By Parisa Hafezi and Alexander Cornwell
DUBAI/TEL AVIV, March 3 (Reuters) - Explosions tore through Tehran and Beirut on Tuesday and stock markets around the world tumbled while oil prices soared at the prospect of a prolonged disruption to global energy supplies from the U.S.-Israeli air war against Iran.
Iranian drones struck the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia after previously hitting the mission in Kuwait. Washington responded by shutting both embassies and ordering non-emergency government personnel and their families to leave countries across the Middle East.
A day after President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave open-ended answers when asked how long the war would last, a source told Reuters that Israel's campaign had been planned to last two weeks and was moving faster.
The source, familiar with Israel's war plan, said its aim was to overthrow Iran's clerical rulers, and there was no firm deadline to achieve it.
But the Israeli military was going through its target list faster than planned, with early success killing Iran's leaders and taking out its defences, the source said. Israel was also accelerating its campaign out of concern Washington might reach a deal with Iran's surviving leaders and stop too soon, the source added.
Inside Iran, Israel struck the Tehran headquarters of the state broadcaster IRIB. Israel warned residents in the afternoon to leave the Hakimeh district and the area around the capital's Mehrabad airport. Shortly afterwards there were explosions in both districts.
As Iranians have fled cities, the capital has become a ghost town.
“How long will this continue? Where are the shelters? Where is the government?” Bijan, 32, a bank employee, told Reuters by telephone from Tehran. “Every night my wife and I hide in the basement. The whole city is empty. There is smoke and blood everywhere.”
Firuzeh Seraj said she was afraid to take her 10-year-old daughter for dialysis treatment after a hospital in the capital was struck.
"World, do you see? They are killing us. Hear our voice," she said through tears from Tehran.
WALL STREET FALLS AT OPENING
Global stock markets slid as the disruption of Middle East energy supplies threatened to reignite post-pandemic inflation. The price of crude oil was up by 17% in two days, and the European wholesale price for natural gas was up a punishing 40%.
The S&P 500 fell 2.2% after Wall Street's opening. Europe's benchmark STOXX 600 index was down 3.3% in afternoon trading, after a 1.7% drop on Monday. Shares in energy import-dependent South Korea plunged more than 7%. [MKTS/GLOB]
Iran has called the war an unprovoked attack. It has responded by firing missiles and drones at neighbouring Arab states that host U.S. bases, and by strangling shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world's supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas travel past its coast.
Qatar, one of the world's main exporters of LNG, has halted production, while tankers have dropped anchor in the Gulf rather than brave the strait. [O/R]
The cost of hiring a tanker to ship oil from the Middle East to Asia has nearly quadrupled since last week to an all-time high well over $400,000 a day.
The U.S.-Israeli campaign killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on day one in history's first assassination of a national leader by enemy forces from the air. If the campaign were to achieve the aim of overthrowing Iran's ruling system using air power with no armed force on the ground, that would also be a first.
Since Monday, the war has spread to Lebanon, where Iran's Hezbollah allies fired on Israel, which responded with air strikes and reinforcements of ground positions in the south. Thick black smoke blanketed Beirut as the sound of explosions rumbled in the air. Authorities said dozens were killed there.
Iran said its death toll from the attacks had reached 787, citing the Red Crescent.
State media showed hundreds packing the streets of the southern city of Minab to mourn scores of girls killed in the bombing of a girls' school on the war's first day, by far the worst of several reported attacks to hit civilian targets.
The girls' small coffins, draped with Iranian flags, were passed from a truck and borne by the crowd across a sea of upraised hands towards the grave site.
The U.N. human rights office demanded an investigation into the strike, which its spokesperson called "absolutely horrific".
Some Iranians have openly celebrated the death of Khamenei, 86, who had ruled Iran for 37 years and led security forces that killed thousands of anti-government protesters only weeks ago.
RUBIO SAYS WASHINGTON ATTACKED KNOWING ISRAEL WOULD STRIKE
While Israeli officials explicitly say they want to oust Iran's government, U.S. officials have said the war's aim is to destroy Iran's ability to project force beyond its borders. But Trump has also urged Iranians to topple the clerical leadership, which has tormented the U.S. and its allies for generations.
In a social media post, Trump wrote: "Their air defense, Air Force, Navy, and Leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said 'Too Late!'"
Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told a briefing that the duration could depend on developments, adding: "We have prepared a general scope of weeks." Asked if Israel could deploy ground forces to Iran, Shoshani said that was unlikely.
In Israel, where Iranian missiles have killed 10 people since Saturday, air raid sirens sounded repeatedly, warning of incoming attacks and sending millions into bomb shelters as the blasts of interceptions shook buildings and shrapnel crashed through the roof of a residential building near Tel Aviv.
Global air transport has also been in chaos, with airports shut in the Middle East that serve as hubs linking Asia, Europe and Africa.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
