4 hours Ago By Wafaa Shurafa, Bassem Mroue
Dubai, United Arab Emirates : Israel launched strikes early Saturday on military targets in Iran, officials said. It wasn’t immediately clear what the targets were. Iranian state media reported the sound of explosions around Iran’s capital, Tehran, without immediately elaborating.
An Israeli military statement said that Israel “has the right and the duty to respond”. “The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since October 7 – on seven fronts – including direct attacks from Iranian soil,” the statement read. It also did not elaborate on the targets.
The United States was notified by Israel ahead of its operation against targets in Iran, a US official told Reuters on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity. The official added there was no US involvement in the Israeli operation. Loading Iranian state television later identified some of the blasts as coming from air defence systems, without offering more details.
Iran has launched two ballistic missile attacks on Israel in recent months. Israel also struck residential areas in southern Gaza on Friday, killing 38 people, including 13 children from the same extended family, Palestinian health officials said. In northern Gaza, health officials reported that Israeli forces had raided 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. Palestinians sift through the rubble of a building destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in the city of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. Credit: AP Israeli strikes kill dozens in Khan Younis The Health Ministry in Gaza reported that Israeli airstrikes and shelling pounded the southern city of Khan Younis, killing 38 people and wounding dozens.
The Israeli military said its troops were dismantling militant infrastructure and killing Hamas fighters in the southern town. It said the figures from Gaza’s health ministry “do not align with the information” it has, but did not offer its own casualty estimate. Palestinians said the neighbourhood was hit with no warning.
Footage from the Palestinian Civil Defence showed rescuers pulling the bloodied bodies of nine children from the al-Farra family out of the ruins. The victims were taken to the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis as well as to the European Hospital, where records showed at least 15 members of the al-Farra family had been killed. Six members of the Abdeen family were also killed, health officials reported.
Saleh al-Farra, who lost his 17-year-old brother and 15-year-old sister in the attack, said shaking from the bombardment sent his family members running to the middle of the house for shelter. The next thing he knew, he said, he was waking up in the rubble of what had been his home. “I started screaming and screaming until my brother and father came, and they started trying to pull me out,” he said.
“I didn’t know anything about anyone.” Medical organisation Doctors Without Borders said one of its staff members – identified as 41-year-old Hassan Sobh, a father of seven who had worked with the charity for five years – had been killed in the attack. It said Sobh was its eighth worker to be killed in the past year of the Israel-Hamas war.
Israeli forces intensify operations around northern Gaza hospital In response to reports that it had stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, the Israeli military said only that it was “operating in the area” of the hospital based on intelligence that indicated the presence of militants and militant infrastructure. The pediatric hospital is one of the area’s three medical facilities to remain somewhat operational after more than a year of war. The Gaza-based Ministry of Health reported that Israeli troops on Friday rounded up medical staff and displaced people sheltering at the hospital and forced the men to strip, a common practice that Israel says is meant to ensure detainees do not conceal weapons.
The ministry said some Palestinians were detained, without specifying how many. The Palestinian Civil Defence said Israeli forces arrested two of its workers, including a local rescue co-ordinator and a firefighter. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the arrests.
Loading The World Health Organisation said on Friday it lost touch 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 that oversees 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 disturbing given the number of patients being served and people sheltering there,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on social media platform X about Friday’s loss of communication.
Kamal Adwan Hospital director Hussam Abu Safiya could not be reached on Friday. In voice messages sent late on Thursday, Abu Safiya described calamitous conditions. “Patients are still lying on the floors of the reception and emergency areas, with many in critical condition.
There are no resources, supplies, or specialists to save these children’s lives,” Abu Safiya said. “We appeal to the world to intervene.” The UN has said hundreds of thousands of people have been trapped with little food or supplies as Israeli forces close in on the northern town 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.” A destroyed car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound in southeast Lebanon housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency. Credit: AP Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 – in which Palestinian militants killed some 1200 people and dragged another 250 back into Gaza – hospitals in Gaza have come under attack.
The Israeli military accuses Hamas fighters of using hospitals, and tunnels beneath them, as bases. Hamas and Palestinian doctors have denied that claim. Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Israel’s military announced Friday that three more soldiers were killed in Gaza this week, bringing the number of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza since the start of its ground invasion to 359. Loading Israel’s strikes on Lebanon kill three journalists A rare Israeli airstrike in southeast Lebanon hit a residence where journalists were staying on Friday, levelling the building and killing three media workers sleeping there. Thick dust churned up by the bombardment coated cars marked “PRESS” parked outside the ruins of the guest house.
Al-Manar TV, operated by Hezbollah, and the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV, an outlet seen as aligned with the militant group, said its staffers were among those killed. The Israeli army said it was aware of reports that the three journalists were killed in the airstrike, which it said had targeted a Hezbollah military structure. “The incident is under review,” it added, without elaborating.
On Friday, at least two people in northern Israel were killed by shrapnel during a rocket barrage from Lebanon, according to Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency service. AP Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Middle East at war Israel Israeli-Palestinian conflict Gaza Strip Lebanon WHO Iran Most Viewed in World Loading.
