An Iranian attack on a power and water desalination plant in Kuwait killed one Indian worker and damaged a service building at the facility late Sunday, while Israel’s parliament passed the largest national budget in the country’s history in the same 24-hour period, deepening the economic and military footprint of a conflict now entering its second month.
Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy confirmed that a service building at one of its power and water desalination plants was struck, killing one worker of Indian nationality and causing significant material damage. Technical and emergency teams were immediately deployed under the ministry’s approved contingency plans, with officials stressing that electricity and water systems across Kuwait remained stable.
Kuwait’s state-run Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reported that 10 Kuwaiti soldiers were also injured in separate projectile attacks on a military camp during the same overnight period, with 14 missiles and 12 drones detected in Kuwaiti airspace.
Kuwait’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Jarrah Jaber Al Sabah condemned what he described as a “systematic pattern of undermining regional stability.” However, the attribution of the desalination plant attack is disputed. Iran’s military command claimed, without providing evidence, that Israel was responsible for the strike, calling it aggression “carried out in the pretext of accusing the Islamic Republic.” Kuwait and most Western governments have attributed the attack to Iran.
The Indian Ministry of External Affairs has been in contact with Kuwaiti authorities and Indian diplomatic missions in the region to coordinate support for the deceased worker’s family and monitor the welfare of the wider Indian expatriate community in the Gulf. The latest death brings the reported number of Indian nationals killed in the regional conflict to at least eight.
In Israel, meanwhile, the Knesset passed its 2026 state budget in a marathon session that stretched from Sunday evening into the early hours of Monday morning. Lawmakers voted 62 to 55 in favor of the spending plan, averting a government collapse that would have been automatically triggered under Israeli law had the budget failed to pass before the end of March.
Total expenditure under the approved plan amounts to approximately 850 billion New Israeli Shekels (NIS) or $270 billion. As part of the updated plan, more than NIS 30 billion, equivalent to approximately $10 billion, has been added to the Defence Ministry budget under the framework of Operation Roaring Lion, the name Israel has given to its war with Iran, bringing total defence spending to over NIS 142 billion.
The defence allocation stands roughly 120 percent above pre-war 2023 levels and will be funded through additional government borrowing, a one-off bank levy, and a three percent across-the-board cut to all civilian ministries. The vote was conducted from a fortified auditorium after ballistic missile sirens forced lawmakers to evacuate the main chamber multiple times during proceedings.
Kuwait relies on desalination for approximately 90 percent of its drinking water, making such facilities among the most sensitive infrastructure targets in the Gulf as Iranian strikes increasingly focus on energy and water systems across the region.
