The bloody Middle East war is spreading across the wider region towards Europe as Iran opens fire with ballistic barrage on Turkey and the death toll soars with around 10,000 injured

The Middle East war death toll has soared as it spreads towards Europe while Tehran named its new leader Motjaba Khamenei, son of the slain Ayatollah.

NATO defences were forced for a second time to intercept an Iranian ballistic missile hurtling towards Turkey - a popular holiday destination for Brits.

It came as 1,255 were announced dead in Iran, at least 13 in Israel, eight US soldiers lost their lives from Iranian attacks and a further 14 have now died in the Gulf States.

Close to 500 have died in Lebanon and more than 10,000 have been injured throughout the war-battered region - as a NATO country also came under fire.

In Israel a further 1,929 have been wounded in Iranian attacks on Israel since last week, with 157 people hurt in Iranian strikes over the last 24 hours. And Iranian missiles have targeted the headquarters of the US Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain’s Juffair area multiple times.

Ensure our latest headlines always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source. Click here to activate or add us as your Preferred Source in your Google search settings.

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth refused to rule out U.S. boots on the ground in Iran as the joint mission with Israel against Iran entered a second week.

On CBS News Hegseth confirmed that U.S. forces were not on the ground in Iran and added: “But we reserve the right. We would be completely unwise if we did not reserve the right to take any particular option, whether it included boots on the ground or no boots on the ground.”

Mid-ranking cleric Motjaba, 56, is a close insider to Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and his appointment dampened hopes for an early end to the war.

It is believed he is even more hardline than his father - having lost his wife, a son and both parents in the war that began on February 28.

As the war entered its tenth day the US-Israeli onslaught hit 140 Tehran regime targets with around 900 missiles and the war showed little sign of slowing down.

Three more US air force B-52 bombers landed at RAF Fairford, in Gloucestershire, joining a vast fleet of American warplanes preparing to join the attack on Iran.

Among them are three American B-1 stealth bombers which arrived after the UK gave permission for the US to use UK bases at Fairford and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Israeli forces killed the late Ayatollah’s emergency command chief Abu al-Qassem Baba’iyan in Tehran, on Sunday, who had only been in the job for two years.

Israel also targeted Iranian fuel storage facilities in Tehran over the weekend - the first known attack on Iran’s oil infrastructure since the start of the war.

The Israeli Defence Force said the fuel was used for their missiles programme and to support their military and was therefore a legitimate target.

Iran continued to bombard Israel and overnight, air raid sirens were triggered in the centre of the country, the south, and the coastal region.

Some weapons were intercepted and the others fell in uninhabited areas. Israeli bombs rained down on Iran's city of Isfahan, targeting command centres for the Revolutionary Guard and its Basij security force.

They also hit a rocket engine production facility and missile launch sites. Intelligence analysis reaffirms fears Iran will spin the conflict out, having de-centralised the IRGC, with its 250,000 hardliners and Tehran’s half a million security police the Basij.

European warships have converged around Cyprus to prevent Iran war spill-over and to protect the island, including Greece, France, Italy, Spain and Germany - but still no UK ship in the region.

Type 45 warship HMS Dragon is expected to set sail this week so the earliest it can reach Cyprus, or the eastern Mediterranean is next week.

But Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has launched attacks on at least 27 bases in the Middle East where US troops are deployed as well as Israeli military facilities in Tel Aviv and other parts of Israel.

So far, Iran has launched strikes across ten countries in the region including Israel, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

An Iranian drone also struck a runway at a UK military base in Cyprus. Top clerics from Iran's Assembly of Experts reportedly finalised their decision on Sunday - eight days after Ali Khamenei, who ruled for 37 years, was killed in an Israeli strike on Tehran. The Assembly said Mojtaba Khamenei had been selected by a "decisive vote", according to a statement shared by state media.

The clerical body urged citizens across the country - "especially the elites and intellectuals of the seminaries and universities" - to pledge allegiance to the new leadership.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) welcomed Khamenei's appointment in a statement carried by state media. It claimed the Iran-Iraq war veteran was an "all-encompassing jurist, a young thinker and the most knowledgeable on political and social issues."

The IRGC also declared its "respect, devotion and obedience" to Khamenei, adding that its members are "ready for complete obedience and self-sacrifice in carrying out the divine commands of the Guardian Jurist".

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday Iran's next supreme leader was "not going to last long" if Tehran did not obtain his approval first. The Israeli military said in a post on X in Farsi that it would continue pursuing every successor of Ali Khamenei and target anyone involved in appointing one.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said no foreign actor would have a say in selecting the new supreme leader. Speaking to NBC News on Sunday, Araghchi said that Iran "allow[s] nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs.”

He added:"This is up to the Iranian people to elect their new leader. They have already elected the Assembly of Experts and the Assembly will do their job. It's only the business of the Iranian people and nobody else's business."

Mojtaba Khamenei has kept a low profile, having never held elected office or formally occupied a senior position within Iran's government.

He has never given public speeches and few photographs of him exist online. But the billionaire property tycoon has strong links with the IRGC and was sanctioned by the US in 2019 for working "closely" with the commander of the IRGC's Qods Force and the Basij Resistance Force.”

Both Ali Khamenei and his predecessor Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, were critical of hereditary succession, particularly in the context of the Pahlavi monarchy, which was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.