- IEA says war causes biggest ever oil shock -

The war "is creating the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market", as Iran's chokehold on regional supplies forces Gulf producers to slash production, the International Energy Agency said Thursday.

An IEA market report said crude oil production was currently down by at least 8.0 million barrels per day, with an additional 2.0 million of petroleum products shut off. Oil prices briefly rose back over $100 a barrel on Thursday.

The US Department of Energy said it will release 172 million barrels of oil from its strategic reserve as part of an agreement among IEA members to release 400 million barrels to ease market turbulence.

- Explosions in Tehran, Jerusalem -

A series of powerful explosions hit the Iranian capital on Thursday, an AFP journalist said. Smoke was seen rising from western Tehran but it was not immediately clear what was targeted, the journalist said. Israel's military said it began a new "wide-scale" wave of strikes across Iran.

Blasts were also heard over Jerusalem, AFP journalists said, after the Israeli military reported missiles fired from Iran. Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned on Thursday that Tehran will "abandon all restraint" if the United States and Israel attack any of its islands in the Gulf.

- UN says three million displaced in Iran -

Up to 3.2 million people have been displaced inside Iran since the war erupted nearly two weeks ago, the United Nations refugee agency said Thursday

- New hits on Dubai, Kuwait -

Dubai reported a drone attack and fallen debris in two locations on Thursday while Kuwait's airport was damaged in yet another strike on the facility during Iran's Gulf campaign in the war.

- Italian base attacked in Iraqi Kurdistan -

An attack on an Italian military base in Iraqi Kurdistan, where Italian troops train Kurdistan security forces, caused damage but no injuries, officials said.

Drones were shot down on Wednesday over Erbil by US-led international forces based at Erbil airport, a Kurdish security source said.

- Strike on Beirut seafront kills eight -

The Lebanese health ministry said that eight people were killed and 31 injured in an Israeli strike on the seafront area of Beirut, where some displaced people have been sleeping out in the open, hours after another attack in the heart of the capital.

- Ships hit in the Gulf -

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said Thursday they had struck a Marshall Islands-flagged ship, which they claimed was US-owned, in the northern part of the Gulf.

Meanwhile, three crew believed trapped on a Thai bulk carrier hit by projectiles in the crucial Strait of Hormuz were yet to be rescued, the vessel's owner said.

Two oil tankers were attacked off Iraq's coast, government officials told the INA news agency. At least one crew member of a ship was killed and several were missing, while 38 people had been rescued, port authorities said.

- Strikes in Iraq kill nine -

Air strikes killed at least nine Iran-backed fighters in Iraq on Thursday near the Iraqi-Syrian border, two senior security officials told AFP.

Another 10 fighters were wounded in the strikes on a base belonging to the US-blacklisted Harakat Ansar Allah al-Awfiya, the officials added.

- Trump says Iran near defeat -

President Donald Trump reiterated his insistence that US strikes on Iran had already practically defeated the Islamic republic.

"They are pretty much at the end of the line," Trump told reporters, after delivering a speech to supporters in which he declared: "We've won... We won -- in the first hour it was over."

Meanwhile, Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior military adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, lashed out at Trump in remarks on state television. "Trump is the most corrupt and stupid American president," he said. "He is Satan himself."

- US war costs hit $11.3 bn in six days -

The opening week of the war against Iran cost the United States military more than $11.3 billion, lawmakers were told in a Pentagon briefing, according to a New York Times report.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY