OCCUPIED JERUSALEM/CAIRO: Israel’s airstrikes “hit hard” Iran’s defences and missile production, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, but Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the damage from Saturday’s attack should not be exaggerated.

With warfare raging in Gaza and Lebanon, direct confrontation between Israel and Iran risks spiralling into a regional conflagration. But a day after the airstrikes, there was no sign they would spark another round of escalation.

However, heavy fighting in Lebanon between Israeli forces and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which sharply intensified over recent weeks, continued on Sunday with an Israeli airstrike killing eight people in a residential block in Sidon, medics said.

“The air force attacked throughout Iran. We hit hard Iran’s defence capabilities and its ability to produce missiles that are aimed at us,” Netanyahu said in a speech, calling the attack “precise and powerful” and saying it met all its objectives.

The Islamic Republic has not signalled how it will respond to Saturday’s long-anticipated strikes, which involved scores of fighter jets bombing targets near the capital Tehran and in the western provinces of Ilam and Khuzestan.

The heavily armed arch-enemies have engaged in a cycle of retaliatory moves against each other for months, with Saturday’s strike coming after an Iranian missile barrage on Oct. 1, much of which Israel said was downed by its air defences.