Iran hosts funeral for victims reportedly killed by U.S. air strike during wedding, fires on Kuwait

Open this photo in gallery:Rubble lies around a damaged house following a reported attack near a wedding gathering in Kuhistik, Sirik, Iran, Sept. 2.Razieh Poudat/ISNA/via WANA/ReutersIranian mourners carried caskets on Thursday at a funeral for victims of a U.S. air strike said to have struck a wedding party, and Tehran launched missiles and drones overnight at a U.S. base in Kuwait, after the war’s biggest escalation in more than a month.Mourners assembled in the late afternoon outside the village of Kuhestak in Sirik County, along a stretch of the coast of the Strait of Hormuz that was hit by heavy U.S. air strikes late on Tuesday.Iranian officials say four people died and nearly 70 were wounded by a strike that hit a home during a wedding. State TV reported on Thursday that a fifth person, a 22-year-old woman, had since died in hospital.The U.S. military said it was aware of the Iranian reports but that it “never targets civilians.”“This is the body of Martyr Amir-Mohammad Karimi, a 4-year-old child who war martyred in an attack on the country’s south by the criminal American regime,” a reporter from Iran’s Mehr news agency said in footage filmed in front of a pickup truck carrying a flag-draped coffin beneath a canopy of palm fronds.What to know about U.S. air strike that reportedly killed four at Iranian weddingIn other footage of the funeral, mourners threw petals into the air as doleful music played from a loudspeaker. A casket was carried past a row of soldiers standing at attention with rifles. “If it was a military location, it wouldn’t be so painful. This was a wedding ceremony, but they turned people’s joy into mourning,” the semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted a local man as saying.Washington launched the air strikes on Tuesday, hitting what it said were military targets along the coast in retaliation for Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.The sudden escalation of the Iran war has caused a surge in oil prices to levels unseen since July. Price rose for a fourth straight day on Thursday, taking Brent crude futures over US$96 a barrel.Iran reported 18 dead in the last U.S. assault, including the four killed at the wedding. It responded on Wednesday to the U.S. strikes with attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, and carried out further attacks early on Thursday, saying it was targeting another U.S. base, in Kuwait.Kuwait’s military said its air defences had intercepted missiles and drones. But following that, the war’s biggest flare-up since July appeared to subside, with no more major attacks from either side reported as the day wore on.Oil prices rise on escalation in Middle EastThe month of August was largely quiet in the Gulf after U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly halted two weeks of intensive air strikes in July, having been warned by his military that Washington was running low on munitions.Trump has yet to achieve the aims he set out when he launched Operation Epic Fury in February: to end Iran’s nuclear program, halt its ability to attack its neighbours and create conditions for Iranians to topple their leadership.Iran’s economy has suffered severely from a U.S. blockade. But its clerical rulers remain in power and aim to emerge from the war stronger than before, demanding the lifting of sanctions and hoping to collect fees from ships that use the strait, which carried a fifth of global oil and gas shipments before the war.