Kuwait desalination plant, oil refinery hit by missile and drone strikes

AN air strike has hit a power and desalination plant in Kuwait.

And 12 people have been injured in the United Arab Emirates as missiles were intercepted causing debris to fall, authorities in both countries said.

Gulf nations continue to face retaliatory strikes on the 35th day of the war by the United States and Israel on Iran.

Kuwaiti authorities blamed Iran for the strike before midday on Friday. The plant was not identified and the extent of the damage isn’t known.

Following the attack, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) denied responsibility and shifted blame to Israel.

Israel’s “unconventional and illegitimate attack on Kuwait’s water desalination centres is a sign of the vileness and baseness of the Zionist occupiers,” the IRGC said in a statement posted on Telegram.

Iran “condemn[s] this inhuman act and announces that the American bases and military in the region and the military and security centres of the Zionist regime in the occupied Palestinian territories are our powerful targets,” it added.

The attack came hours after Kuwait’s Al-Ahmadi oil refinery was also targeted in early morning drone strikes. State news agency KUNA said the attack caused fires in a “number of operational units,” and no employees were injured. Emergency and firefighting teams were sent and environmental experts are monitoring air quality.

Al Jazeera’s Malik Traina, reporting from the capital, Kuwait City, said this was the third time the refinery has been hit and that people across the country are on “high alert”.

“It’s one of the biggest refineries in the Middle East and it is also critical for local consumption,” he said.

“Kuwait is the closest country to Iran – just 80 km separates Kuwait from Iran’s coastline, so it’s perhaps the most easily targeted from these attacks from Iran,” he added.

In an early post on X, KUNA warned that “hostile missile and drone attacks” on Kuwait were underway. Sirens sounded during midair explosions as interceptions of Iranian missiles were heard across the country, the agency reported.

Kuwait and much of the Gulf are highly dependent on desalinated water. An Indian national was killed on March 30 after a Kuwaiti power and desalination plant was hit. Iran denied claims it launched the attacks and blamed Israel.

On Friday, Crown Prince Sheikh Sabah Khaled and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer discussed the deployment of a British ground-based air defence system in Kuwait, KUNA reported.

Twelve injured; data centres targeted

Meanwhile, on Friday, the UAE defence ministry said the country was battling a new wave of suspected Iranian missile and drone attacks.

At least 12 people were injured in Abu Dhabi’s Ajban Area after debris fell from projectiles being intercepted, according to Abu Dhabi’s media office. It said at least seven of those are citizens of Nepal and five are Indian.

Falling debris also caused a fire at the Habshan gas facility, a major Emirati gas processing complex. The Abu Dhabi media office said “operations have been suspended while authorities respond”.

UAE air defences intercepted 19 ballistic missiles and 26 drones on Thursday alone, the defence ministry said – just a fraction of the hundreds of missiles and thousands of drones Iran has allegedly targeted the country with since the war was started by the US and Israel.

At least two service members have been killed and 191 people of different nationalities injured, said UAE authorities.

Saudi Arabia said it destroyed a drone in its airspace overnight, while Bahrain sounded missile alarms three times, the Anadolu Agency reported.

Iranian leaders also appear to be making good on earlier warnings to hit major US technology firms in the Gulf as attacks on Iran continue.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported on Friday that Tehran targeted an Oracle data centre in Dubai in retaliation for US-Israeli strikes that injured former Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi and killed his wife on April 1. The Dubai Media Office alleged it was “fake news”.

On Monday, Amazon Web Services confirmed that two of its data centres in the UAE were “directly struck” and that a third in Bahrain was damaged by a nearby drone strike.

The attacks appeared to have resulted in localised and limited disruption to AWS’s servers, said the Associated Press news agency.

Iran’s army spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaghari warned of impending attacks on regional power plants as US President Donald Trump warned of intensifying strikes on infrastructure.

If the US continues to threaten strikes on Iranian power plants, Tehran will begin targeting regional energy infrastructure and information and telecommunications companies with American shareholders, Zolfaghari said in a video posted on Friday by state-run Press TV.