Tehran, Iran - Israel pounded Tehran with fresh strikes and Iran targeted Kurdish guerrilla groups in Iraq on Thursday as the spiraling war launched by the US engulfed the Middle East.

In Lebanon, AFPTV images showed buildings in rubble and plumes of black smokes drifting over Beirut after Israeli strikes aimed at Hezbollah.

AFP reporters in Tehran heard fighter jets screaming across the skies in the west of the city and several explosions as Israel launched a fresh barrage.

Earlier Thursday, Tehran said it had hit Iraq-based Kurdish groups, as the US reportedly seeks to arm Iranian Kurdish guerrillas to infiltrate Iran.

The strikes which killed a member of an exiled Iranian Kurdish group, according to a representative, followed a warning from Iranian officials.

"Separatist groups should not think that a breeze has blown and try to take action," said Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council.

"We will not tolerate them in any way."

The strikes were further evidence of how the war is drawing in parties across the region and further afield.

Australia deployed two military aircraft to the theater while Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney said he could not rule out his armed forces taking part in hostilities.

The war has also dragged in NATO member Turkey after a missile launched from Iran was destroyed by NATO air defenses as it headed towards its airspace.

The conflict even reached the coast of Sri Lanka, where a US submarine sank an Iranian warship, Washington's first torpedoing of a vessel since World War II.

The strike killed at least 87 people, Sri Lankan officials said, with 61 remaining missing. Thirty-two sailors were rescued, many wounded, said Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath.

"Mark my words: The US will come to bitterly regret the precedent it has set", said Iranian Foreign Minister Abas Araghchi about the attack that he described as "an atrocity at sea."

Iran's official IRNA news agency said 1,045 military personnel and civilians have been killed since the war began, a toll AFP could not independently verify.

The country is effectively cut off from the rest of the world, with the internet operating at around one percent of capacity, according to the Netblocks monitor.

In the early hours of Thursday, AFP reporters in Jerusalem heard explosions following warnings of incoming Iranian missile fire, but residents were quickly cleared to leave their shelters.

Fresh explosions also echoed over the Qatari capital Doha and Bahrain's Manama early on Thursday as Iran continued to target US bases in the region.

Thirteen people, seven of them civilians, have been killed in countries around the Gulf since the war began, including an 11-year-old girl in Kuwait.

Qatar said Thursday it was evacuating residents living near the US embassy in Doha, after earlier announcing it had thwarted attacks on Hamad International Airport.

The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar all said they had intercepted Iranian missiles on Wednesday, including a drone set to hit the Saudis' huge Ras Tanura refinery.

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have claimed the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf chokepoint through which a fifth of the world's crude oil flows, with oil tanker transits down 90%, according to market intelligence firm Kpler.

A tanker in the waters off Kuwait became the latest casualty of the conflict, after it was hit with a "large explosion" that caused an oil spill, the British maritime security agency UKMTO reported.

According to Iranian state TV, Iran struck a US oil tanker in the Gulf with a missile, an incident that could not be independently confirmed immediately.