Sirens blared and loud bangs were heard across Israel late Tuesday after Iran launched a missile attack on the country. The Israeli military said its missile defense systems conducted a “large number of interceptions,” and a U.S. defense official said the United States intercepted some of the missiles to help defend Israel.

After about 45 minutes, the Israel Defense Forces said it was safe for people across Israel to leave the shelters, and spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the military “did not identify any additional air threats from Iran.”

Hagari said that while several Iranian weapons had landed and assessments were ongoing, the IDF was “not aware of any casualties.”

US officials said almost 200 rockets were fired from Iran towards Israeli territory, while the IDF stated: “Since the beginning of the Iranian missile attack… IDF systems have identified approximately 180 rockets fired from Iran towards Israeli territory.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the attack a failure, but promised that “Iran will pay for it.”

“The Iranian regime does not understand our determination to defend ourselves,” Netanyahu said. He also thanked the United States “for supporting our defense efforts.”

The Israeli leader, speaking on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, concluded his remarks by saying: “Israel is on the move and the axis of evil is retreating. “We will do everything necessary to continue this trend, to achieve all the goals of the war, above all the return of all our abductees and ensuring our existence and our future.”

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday during a White House news conference that U.S. Navy destroyers had joined Israel “in firing interceptors to shoot down incoming missiles.”

In Tel Aviv, the rockets seemed to come in waves, each beginning with sirens, loud booms, and then silence until another siren began.

“The explosions you hear are from (missiles) intercepting or falling. The air defense system constantly detects and intercepts threats,” the Israeli military said.

An Israeli security official said most of the missiles were intercepted “in cooperation” with U.S. Air Force Central Command, but “a few hits were identified and damage is currently being assessed.”

Sullivan said President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were monitoring the attack and the response from the White House Situation Room. He said the United States was not aware of any deaths in Israel but was monitoring a report of the death of a Palestinian civilian in Jericho, West Bank.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that Iran’s attack was “completely unacceptable and should be condemned by the entire world.”

He said initial reports suggested that “Israel, with the active support of the United States and other partners, successfully repelled this attack.”

In a statement released late Tuesday night, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that “U.S. forces in the Middle East intercepted multiple missiles fired by Iran toward Israel,” calling it “an outrageous act of aggression by Iran.”

“We will never hesitate to protect our forces and interests in the Middle East and to support the defense of Israel and our partners in the region,” Lloyd added.

In Jerusalem, retired trauma surgeon Bill Schecter of San Francisco said an alarm went off on his phone and he went to a shelter in his apartment building.

“We heard a lot of bangs. I suspect it was… Iron Dome shooting down missiles”said Schechter, referring to Israeli defense systems. “There were two waves. The one where we heard bangs. Then it quieted down and we left. Then we heard another series of bangs and we had to go back to the shelter.”

Iran’s mission to the United Nations issued a statement confirming the attack on Israel and indicating that its direct attack had ended.

“Iran’s legal, rational and justified response to the terrorist acts of the Zionist regime – which included targeting Iranian citizens and interests and violating the national sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran – was duly carried out,” the Iranian statement said. Iran supports multiple proxy groups in the region, and it was unclear whether any of those groups could still launch additional attacks on Israel after Iran’s missile salvo.

Iranian state television declared victory after the attack, saying many of the rockets had penetrated Israel’s defenses and hit their targets, although there was little evidence to support this claim.

Although the Iranian rockets appeared to cause no deaths, Israeli police reported that shortly before the rockets were fired, two gunmen opened fire on people on a road in Tel Aviv. The Associated Press quotes police as saying six people died in the attack before two suspects were killed.

The explosions following the Iranian missile attack came just hours after a senior White House official told CBS News that the United States had signs that Iran was preparing to launch a missile attack on Israel. Israeli officials said they had been given a warning.

Iran last in April, it fired a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israelin retaliation for an Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital that resulted in the deaths of several senior Iranian military commanders.

During the April attack, Iran fired more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel, but Hagari said at the time that virtually all of the weapons were intercepted before entering Israeli territory and reported only minor damage to one military base among several missiles that landed in the country. One 10-year-old girl was “seriously injured by shrapnel” from an intercepted missile, but the IDF reported no additional casualties.

Earlier on Tuesday, U.S. officials told CBS News that Iran was ready to strike Israel again within a short period of time since early August, when Tehran threatened retaliation for assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

An Iranian diplomatic source told CBS News on Tuesday that the country’s leaders were “under intense pressure to take action” against Israel over the escalating attacks on its close ally Hezbollah, but believed that any Iranian attack on Israel would be limited in scope. Iran described its missile attack on Israel as a response not to Israel’s actions against Hezbollah but to its assassination of senior figures in the Iranian armed forces earlier this year.

The Iranian attack came a day after Israel announced the start of “limited, localized and targeted ground raids“against an Iran-backed group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

President Biden has repeatedly called for a ceasefire after weeks of escalating fire between Israel and Hezbollah on Lebanon’s southern border. White House, State Department and Pentagon officials have made clear the risk of all-out war between Israel and a well-armed Iranian proxy group in Lebanon, warning that it could escalate into a broad regional conflict.

On September 30, Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters that the deployment of a number of U.S. units already in the Middle East would be extended and that the forces intended to replace them would instead overlap. That includes F-16, F-15E, A-10 and F-22 fighters and the personnel who operate those planes, she added, meaning an increase in the number of “an additional several thousand” U.S. troops in the region.

U.S. defense officials told CBS News on Tuesday that more U.S. military capabilities, including 40,000 U.S. troops, are now in the region than when Iran launched a missile attack on Israel in April.

Iran supports a number of groups from across the regionincluding Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthi rebels in Yemen. Tehran calls these groups a “resistance front” against Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory, while Israel describes them as an axis of evil whose ideological goal is to wipe the Jewish state off the map.

Hezbollah calls its missile and drone attacks on Israel legitimate support and defense of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and the Houthis give the same justification in maintaining months-long attacks on commercial and military ships in the Red Sea.

One of the greatest threats to the United States is that Iran’s proxy groups – including smaller militias based in Iraq and Syria – will attack US forces in the region in retaliation for Washington’s support for Israel. They have already done so since October 7, firing missiles and drones at US bases more than 165 times. Most attacks cause little or no damage, but the January drone attack on a U.S. facility in Jordan claimed by an Iran-backed group in Iraq killed three American soldiers and injured dozens.

Ahead of Iran’s missile attack, the IDF tightened internal security measures in much of the country on Tuesday. New measures announced by the IDF’s Home Front Command include limiting the number of people allowed to gather in public places in northern Israel, near the border with Lebanon.

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