Israel threatens Iran's supreme leader as Iranian strikes wound over 200

An Iranian missile hit the main hospital in southern Israel early Thursday, wounding people and causing “extensive damage” but no serious injuries, the medical facility said. Israeli media aired footage of blown-out windows and heavy black smoke.

Other missiles hit a high-rise apartment building in Tel Aviv and other sites in central Israel. At least 240 people were wounded by the Iranian missiles, four of them seriously, according to Israel’s Health Ministry.

After the strikes, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz blamed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and said the military “has been instructed and knows that in order to achieve all of its goals, this man absolutely should not continue to exist.”

Israel, meanwhile, carried out strikes on Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, its latest attack on Iran’s sprawling nuclear program. Iranian state television said there was “no radiation danger whatsoever” and that the facility had been evacuated before the attack.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Thursday that hospitals had received 69 bodies and 221 wounded people in the last 24 hours.

It said 55,706 Palestinians have been killed and another 130,101 wounded since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, without saying how many were civilians or combatants.

The war began with Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack into Israel, when Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251. They still hold 53 hostages, more than half of them believed to be dead.

Israel said its airstrikes have destroyed around two-thirds of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers, according to an Israeli military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military regulations. The official said on Thursday that Israel estimates Iran still has over 100 missile launchers remaining active.

“We are hitting all the chain of production, from the military factory all the way to the launcher itself, we’re stopping all of the elements,” the official said. Israel estimates that before Friday, Iran had around 2,000 ballistic missiles.

The official would not comment on Israeli impact on Iran’s nuclear program. “We said we’re going to damage severely the nuclear facilities, but we didn’t say we’re going to destroy it totally,” the official said. “We know our limits.”