Israeli military launches strikes on military targets in Iran, officials say

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Israel launched airstrikes early Saturday targeting what it described as military targets in Iran in retaliation for a ballistic missile assault Oct. 1, officials said. There was no immediate information on damage in the Islamic Republic.

Israel's military described the attack as “precise strikes on military targets in Iran,” without immediately elaborating.

“The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since Oct. 7 – on seven fronts – including direct attacks from Iranian soil,” an Israeli military statement said. “Like every other sovereign country in the world, the State of Israel has the right and the duty to respond.”

In Tehran, the Iranian capital, the sound of explosions could be heard, with state-run media there initially acknowledging the blasts and saying some of the sounds came from air defense systems around the city.

Iran has launched two ballistic missile attacks on Israel in recent months amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip that began with the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel also has launched a ground invasion of Lebanon.

The strike happened just as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was arriving back in the U.S. after a tour of the Middle East where he and other U.S. officials had warned Israel to tender a response that would not further escalate the conflict in the region and exclude nuclear sites in Iran.

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 neighborhood was hit with no warning.

Footage from the Palestinian Civil Defense 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 that 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.”

The medical organization Doctors Without Borders said that 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. Since Israeli military ordered the evacuation of the hospitals amid its renewed assault against Hamas militants in northern Gaza, doctors have warned that dire shortages of food and medical supplies had triggered a humanitarian emergency.

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 Defense said that 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 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 U.N. 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 Thursday, Abu Safiya described calamatious 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."

Gaza's health ministry said two children who were on life support in the intensive care unit died after the hospital’s generator cut out and Israeli fire hit the oxygen tanks. It said that Israeli soldiers were conducting searches in the hospital, sparking panic and chaos in the complex full of some 600 patients, medics and displaced people.

The U.N. 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 U.N. human rights chief, Volker Türk, said Friday that Israeli military actions in the north “risk emptying the area of all Palestinians."

Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and dragged another 250 back into Gaza — hospitals in Gaza have come under attack. Kamal Adwan was besieged and raided 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 that claim.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were combatants but says women and children make up more than half the fatalities.

Israel’s military announced Friday that three more soldiers were killed in Gaza this week, without providing details. That brings the number of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza since the start of its ground invasion to 359.

Israel's strikes on Lebanon kill 3 journalists

A rare Israeli airstrike in southeast Lebanon hit a residence where journalists were staying on Friday, leveling 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.

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

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. The rockets struck in Majd Al-Krum, an Arab town in the country’s north, hitting a gym. Six others were injured, the rescue services added, including an 80-year-old man who remained in serious condition.