Explosions from Israeli strike rock Iranian capital: witness

Israel's military strike on Iran started at midnight on Friday and kept for a long time, with explosions rocking Tehran, capital of Iran, recalled a witness.

Israel on Friday launched a large-scale "preemptive, precise, combined" strike on Iranian military and nuclear sites, prompting retaliatory attacks from Tehran.

Saeed, a Tehran resident, shared his experience with China Global Television Network (CGTN) hours after the strike.

"It was about 04:00. I woke up to a sound of a loud explosion. That atmosphere was very tense and worrying. We live in west of Tehran and the explosion sounded very close. And after that, the explosions didn't stop and we kept hearing so many sounds from different distances. It seemed a military operation was happening in a large area. Later in social media, we found that other cities were also attacked," said Saeed, the witness.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) reported that approximately 200 aircraft participated in the operation, striking nearly 100 sites across Iran, including targets in Tehran, Natanz, Khondab and Khorramabad.

China launched a Long March-8A carrier rocket on Tuesday in the southern island province of Hainan, sending a new group of internet satellites into space.

The rocket lifted off at 23:25 (Beijing Time) from the Hainan commercial spacecraft launch site. It successfully placed the payloads, the 18th group of low-orbit internet satellites, into preset orbit.