DUBAI, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Iranian mourners carried caskets on Thursday at a funeral for victims of a U.S. airstrike 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. airstrikes late on Tuesday.
Iranian officials say four people died and nearly 70 were wounded by a strike that hit a home during a wedding. The U.S. military said it was aware of the Iranian reports but "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.
In 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.
U.S. CARRIED OUT HEAVY BOMBARDMENTS ON TUESDAY
Washington launched the airstrikes 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 $96 a barrel. [O/R]
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 flareup since July appeared to subside, with no more major attacks from either side reported as the day wore on.
The month of August was largely quiet in the Gulf after U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly halted two weeks of intensive airstrikes 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 programme, 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.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
