close military and diplomatic ties with both Tehran and Washington, but those divided loyalties are a constant source of tension and frequent domestic unrest.
The office of Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, who took power just two months ago, urged the parties involved to avoid escalation and said he wanted to keep the country out of regional conflicts.
The Iraqi presidency denounced the strikes on the paramilitaries as "an unacceptable attack and a flagrant violation of Iraq's sovereignty", while also calling for a halt to attacks by armed groups against Iraq's neighbours.
The deep ties between Iran and Iraq, the two biggest Shi'ite-majority countries, are on display this week as hundreds of thousands of Iranian religious pilgrims head to shrines in Iraq for an annual observance of mourning for martyrs.
Hours before launching the attacks on Iraq, the U.S. military said its air defences had averted a surprise Iranian attack on U.S. troops in the region.
Jordan's military said it had shot down five Iranian missiles. U.S. bases in Jordan have lately become primary Iranian targets, where three U.S. service members were killed this month in the worst U.S. losses since March.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they had fired several ballistic missiles at U.S. military installations in Jordan, and had struck three tankers that were attempting to transit through the Strait of Hormuz along an unauthorised route.
(Reporting by Reuters bureauxWriting by Peter Graff, Idrees Ali and Joseph Ax; Editing by Toby Chopra, Sanjeev Miglani and Michael Perry)
