The Israeli army launches attacks on military targets in Iran, officials say

The Israeli army launched attacks on military targets in Iran early on Saturday, officials said.

It was not immediately clear what the targets were. Iranian state media reported the sound of explosions around the Iranian capital Tehran, without immediately commenting.

An Israeli military statement said Israel “has the right and obligation to respond.”

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

The objectives were also not discussed in detail.

Iranian state TV later identified some of the blasts as coming from air defense systems, without providing more details.

US officials said President Joe Biden had been briefed on the new attacks and was closely monitoring the situation.

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

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

In northern Gaza, health officials reported that Israeli forces had raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few medical facilities still functioning in the area. Israel has renewed its offensive against Hamas in the north in recent weeks, and aid groups are sounding the alarm over dire humanitarian conditions.

In Lebanon, Israeli strikes in the country’s southeast killed three journalists working for news media believed to be linked to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and its patron, Iran.

Israeli attacks kill dozens of people in Khan Younis

The Health Ministry in Gaza said Israeli airstrikes and shelling hit the southern town of Khan Younis, killing 38 people and wounding dozens.

The Israeli army said its forces dismantled militant infrastructure and killed Hamas fighters in the southern city. It said the Gaza Health Ministry figures “do not match the information” it has, but did not provide its own estimate of the number of casualties.

Palestinians said the neighborhood was hit without warning.

Palestinian Civil Defense footage showed rescuers pulling the bloodied bodies of nine children from the al-Farra family from the ruins.

The victims were taken to both the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis and the European Hospital, where records showed that at least 15 members of the al-Farra family had been killed. Six members of the Abdeen 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 the shaking from the bombardment caused his relatives to run to the center of the house for shelter. Before he knew it, he said, he woke up in the rubble of what had been his home.

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

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

Israeli forces intensify operations around the hospital in northern Gaza

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

The children’s hospital is one of three medical facilities in the area that remain somewhat operational after more than a year of war. Since the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of hospitals amid the renewed attack on Hamas militants in northern Gaza, doctors have warned that severe shortages of food and medical supplies had created a humanitarian emergency.

The Gaza-based Health Ministry said Israeli forces on Friday rounded up medical staff and displaced persons sheltering in the hospital and forced the men to undress, a common practice that Israel says is intended to ensure detainees do not hide weapons. The ministry said some Palestinians were detained, without specifying how many.

The Palestinian Civil Defense said Israeli forces arrested two of its workers, 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 Friday it had lost contact with staff at Kamal Adwan, where some had been the night before to deliver supplies and help transfer patients to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The Israeli military body overseeing aid distribution in Gaza, COGAT, said it facilitated the UN health agency’s efforts to deliver aid and fuel to Kamal Adwan and evacuate patients.

“This development is deeply worrying given the number of patients being helped and the people being sheltered there,” WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on social media platform X about the loss of communication on Friday.

Kamal Adwan Hospital Director Hussam Abu Safiya could not be reached on Friday. In voice messages sent late Thursday, Abu Safiya described disastrous conditions.

“Patients are still on the floors of the reception and emergency departments, many in critical condition. There are no resources, supplies 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 on life support in the intensive care unit died after the hospital’s generator failed and Israeli fire hit the oxygen tanks. It said Israeli soldiers carried out searches at the hospital, causing panic and chaos in the complex packed with some 600 patients, medics and displaced people.

The UN has said hundreds of thousands of people are trapped with little food or supplies as Israeli forces close in on the northern city of Jabaliya. The UN human rights chief Volker Türk said on Friday that Israeli military actions in the north “risk emptying the area of all Palestinians.”

Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 – in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and dragged another 250 back into Gaza – hospitals in Gaza have been attacked. Kamal Adwan was besieged and ambushed by Israeli forces a year ago.

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

According to the Israeli Ministry of Health, more than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive in Gaza. The Health Ministry did not say how many fighters there were, but said women and children made up more than half of the fatalities.

The Israeli army announced on Friday that three more soldiers had been killed in Gaza this week, without providing details. That brings to 359 the number of Israeli soldiers killed since the ground invasion of Gaza began.

Three journalists are killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon

A rare Israeli airstrike in southeast Lebanon struck a home where journalists were staying on Friday, leveling the building and killing three media workers who were sleeping there. The thick dust kicked up by the bomb-covered cars marked ‘PRESS’ parked outside the ruins of the guest house.

Al-Manar TV, operated by Hezbollah, and Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV, a channel seen as linked to the militant group, said its staffers were among the dead.

The Israeli military said it was aware of reports that the three journalists were killed in the airstrike, which it said targeted a Hezbollah military structure. “The incident is under investigation,” it added, without elaborating.

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

At least two people were killed by shrapnel during a rocket fire from Lebanon on Friday in northern Israel, according to Magen David Adom, the Israeli emergency service. The rockets struck Majd Al-Krum, an Arab city in the north of the country, and hit a gym. Six others were injured, rescuers added, including an 80-year-old man who remained in serious condition.