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CAIRO — Iran launched a barrage of missiles at American forces in the Middle East early Wednesday as the U.S. partnered with Saudi Arabia to strike Tehran-backed militias in neighboring Iraq, killing at least 20 fighters.

Six Iranian advisers were also killed in the U.S.-Saudi strike, two Iraqi militia officials told the Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

The flare-up on multiple fronts, after several days of relative calm, raised the risk of a return to all-out war. It also underscored the difficulty of winding down a five-month conflict that has jolted the world economy and is unpopular among Americans. The fighting was also likely to add to concerns that the U.S. is further drawing down already diminished stockpiles of sophisticated munitions needed to defend its bases and allies.

Meanwhile, a Fox News reporter said in an on-air segment that he spoke with President Donald Trump who, using a series of vulgarities, told him the U.S. will hit back hard in response to the Iranian attacks.

Saudi Arabia had accused the Iraqi militias of firing drones against its oil facilities over the past two days. An umbrella group of Iraqi militias initially denied the allegations, while another Iran-backed group — the Houthi rebels in Yemen — said they had attacked Saudi energy facilities as part of a separate but related conflict.

Before the latest eruption, mediators had expressed optimism about bringing the U.S. and Iran back to the negotiating table. An interim agreement collapsed in recent weeks over renewed fighting in the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global energy supplies that Iranian attacks have again effectively closed.

A regional official said mediators are “still trying with both sides” to restore calm and get the ceasefire back on track. He gave no details on whether progress was being made and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door diplomacy.

The renewed hostilities sent oil prices spiking. Brent crude, the international standard, jumped 3.1% to $84.58 a barrel.

Jordan intercepts missiles and US strikes militias in Iraq

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it fired ballistic missiles at Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, a key U.S. military hub for the region, in a statement carried by the state-run IRNA news agency.

Jordan’s military said five Iranian missiles had been intercepted and destroyed. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

The U.S. military later announced that American and Saudi fighter aircraft had struck multiple logistics and weapons sites in eastern Iraq in response to the alleged drone attacks on Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Defense Ministry warned that it “does not seek escalation but will respond to any aggression.”

The Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of primarily Shiite, Iran-backed armed groups that is officially under the command of the Iraqi military, said at least 20 fighters were killed and 32 others wounded in the overnight strikes.

Those groups joined the fight against the Islamic State group after it seized large sections of Iraq in 2014. The Iraqi government later designated it as an “independent military formation” within the armed forces, but the militias have significant autonomy, and some have attacked U.S. facilities.

The office of Iraqi President Nizar Amidi condemned Wednesday’s U.S.-Saudi airstrikes, calling them “an unacceptable attack and a blatant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty, targeting its official security institutions.”

Iraq’s National Security Council also condemned the strikes, saying in a statement that they had been carried out “while the Iraqi government was in contact with relevant parties to investigate and address all the concerns raised by the Saudi and American sides.” It said “a number of innocent people” had been killed and wounded.

A visit to Saudi Arabia by Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi that had been scheduled for Thursday was postponed indefinitely, said two Iraqi government officials on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

Attacks on Saudi oil facilities could worsen global energy crisis

Saudi Arabia is also locked in a renewed conflict with the Houthis. The rebels have declared a blockade of Saudi shipping that could choke off another crucial Middle East trade route, the Bab el-Mandeb strait from the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aden.

On Monday, the Houthis said they had launched drones targeting oil facilities used to transport oil across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea port city of Yanbu, a key bypass for Saudi exports blocked by Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz.

The rebels said their attack was in response to a Saudi drone they said had breached Yemen’s airspace.

Planet Labs satellite imagery from Monday analyzed by The Associated Press showed damage to Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq oil-processing facility. The massive facility is capable of processing approximately 7 million barrels of crude oil per day.

In 2019, attacks on Abqaiq claimed by the Houthis disrupted production of 5.7 million barrels per day, spiking global oil prices and demonstrating the vulnerability of Saudi oil facilities to missile and drone attacks.

Separately, a regional official said an oil refinery in Jazan, on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, has temporarily shut down due to “relatively significant” damage from a Houthi attack on Saturday. The official, who was not authorized to brief journalists and spoke on condition of anonymity, said it would take several days to be repaired. The refinery produces 400,000 barrels per day.

The Texas-based IIR Energy consultancy said the refinery was tentatively expected to restart on Aug. 15.

Iran rejects Oman proposal for managing Strait of Hormuz

The Strait of Hormuz has been a major flashpoint in the conflict. Iran’s deputy foreign minister said his country rejected a proposal by Oman, which lies on the other side of the strait, to jointly manage ship traffic.

