Israel Katz says Iran’s supreme leader ‘can no longer be allowed to exist’
Israel’s defence minister said on Thursday that Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “can no longer be allowed to exist” after Soroka hospital in southern Israel was hit during an Iranian missile attack, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
Israel Katz told journalists in Holon near Tel Aviv:
Khamenei openly declares that he wants Israel destroyed – he personally gives the order to fire on hospitals. He considers the destruction of the state of Israel to be a goal,
Such a man can no longer be allowed to exist.
Key events
Below is a graphic produced by the Guardian of the latest airstrikes reported across Iran since 12 June.
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.
Below is a graphic produced by the Guardian of the latest airstrikes reported across Israel since 12 June.
Most recently, Soroka hospital in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba was hit by a ballistic missile after Iran launched its latest wave of retaliatory airstrikes on the country.
Missile strikes skyscraper in Ramat Gan
Julian Borger
A missile struck the base of a skyscraper on Jabotinsky street in Ramat Gan, close to central Tel Aviv and about 200 metres from the city’s diamond exchange.
Local people said a takeaway pizza business took the full force of the strike, but some older apartment blocks across the world were also wrecked by the force of the blast, which had smashed windows across the district.
There were no immediate reports of casualties. After six days of war, residents were accustomed to rushing to their shelters.
“It was like an atom bomb. An earthquake,” said Asher Adiv, a 69-year-old who lives in a nearby apartment block. His mother was an Iranian Jew from Isfahan and Asher grew up speaking Farsi. He had strong ideas about what should happen next.
He said:
The Iranian people should make a revolution, and kick out the ayatollahs,” Asher said. “We are not just fighting for Israel. We are fighting for the whole world. We ask Trump to go inside and finish the problem.
The US president, now considering his military options, was the first subject most local residents wanted to bring up, as they gathered at the police tape to watch first responders go about their work among the rubble and shattered glass.
Asher’s wife, Anny, an immigrant from Morocco who came to Israel in 1969, said she thought Israel would prevail even without US intervention.
She said:
Tell Donald Trump to be beside us. He has to bomb them to finish the nuclear sites.
We are innocent citizens, but they threaten us all the time and say they want to kill us. We didn’t have any choice. We saw what happened on 7 October.
Our people are strong and resilient. We will keep fighting and we will finish the Iran nuclear sites or they will finish us.
Here is a video showing the aftermath of the Iranian missile strike on Soroka hospital in Beersheba on Thursday:
Julian Borger
Aryeh Myers, a spokesperson for the Magen David emergency services, said the Soroka hospital building which was struck had been evacuated the previous evening because “there were certain areas that we knew were less protected than we’d like them to be.”
He added: “So we moved patients to more protected areas again, to give them the best protection we possibly can. And so that as few people as possible were actually directly affected.”
Myers made a distinction between Iran’s missile strike against this hospital and the Israeli targeting of hospitals and clinic across Gaza over the past 20 months.
He said it was not a moral or legal double standard.
He added:
The main difference between this hospital is it is a totally civilian hospital.
There are no tunnels underneath, its not housing terrorist headquarters. This hospital is for the civilians who live in the Negev region – whether they are Jewish residents, Muslim residents, whoever it is.
We’ve got a huge Bedouin community that live in this area who are served very much by this hospital. And the fact that this hospital was targeted is a horrendous state of affairs.
Israel Katz says Iran’s supreme leader ‘can no longer be allowed to exist’
Israel’s defence minister said on Thursday that Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “can no longer be allowed to exist” after Soroka hospital in southern Israel was hit during an Iranian missile attack, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
Israel Katz told journalists in Holon near Tel Aviv:
Khamenei openly declares that he wants Israel destroyed – he personally gives the order to fire on hospitals. He considers the destruction of the state of Israel to be a goal,
Such a man can no longer be allowed to exist.
Israeli president Isaac Herzog praises Soroka hospital director general
Julian Borger
Israel’s president Isaac Herzog has been visiting the Soroka medical centre in Beersheba, which was hit this morning by an Iranian missile.
Standing in front of the scorched surgery building which had taken the full force of the impact, Herzog praised the hospital’s director general for taking the decision the night before to evacuate the building on grounds it was insufficiently protected.
“Luckily, it was truly a miracle no one was hurt by this cruel Iranian missile which landed on a hospital,” he said, adding that the staff and patients were both Jews and Muslims.
He said:
They’re all treated here, treated beautifully. But this missile, – those who launched, they don’t care. They would kill anybody, so long as it’s in Israel.
So we have answers for them.
