Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Israel’s main southern hospital sustained a direct hit Thursday from an Iranian missile, with officials reporting “extensive damage.”
Separate Iranian strikes hit a high-rise apartment building in Tel Aviv and other sites in central Israel. A hospital in Tel Aviv said it had received 16 wounded people, three with serious injuries.
Journalists with the French news agency AFP reported hearing “violent, sustained explosions” in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The developments came as President Trump was mulling whether the United States would directly take part in Israel’s efforts to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.
A spokesperson for the Soroka Medical Center in Beer Sheba said the hospital suffered “extensive damage” in different areas and people had been wounded in the attack. The hospital has requested that people don’t come for there for treatment.
Israeli officials said the part of the hospital that took a direct hit had been evacuated before the strike.
The director general of Magen David Adom — Israel’s emergency rescue service — said, “Last night, the Ministry of Health gave instructions to further clear the floor that was damaged in Soroka. Many lives were saved.”
Amir Cohen / REUTERS
Israeli Health Minister Uriel Bosso called the attack “an act of terrorism and a crossing of a red line. A war crime by the Iranian regime that was deliberately committed against innocent civilians and medical teams dedicated to saving lives. The Ministry of Health was prepared in advance, and thanks to the immediate actions we took, a very serious disaster was averted.”
The hospital has over 1,000 beds and provides services to the approximately 1 million residents of southern Israel, according to its website.
The strike came as Israel attacked Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, Iranian state television said Thursday.
The report said there was “no radiation danger whatsoever.” An Iranian state television reporter, appearing live in the nearby town of Khondab, said the facility had been evacuated and there was no damage to civilian areas around the reactor.
Israel had warned earlier Thursday morning it would attack the facility and urged the public to flee the area.
The Israeli military said Thursday’s round of airstrikes targeted Tehran and other areas of Iran, without elaborating. It later said Iran fired a new salvo of missiles at Israel and told the public to take shelter.
Israel’s seventh day of airstrikes on Iran came a day after Iran’s supreme leader rejected U.S. calls for surrender and warned that any military involvement by the Americans would cause “irreparable damage to them.” Israel also lifted some restrictions on daily life, suggesting the missile threat from Iran on its territory was easing.
Already, Israel’s campaign has targeted Iran’s uranium enrichment site at Natanz, centrifuge workshops around Tehran and a nuclear site in Isfahan. Its strikes have also killed top generals and nuclear scientists.
A Washington-based Iranian human rights group said at least 639 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 1,300 wounded. In retaliation, Iran has fired some 400 missiles and hundreds of drones, killing at least 24 people in Israel and wounding hundreds. Some have hit apartment buildings in central Israel, causing heavy damage.
The Arak heavy water reactor is 155 miles southwest of Tehran.
Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. That would provide Iran another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, should it choose to pursue the weapon.
Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign the facility to relieve proliferation concerns.
In 2019, Iran started up the heavy water reactor’s secondary circuit, which at the time didn’t violate Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
Britain at the time was helping Iran redesign the Arak reactor to limit the amount of plutonium it produces, stepping in for the U.S., which had withdrawn from the project after President Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally pull America out of the nuclear deal.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, has been urging Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites. IAEA inspectors reportedly last visited Arak on May 14.
Due to restrictions Iran imposed on inspectors, the IAEA has said it has lost “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s heavy water production — meaning it couldn’t absolutely verify Tehran’s production and stockpile.
As part of negotiations around the 2015 deal, Iran agreed to sell off its heavy water to the West to remain in compliance with the accord’s terms. Even the U.S. purchased some 32 tons of heavy water for over $8 million in one deal. That was one issue that drew criticism from the pact’s opponents.
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