Live updates: Iran begins mourning Khamenei and hits U.S. sites in the Gulf as Israel targets Tehran's new leadership

The Sri Lankan military has rescued at least 30 people on board a sinking Iranian ship near Sri Lankan waters on Wednesday, the country’s foreign minister told parliament.

The Sri Lankan navy dispatched a rescue mission after a distress call from the Iranian ship, a defence ministry spokesperson said earlier on Wednesday.

Foreign minister Vijitha Herath did not give further details but said Sri Lanka would take appropriate action.

Local media reported the ship reported distress off the coast of Galle in the southern part of the country, and that the injured had been admitted to a hospital in Galle.

An Iranian fighter jet was shot down by an Israeli fighter jet over Tehran, the Israeli military has said, the first such claim during this war.

An Israeli Air Force F-35I fighter jet (“Adir”) shot down an Iranian Air Force YAK-130 fighter jet over Tehran, the IDF said. It said this was the first shootdown in history of a manned fighter aircraft by an F-35 (“Adir”) fighter jet.

There was no immediate confirmation from Iran, and NBC News has not independently verified the claims.

Overnight and this morning have been the most intense bombardment across Lebanon since Sunday night. We could hear the strikes throughout the morning from our location.

A notable strike in Beirut was on a hotel in the southeast of the capital that is OUTSIDE the usual Dahiyeh suburb where the strikes have been concentrated.

Ibrahim Amro / AFP via Getty Images

Ibrahim Amro / AFP via Getty Images

Ibrahim Amro / AFP via Getty Images

We're yet to receive any confirmation as to why the site was targeted, though Israel says it is striking Hezbollah operatives.

The Israeli military has launched what it says are "broad scale strikes" targeting Iranian regime targets in Tehran this morning.

Iranian state media were reporting explosions heard in east Tehran, and a smoke could be seen rising in the area.

Iran will begin mourning its slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei today, Iranian state media has reported.

Women mourn the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on Sunday. Majid Saeedi / Getty Images

Starting later today, Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Mosque will host the body of the country's leader, killed in the U.S.-Israeli attack over the weekend, as part of a three-day farewell ceremony that will kick off funeral proceedings.

The three-day long farewell will also include special programs. A funeral is also being planned with details yet to be confirmed.

The start of the public mourning comes as the country's ruling clerics move forward with selecting a new leader.

Saudi Arabia is one of the latest additions to the State Department’s list of nations where nonemergency U.S. government employees and their families can evacuate.

The same order was issued overnight for Oman, Pakistan and even Cyprus.

Due to safety risks, the travel advisory states that government employees working in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to travel within 20 miles of the Yemen border. Houthis in Yemen have launched missile and drone attacks into Saudi Arabia, the advisory notes.

“The U.S. government has limited ability to offer emergency services to U.S. citizens in the Yemen border region due to the safety risks,” it says.

The Israel Defense Forces have killed the highest-ranking commander of Iran’s Quds Force, an IDF spokesperson said.

The IDF killed Davoud Alizadeh, responsible for Iranian activity in Lebanon, Avichay Adraee said. The Quds Force is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s force that handles Iran’s relationship with regional militias.

“He instructed Hezbollah to attack Israel in defense of Iran, rather than in defense of the Lebanese state and its citizens,” Adraee said on X.

Operatives working for Iran’s government have 24 hours to leave Lebanon, Adraee said. He said Israel will not tolerate “representatives of the Iranian terrorist regime in Lebanon” any longer, at least after that 24-hour stretch is up.

“There will be no safe haven for representatives of the Iranian regime in Lebanon, and the IDF will target them wherever they are found,” Adraee said.

Asian stocks tanked as the war in Iran entered its fifth day, with investors dumping crowded positions in chipmakers on worries that the conflict will drive an oil shock that raises inflation and delays interest rate cuts.

Deep falls in South Korea triggered a circuit breaker as the Kospi shed more than 11%, with two-day losses at 17% and the heaviest since 2009 while the won currency slumped to a 17-year low.

Japan’s Nikkei fell 4.3% and Taiwan stocks dropped 3.6% as investors race out of what has been one of the hottest bets of the last few months in semiconductor makers.

S&P 500 futures eased 0.6% and European futures gave up an early bounce to fall just below flat.

As the United States and its Middle East allies face Tehran’s response to President Donald Trump’s renewed bombardment of Iran, they must find a solution to a growing problem: drones.

  Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images

Cheap and simple to produce, Iran’s Shahed drones are unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) used to overwhelm air defenses in conjunction with other missiles. They have been used to successfully bombard a U.S. embassy, a radar system, an airport and a high-rise, videos on social media show.

The issue, experts say, is the long-term ability to intercept them.

Read the full story here.

The elementary school called with an urgent message about her son. “The war has started,” she was told. Come pick him up.

The mother, who asked not to be identified, said she had only just dropped the boy off and couldn’t leave immediately since she had patients to see in her job as a midwife. Then the earth shook. And she ran.

It was too late. Three airstrikes had hit Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab in southern Iran, killing 168 people, according to the town’s mayor. Many of them were children. One of them was her son.

“By the time we arrived, the entire school had collapsed on top of the children,” the mother told NBC News. “People were pulling out children’s arms and legs. People were pulling out severed heads.”

Read the full story here.

Any new leader in Iran “will be an unequivocal target for elimination,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has said this morning.

“It doesn’t matter what his name is or where he hides,” Katz wrote in a post on X. His comments come as Iranian clerics moved forward with the process of selecting a replacement for slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose funeral proceedings will begin later today.

Katz added that Israel and the U.S. will work together “to crush the regime’s capabilities and create conditions for the Iranian people to overthrow and replace it.”