Israeli military strikes military targets in Iran, officials say

The Israeli military carried out strikes early Saturday on military targets in Iran, officials said.

It was not immediately clear what the goals were. Iranian state media reported the sound of explosions around Iran’s capital Tehran, without elaborating.

The Israeli military said in a statement that Israel “has the right and responsibility to respond.”

“The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel on seven fronts since October 7, including direct attacks from Iranian soil,” the statement said.

The goals were also not specified.

Iranian state television later determined that some of the explosions came from air defense systems, without providing further details.

US officials said President Joe Biden has been briefed on the new strikes and is closely monitoring the situation.

Iran has launched two ballistic missile attacks on Israel in recent months.

Israeli strikes on residential areas in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday killed 38 people, including 13 children from one extended family, Palestinian health officials said.

Health officials in northern Gaza said Israeli forces raided Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few medical facilities still operating in the area. Israel has renewed its offensive against Hamas in the north in recent weeks, and aid groups are sounding the alarm about dire humanitarian conditions.

In Lebanon, Israeli strikes in the southeast of the country killed three journalists working for news outlets believed to be linked to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and its backer Iran.

Israeli strikes kill dozens of people in Khan Yunis

Gaza’s health ministry said Israeli airstrikes and shelling hit the southern town of Khan Yunis, killing 38 people and wounding dozens more.

The Israeli military said its troops were dismantling militant infrastructure and killing Hamas militants in the southern city. It said Gaza’s health ministry data “does not correspond to the information it has” but did not provide its own estimate of losses.

Palestinians said the area was struck without warning.

Palestine Civil Defense footage showed rescuers pulling the bloody bodies of nine children from the al-Farra family from the rubble.

The victims were taken to Nasser’s medical complex in Khan Younis, as well as to the European Hospital, where records show at least 15 members of the al-Farra family were killed. Six members of Abdin’s family were also killed, health officials said.

Saleh al-Farra, who lost his 17-year-old brother and 15-year-old sister in the attack, said shaking from the bombing caused his family to run into the middle of the house to seek shelter. The next thing he knew, he said, was waking up in the ruins of what had been his home.

“I started screaming and screaming until my brother and father came and started trying to pull me out,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about anyone.”

Medical organization Doctors Without Borders said one of its staff, identified as Hassan Sobh, 41, a father of seven who had worked with the charity for five years, was killed in the attack. The statement said Sobh was the eighth worker killed in the past year in the war between Israel and Hamas.

Israeli forces step up operations around hospital in northern Gaza

In response to reports of the assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital, the Israeli military said only that it was “operating in the area” of the hospital based on intelligence indicating the presence of militants and military infrastructure.

The children’s hospital is one of three medical facilities in the area still operating after more than a year of war. As the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of hospitals amid a renewed attack on Hamas militants in northern Gaza, doctors warned that severe shortages of food and medicine were sparking a humanitarian emergency.

The health ministry in the Gaza Strip said Israeli troops on Friday surrounded medical staff and displaced people sheltering in a hospital and forced the men to strip. It is a common practice that Israel says is intended to ensure that detainees are not hiding weapons. The ministry said some Palestinians were detained, but did not say how many.

Palestinian Civil Defense said Israeli forces had arrested two of its employees, including a local rescue coordinator and a firefighter. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the arrests.

The World Health Organization said on Friday it had lost contact with staff at Kamal Adwan Hospital, where some had been there the previous evening to deliver supplies and help transfer patients to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The Israeli military body overseeing aid distribution in the Gaza Strip, COGAT, said it assisted the UN health agency’s efforts to deliver aid and fuel to Kamal Adwan and evacuate patients.

“This development is deeply concerning given the number of patients served and people sheltering there,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on social media site X about the loss of communications on Friday.

Kamal Adwan Hospital director Hussam Abu Safiya could not be reached on Friday. In voicemails sent late Thursday, Abu Safiyah described catastrophic conditions.

“Patients are still lying on the floor in emergency departments and emergency departments, many of them in critical condition. There are no resources, materials or specialists to save the lives of these children,” Abu Safiya said. “We call on the world to intervene.”

Gaza’s health ministry said two children who were on life support in the intensive care unit died after the hospital’s generator failed and Israeli fire hit the oxygen tanks. The report said Israeli soldiers carried out searches at the hospital, causing panic and chaos in the complex full of about 600 patients, medics and displaced people.

The UN said hundreds of thousands of people were trapped with little food or supplies as Israeli forces closed in on the northern town of Jabaliya. UN human rights chief Volker Türk said on Friday that Israeli military action in the north “risks devastation of territory for all Palestinians.”

Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, in which Palestinian militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and dragged another 250 back to Gaza, hospitals in the Gaza Strip have come under attack. Kamal Adwan was besieged and attacked by Israeli forces a year ago.

The Israeli military accuses Hamas militants of using hospitals and the tunnels underneath them as bases. Hamas and Palestinian doctors have denied this claim.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, which did not say how many were combatants but said women and children accounted for more than half of the dead.

The Israeli military announced Friday that three more soldiers had been killed in the Gaza Strip this week, without providing details. This brings the number of Israeli soldiers killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the ground invasion to 359.

Three journalists killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon

A rare Israeli airstrike in southeastern Lebanon on Friday hit a house where journalists were staying, leveling the building and killing three media workers sleeping there. Thick dust raised by gunfire cars with the sign “PRESS” parked near the ruins of the guest house.

Al-Manar TV, which is run by Hezbollah, and Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV, which is believed to be affiliated with the militant group, said its employees were among those killed.

The Israeli army said it was aware of reports that three journalists were killed in an airstrike it said targeted Hezbollah’s military base. “The incident is under investigation,” the department added, without going into details.

Lebanon’s health minister said Friday that 11 journalists have been killed and eight wounded since Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group began firing across the border in October 2023.

At least two people in northern Israel were killed by shrapnel from a rocket attack from Lebanon on Friday, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service. Rockets hit a gym in Majd al-Krum, an Arab city in the north of the country. Six more were injured, rescue services added, including an 80-year-old man who remains in serious condition.