The Israeli military struck military targets in Iran, officials said

The Israeli military struck military targets in Iran early Saturday, officials said.

It was not immediately clear what the goals were. Iranian state media reported the sounds of explosions around the Iranian capital, Tehran, without specifying details.

The statement of the Israeli military says that Israel “has the right and duty to respond.”

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

The goals are also not specified.

Iran’s state television later said some of the blasts were from air defense systems, without giving further details.

US officials said President Joe Biden had been informed of the new strikes and was closely monitoring the situation.

In recent months, Iran has carried out two ballistic missile strikes on Israel.

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

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

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

Israeli strikes killed dozens of people in Khan Younis

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

The Israeli military said its forces were dismantling militant infrastructure and killing Hamas fighters in the southern city. He noted that data from Gaza’s health ministry “does not agree with available information,” but did not provide his own estimate of casualties.

The Palestinians said that they struck the neighborhood without warning.

Footage of the Palestinian Civil Defense showed rescuers removing the bloodied bodies of nine children from the al-Farra family from under the ruins.

The injured were taken to the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, as well as to the European Hospital, where at least 15 members of the al-Farra family were reportedly 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 that shaking from the gunfire, members of his family ran into the middle of the house to take cover. 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.”

Doctors Without Borders said one of its staff members, Hassan Sobh, 41, a father of seven who had worked for the charity for five years, was killed in the attack. It said Sob was the eighth worker to be killed in the last year of the Israel-Hamas war.

Israeli forces are stepping up operations around a hospital in northern Gaza

In response to reports that they had stormed Kamal Advan Hospital, the Israeli military said only that they were “operating in the area” of the hospital based on intelligence indicating the presence of militants and militant infrastructure.

The pediatric hospital is one of three medical facilities in the district that continue to operate after more than a year of war. After the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of hospitals amid a renewed attack on Hamas militants in northern Gaza, doctors warned that acute shortages of food and medical supplies had sparked a humanitarian emergency.

The Gaza-based health ministry said Israeli forces on Friday rounded up medical staff and displaced people hiding in the hospital and forced the men to strip. It’s a common practice that Israel says is aimed at preventing detainees from concealing weapons. The ministry said several Palestinians had been detained, but did not specify how many.

The Palestinian Civil Defense said Israeli forces had 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.

On Friday, the World Health Organization said it had lost contact with staff at Kamal Advan Hospital, where some of them had been the night before to deliver food and help transport patients to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Israel’s military body overseeing the distribution of aid in Gaza, COGAT, said it assisted the UN health agency’s efforts to deliver aid and fuel to Kamal Advan and to evacuate patients.

“This event is deeply concerning, given the number of patients being served and the number of people who are there,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on social media platform X about the outage on Friday.

Kamal Advana Hospital director Husam Abu Safia could not be reached for comment on Friday. In a voice message sent late Thursday, Abu Safiya described the catastrophic conditions.

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

Gaza’s health ministry said two children who were on intensive care units died after the hospital’s generator went out and Israeli fire hit oxygen tanks. It said Israeli soldiers raided the hospital, causing panic and chaos in the compound, which is home to about 600 patients, medics and displaced persons.

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 Jabalia. UN human rights chief Volker Turk said on Friday that Israeli military action in the north “risks liberating the territory from all Palestinians”.

Following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, in which Palestinian militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and drove another 250 back to Gaza, hospitals in Gaza came under attack. Kamal Advan was besieged and raided by Israeli forces a year ago.

The Israeli military accuses Hamas militants of using hospitals and the tunnels beneath them as bases. Hamas and Palestinian doctors deny the claim.

More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which did not say how many were combatants, but said women and children made up more than half of the dead.

Israel’s armed forces announced on Friday that three more soldiers had been killed in the Gaza Strip this week, without giving details. Thus, the number of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza since the beginning of the ground invasion reached 359 people.

Israeli strikes on Lebanon killed 3 journalists

A rare Israeli airstrike in southeastern Lebanon hit a residence where journalists were staying on Friday, leveling the building and killing three media workers who were sleeping there. Thick dust rising from the shelled cars marked “PRESS” parked near the ruins of the guest house.

Hezbollah-run Al-Manar TV and the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV channel, which is believed to be linked to the militants, said their employees were among the dead.

Israel’s military said it was aware of reports that three journalists had been killed in an air strike it said targeted a Hezbollah military structure. “The incident is under review,” it added without elaborating.

Lebanon’s health minister said on Friday that 11 journalists were killed and eight wounded after Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group began a firefight in October 2023.

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