In an interview with Iran’s state-run television, Kazem Gharibabadi said Oman’s proposal included dividing the strait into two routes, each allowing the transit of half the shipping through the waterway.

Iran offered a counterproposal with a temporary plan for transit of vessels through its territorial waters, he said, adding that Tehran’s policy is for the strait “never to return to its prewar situation,” when ships moved freely.

KUMAMOTO, Japan — Soldiers and emergency workers combed through a badly damaged shopping mall and collapsed houses looking for trapped survivors Wednesday after a powerful earthquake that killed at least 18 people, including a foreigner, in southwestern Japan.

The magnitude 7.1 earthquake that hit a day earlier in the Kumamoto area on the southern main island of Kyushu also left at least 62 people injured, six of them seriously, the prefectural government said. The tally has been steadily growing, fanning fears it may continue to rise.

Some of the most serious damage was at the Aeon Mall shopping center in the town of Kashima, which was bustling with thousands of people when the quake happened. The company said some 3,000 customers were evacuated to a parking lot before a gas explosion happened in another part of the mall, where some people were still working.

Fumika Ono was shopping at a mall with her older sister when the ground shook so fiercely she lost her balance and ducked. Children began screaming and goods scattered on the floor.

The 19-year-old was among the crowd of shoppers who managed to escape safely.

The sweltering weather heightened worries about the survivors as rescuers braved the heat. It remained unclear how many people might still be missing.

The mall’s second floor collapsed, trapping people. Witnesses said the explosion shook the area as much as the quake.

Three people remained missing, while four deaths were confirmed at the mall site, according to Aeon President Akio Yoshida.

“We take it seriously that an explosion happened and precious lives were lost,” Yoshida told a news conference in Kumamoto, where he bowed deeply along with two other executives.

Japanese media footage of the mall showed that part of the ceiling had caved in, and metal pieces and other debris were scattered about as helmeted and masked rescue workers searched the area.

Kiyoshi Matsunaga, 74, who lives in the mall’s neighborhood and was at a supermarket just a few blocks away, said Tuesday’s quake reminded him of a deadly quake 10 years ago that hit Kumamoto and killed 50 people.

He stopped in his tracks when the shaking began while he was pushing his cart toward a cash register. Things scattered from the shelves. He could not move, he recalled.

“I was frightened,” he said.

Japan is one of the most quake-prone nations in the world.

In the Nuyamazu district, a pair of temple gates at a 16th-century Buddhist temple collapsed. They had just been repaired five years ago.

Yuki Kiyozumi, deputy chief priest at the temple, recalled how she had to crawl on the floor because the shaking was so violent. She had just returned home from a meeting and was about to feed her cat.

“I don’t even know if or how we can rebuild them again,” she said, while cleaning up damaged ornaments and furniture.

In nearby Yatsushiro, a chimney collapse at a Nippon Paper Industries factory killed five people while seven others were rescued from the debris, according to the Kumamoto prefectural government disaster team.

Four people were still believed to be trapped there, it said.

In the first reported death of a foreign national, a Vietnamese technical intern was killed after a crane fell on him at a factory where he worked, according to the Vietnamese government. He had arrived in Japan in January. Seven other Vietnamese technical interns at the factory evacuated safely

Separately, a Vietnamese woman married to one of the workers was injured when a wall collapsed and was being treated at a hospital.

Nearly 34,900 homes were still without electricity and some 15,000 homes without running water, Kumamoto officials said. More than 8,800 people left their homes to stay in over 400 shelters, where power sources were being added to provide air conditioning.

Aerial police footage showed some homes in residential areas were completely flattened, including a few that crumbled into a nearby river.

Japan’s Self Defense Forces joined rescue workers in the search and rescue operations. Hundreds of professionals were helping with the effort, including firefighters from Taiwan.

“There are people who are still waiting to be rescued, and it’s a race against time,” Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said. “We will go all out to find and rescue as many people as we can.”

Takaichi said the government was preparing to deliver food and other necessities to hard-hit areas. She also offered her condolences to the victims and sympathy to their relatives, while urging those affected by the quake to take care of themselves under the hot weather.

Bullet train services remained suspended. Although operations at Aso Kumamoto Airport resumed Wednesday, some airlines canceled flights as a precautionary measure.

WASHINGTON — Federal officials involved in the prosecution of James Comey misled judges, submitted false statements and withheld key facts during the course of the investigation, according to new defense filings that seek the dismissal of a case charging the former FBI director with threatening President Donald Trump on social media.

