Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei was injured in an air strike that killed his father at the start of the US and Israel’s attack on the country, the Iranian ambassador to Cyprus told The Guardian newspaper on Wednesday.

‘He was also there and he was injured in that bombardment but I haven’t seen that reflected in the foreign news,’ ambassador Alireza Salarian told the London-based newspaper.

‘I have heard that he was injured in his legs and hand and arm... I think he is in the hospital because he is injured.’

The daytime air strike on the first day of the war on February 28 on a compound in Tehran killed his father, former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as his mother and wife.