3h ago
09.40 BST
Summary
of the day so far
Soroka
hospital in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba has been hit by a ballistic
missile, Israeli officials have said, after Iran launched its latest wave of
retaliatory airstrikes on the country. The medical centre has over 1,000 beds
and provides services to the approximately 1 million residents of Israel’s
south. A hospital statement said several parts of the medical centre were
damaged and that the emergency room was treating several minor injuries.
Israel’s
Magen David Adom rescue service said on Thursday that at least 47 people were
injured in Iran’s other missile strikes, updating an earlier toll and reporting
18 more injured “while running to shelter”. Three people are in serious
condition, and two are in moderate condition, an MDA spokesperson said in as
statement reported by Agence France-Presse.
Israel’s
prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will exact the full price
from the “tyrants” in Tehran. “This morning, Iran’s ‘terrorist tyrants’
launched missiles at Soroka hospital in Beersheba and at a civilian population
in central Israel,” he said in a post on X.
Israel’s
defence minister, Israel Katz said on Thursday that Iran’s supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be “held accountable” after the Iranian strike on
Soroka hospital in Israel. The minister added that he had ordered the army to
“intensify strikes” on the Islamic republic.
Israel
attacked Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor early on Thursday, Iranian state
television has reported. The report said there was “no radiation danger
whatsoever” and that the facility had been already evacuated before the attack.
Israel’s military warned people to evacuate the area around the heavy water
reactor in the regions of Arak and Khondab just a couple of hours before it
launched its attack.
Donald
Trump has suggested to defence officials it would make sense for the US to
launch strikes against Iran only if the so-called “bunker buster” bomb was
guaranteed to destroy the critical uranium enrichment facility at Fordow,
according to people familiar with the deliberations. Trump was told that
dropping the GBU-57s, a 13.6-tonne bomb would effectively eliminate Fordow but
he does not appear to be fully convinced, the people said, and has held off
authorising strikes as he also awaits the possibility that the threat of US
involvement would lead Iran to talks.
The US
president also told reporters that “a deal could still happen” and that he
thinks “Iran was a few weeks away from having a nuclear weapon.” The news came
shortly before several US media outlets reported that Trump approved plans to
attack Iran on Tuesday, but has not yet given the final order to do so. US
intelligence sources briefed US senators on Monday that Iran was not working to
develop a nuclear weapon.
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