Lawyers for Comey made the allegations of misconduct in motions filed late Tuesday that also call the case a vindictive and selective prosecution, request access to transcripts of grand jury proceedings to expose what they say are “irregularities” in how the indictment was secured, and describe “unlawful” surveillance of Comey by the Secret Service.

Taken together, the new motions, along with an earlier one this week that called Comey’s social media post protected speech and not a threat, represent a multiprong defense effort to dismantle a case that defense lawyers say exemplifies a Trump administration retribution campaign targeting one of the president’s most vocal critics.

“Ample objective evidence — much of which comes directly from government officials’ own public statements and admissions — establishes that the President’s animus toward Mr. Comey led to this vindictive and selective prosecution,” Comey’s lawyers wrote in one of the filings.

A picture of seashells on the beach

Comey was charged in April with threatening Trump through a photo he posted on Instagram a year earlier depicting seashells he said he found on the beach in North Carolina in the numerical arrangement of “86 47.”

The Justice Department has said the photo constituted a threat against Trump, the 47th president. Comey deleted the post shortly after he put it up, saying he did not know that anyone interpreted the numbers as a call to violence. His lawyers have said that the slogan has long meant to “get rid of” or “eject” and has been featured on thousands of items sold online and regularly displayed at protests.

Defense lawyers say investigators who tried to prove that Comey intended a physical threat, or knew that the number “86” suggested violence, repeatedly came up empty but withheld that from federal magistrates as they applied for warrants to search the digital accounts of Comey and his wife.

For instance, the FBI searched an internal database of information about open and closed investigations for any indication of an association between Comey and the term “86” but found inconclusive results. An FBI agent also requested a review of the FBI file for the case against reputed mobster John Gambino, which Comey worked on as a young prosecutor, but found no references to the term “86.”

Investigators also interviewed a key government cooperator in the case, Salvatore Gravano, who said he did not recall ever discussing the term “86” with Comey or hearing it in connection with the trial.

“Evidence obtained during discovery supports at least a substantial preliminary showing that the affidavits submitted in support of two of the search warrants contained intentionally false statements and material omissions, and that those defects vitiate any conceivable showing of probable cause,” Comey’s lawyers wrote.

Defense lawyers say case is rooted in Trump’s personal animus

In addition, defense lawyers say the warrant applications distort statements made to investigators by a person who knew Comey but has been now estranged from him for years.

The person, whose name is not revealed in the court filings, is described in the affidavit as saying that they immediately perceived Comey’s post to have a violent meaning. But investigators omitted from the affidavit that the person had said their initial impression was that “86” referred to being “out of something on the menu” and only later concluded that it could be understood as a call to violence.

The person said that view was influenced by having listened to an episode of Rudy Giuliani’s online show in which the Trump loyalist claimed that Comey had worked on mob cases as a prosecutor in which mafia members used “86” to mean “kill.” But the FBI’s own investigation determined Giuliani’s claims to be untrue, defense lawyers said.

The seashells case against Comey was the second in months targeting the ex-FBI director, a long-running Trump foe whom the president over the years has called a “corrupt piece of garbage” and other epithets.

An earlier case in Virginia accusing Comey of lying to Congress was dismissed in November after a judge concluded that the prosecutor who charged him and another Trump adversary, New York Attorney General Letitia James, was illegally appointed to the job.

Comey’s lawyers describe the prosecutions as rooted in Trump’s own personal animus, with the Secret Service closely coordinating with the Justice Department and with Trump, who received frequent updates on Air Force One.

As Comey returned to Washington with his wife to be interviewed by law enforcement about his post, Secret Service agents were directed to conduct “unlawful” electronic surveillance, “including as they stopped to visit the grave of their deceased son,” his lawyers said. The surveillance had been requested by a senior Justice Department official.

Comey was the FBI director when Trump took office in 2017, having been appointed by then-President Barack Obama and serving before that as a senior Justice Department official in President George W. Bush’s administration. Trump fired Comey in May 2017 during an FBI investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign. The men have been openly at odds ever since.

The Justice Department will have an opportunity to respond to the defense filings. The department has not elaborated on any evidence of intent the government has. But acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said earlier this year that prosecutors in every case prove intent with “witnesses, with documents, with the defendant himself to the extent it’s appropriate.”

“And that’s how we’ll prove intent in this case,” Blanche said in April, shortly after he was elevated to lead the department after Pam Bondi’s ouster.