Your crimes against humanity, your war crimes, won’t deter us.
The reality is when you go into this hospital and you see how Jews and Muslims dwell peacefully together, do good together, be treated together, and change the world together. And that’s the future of this region
For that, you need sometimes to go to war in order to hit hard at the head of the snake, the head of the empire of evil… those who decided to run to a nuclear program to annihilate this place, those who decided to spread havoc and terror over all the world,
No way guys. We are here forever, and we shall overcome.
The president then left the hospital without taking questions.
Iran confirms meeting with European states on Friday
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi confirmed on Thursday he would meet his British, French and German counterparts as well as the European Union’s top diplomat on Friday in Geneva, Iranian state media reported, according to Reuters.
He said the meeting had come at the request of the three European states.
The meeting represents a potential diplomatic breakthrough after five days of Israeli bombing, as well as being the first face-to-face diplomatic meeting since the crisis began.
China urged countries in the Middle East, “especially Israel”, to cease fighting on Thursday after fresh exchanges of fire with Iran, and as US president Donald Trump warned he was weighing US military action in the conflict, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said:
China strongly calls on all parties involved in the conflict, especially Israel, to put the interests of the region’s people first, immediately cease fire and stop fighting
The spokesperson added that Beijing “opposes any act that… infringes upon the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of other countries, and opposes the use or threat of use of force in international relations”.
UK shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel said the Conservative party would support the UK government in joining the military fight against Iran if it was deemed necessary, PA Media reports
Asked whether she would agree if the UK joined the offensive, she told Good Morning Britain:
While we want peace in the region, we’re crystal clear that Iran should not be able to obtain nuclear weapons.
And if the Government judges that such action is necessary to avoid that then we would absolutely support the Government if it deemed it necessary to ensure that we can defend our country, our citizens and effectively a lot of our strategic equities in the Middle East region.
She added that she believed the opposition would be able to hold the government to account without a vote in parliament on such a decision.
Ms Patel also told the programme that the government needs to “step up” the evacuation of British nationals in Israel.
She said:
I think the current Government’s response is not sufficient and if families of embassy staff and personnel are being evacuated then I think the same facilities must be extended to our citizens.
Iran on Thursday accused the UN’s nuclear watchdog of acting as a “partner” in what it described as Israel’s “war of aggression”.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) accused Iran in a report prior to the start of the Iran-Israel war of non-compliance with its obligations in its nuclear programme.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei wrote on X, in a post addressed to the head of the agency, Rafael Grossi.
Misleading narratives have dire consequences, Mr. Grossi, and demand accountability.
You betrayed the non-proliferation regime; You’ve made IAEA a partner to this unjust war of aggression.
Here are some of the latest photos of Soroka hospital coming to us through the wires:
Iraq’s top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani warned against targeting Iran’s leadership and said that the Iran-Israel war could plunge the whole region into chaos, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
Sistani said in a statement on Thursday that any targeting of Iran’s “supreme religious and political leadership” would have “dire consequences on the region”.
He warned that it could spark “widespread chaos that would exacerbate the suffering of its [the region’s] people and severely harm everyone’s interests”.
Sistani urged the international community to “make every effort to end this unjust war and find a peaceful solution” to Iran’s nuclear programme.
Sistani, an Iranian, is the highest religious authority for millions of Shia Muslims in Iraq and around the world, with the power to mobilise a huge portion of that base in Iraq.
With warnings of all-out regional war intensifying following Israel’s surprise assault on Iran last week, fears are growing over an intervention by Iran-backed Iraqi factions, mostly against American interests in the region.
Summary of the day so far
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Only the United States has the clout to engage Israel and Iran in negotiations as the two countries continue to trade air attacks, Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Wednesday, Reuters reports.
Mitsotakis said in an interview on the sidelines of an energy conference in Athens:
Europe alone does not have the necessary influence to bring the parties concerned to the (negotiation) table. Only the United States can do that. So I think it is up to the President of the United States to decide which path to take.
We are all very concerned about any factor that will push inflation up and significantly disrupt energy markets
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and the UK plan to hold nuclear talks with their Iranian counterpart on Friday in Geneva, a German diplomatic source told Reuters.
Mitsotakis said Greece was also very worried about the safety of around 180 Greek-flagged and Greek-owned ships that sailed in the wider Persian Gulf region when Israel first attacked Iran last week.
Greek owners control the world’s largest fleet of oil tankers. Commercial ships are being advised by maritime agencies to avoid Iran’s waters around the strait of Hormuz, shipping sources said on Wednesday.