Israeli hospital suffers ‘extensive damage’ after Iranian missile strike

An Iranian missile slammed into the main hospital in southern Israel early on Thursday, injuring people and causing “extensive damage”, according to officials.

Separate Iranian strikes hit a high-rise apartment building in Tel Aviv and other sites in central Israel. At least 40 people were injured, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service.

Israel, meanwhile, carried out strikes on Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, its latest attack on the country’s sprawling nuclear programme, on the seventh day of a conflict that began with a surprise wave of Israeli air strikes targeting military sites, senior officers and nuclear scientists.

Iran has fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, though most have been shot down by Israel’s multi-tiered air defences, which detect incoming fire and shoot down missiles heading toward population centres and critical infrastructure.

A missile hit the Soroka Medical Centre, which has more than 1,000 beds and provides services to the approximately one million residents of Israel’s south.

A hospital statement said several parts of the centre were damaged and that the emergency room was treating several minor injuries. The hospital was closed to all new patients except for life-threatening cases.

Many hospitals in Israel activated emergency plans in the past week, converting underground parking to hospital floors and moving patients underground, especially those who are on ventilators or are difficult to move quickly.

Iranian state TV, meanwhile, reported the attack on the Arak site, saying there was “no radiation danger whatsoever”.

An Iranian state television reporter, speaking 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 on Thursday that it would attack the facility and urged the public to flee the area.

The Israeli military said Thursday’s round of air strikes targeted Tehran and other areas of Iran, without elaborating.

The strikes came a day after Iran’s supreme leader rejected US calls for surrender and warned any military involvement by the Americans would cause “irreparable damage to them”.

Already, Israel’s campaign has targeted Iran’s 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.

The Arak heavy water reactor is 155 miles south-west 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 did not violate Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

The UK at the time was helping Iran redesign the Arak reactor to limit the amount of plutonium it produces, stepping in for the US, which had withdrawn from the project after President Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw America from the nuclear deal.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 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 lost “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s heavy water production – meaning it could not absolutely verify Tehran’s production and stockpile.