US, Iran trade new strikes in latest escalation VIDEO

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said it carried out its 11th consecutive night of strikes against Iran on Monday evening, targeting military facilities it said were linked to Tehran's ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

According to CENTCOM, the strikes targeted Iranian military operations centres, maritime capabilities, aircraft hangars, drone storage facilities and military logistics infrastructure.

The U.S. military said the operations were intended to further degrade Iran's ability to threaten commercial vessels transiting the strategic waterway.

CENTCOM said Iran had attacked more than 30 commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz over the past three months, describing the incidents as endangering mariners and undermining freedom of navigation.

The U.S. military added that the Strait of Hormuz remains open to commercial traffic and said its forces have helped facilitate the transit of around 900 commercial vessels carrying approximately 450 million barrels of crude oil since early May.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has said it will continue its "operation to punish the United States", while the Iranian Armed Forces reported attacks on US facilities in Kuwait.

At the same time, Iranian media reported explosions in Iraq's Kurdistan Region, as well as the activation of air defence systems near Tehran and explosions heard in the cities of Chabahar and Tabriz.

Separately, Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters of the Armed Forces warned that the United States could launch strikes against the Islamic Republic's nuclear and other strategically important facilities.

The headquarters said that if such strikes were carried out, Tehran would view them as a further escalation of the regional conflict. It added that, in that event, all US interests, as well as those of its allies and countries supporting Washington, would become "targets of powerful attacks" by the Iranian Armed Forces.

By Aghakazim Guliyev