Israel Warns Of Eliminating Khamenei; Iran’s Attack On Soroka Hospital Invites Threat From Netanyahu

Israel’s Defense Minister Katz says “eliminating” Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is one of the country’s war goals.

“A dictator like Khamenei, who heads a country like Iran and has made the destruction of the State of Israel his declared goal, this horrific goal of destroying Israel, cannot be allowed to continue or materialise,” he told the media.

Earlier, Iran fired at least 30 ballistic missiles at Israel. In the attack on the Soroka hospital in central Israel, three people were seriously wounded, two in moderate condition, and dozens of others lightly hurt.

Netanyahu said that following the damage to the Soroka hospital after one missile got through Israel’s defense systems, three people were seriously injured, and 80 people were injured in total.

The Israelis are also saying they believe that, for the first time, the Iranians fired cluster munitions – and they are much harder to intercept.

The missile explodes high up in the atmosphere, and then it sends these smaller missiles over an eight-kilometre (five-mile) radius, raining on the ground, and so it’s much harder for the air defense systems to intercept them.

The Israelis are worried about some of them not exploding and therefore leaving live munitions trailing on the ground.

WHO Condemns Attack On Hospital

The WHO’s leader on Thursday denounced attacks on health facilities in the conflict Iran-Israel war as “appalling”, urging all sides to protect hospital buildings, staff and patients.

“The escalation of hostilities between Israel and Iran is putting health facilities and access to health care at risk. The reports on the attacks on health so far are appalling,” World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X.

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday urged Israel to immediately halt air attacks on the Bushehr nuclear plant in Iran where Russian specialists work.

Bushehr, Iran's only operating nuclear power plant, uses Russian fuel that Russia then takes back when it is spent in order to reduce nuclear proliferation risk.

Maria Zakharova, the ministry's spokeswoman, repeated a Russian warning to the U.S. not to get involved militarily in the Israel-Iran conflict, saying this would have unpredictable and negative consequences.