Oil prices surged close to 5% by Monday midday after Israel and Iran exchanged strikes, testing a fragile truce and threatening hopes for a deal to end the Middle East crisis, while global stocks, led by tech, slid.
The contract for August jumped 5.1% to $97.83 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) climbed 4.8% to hit $94.85.
Stocks suffered a blow as South Korea's Kospi led the global retreat, plunging 8.3% on heavy selling of tech shares and extending losses that on Friday gave the S&P 500 its biggest single-day drop in months.
The fresh reaction of markets came as Israel said on Monday it hit a petrochemical plant in Iran's southwest, along with strikes elsewhere on military targets. That's despite U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from further attacks.
In the first hit on an energy site inside Iran since the April 8 cease-fire, Israel said it struck targets at the Mahshahr petrochemical complex. A provincial official told Iran's semi-official Fars news agency that parts of the plant were damaged.
