Officials say the Israeli military is carrying out attacks on military targets in Iran

Officials said the Israeli military launched attacks early Saturday morning on military targets in Iran.

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

An Israeli military statement said Israel “has the right and obligation to respond.”

“The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been mercilessly attacking Israel since October 7 – on seven fronts – including direct attacks from Iranian soil,” the statement read.

The goals were not specified in detail.

Iranian state television later identified some of the blasts as coming from air defense systems, without providing further details.

U.S. officials said President Joe Biden has been briefed on the new strikes and is monitoring the situation closely.

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

On Friday, Israeli attacks on residential areas in southern Gaza killed 38 people, including 13 children from the same extended family, Palestinian health officials said.

In northern Gaza, health officials said Israeli forces had raided Kamal Adwan 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, with aid groups sounding the alarm over dire humanitarian conditions.

In Lebanon, Israeli attacks in the southeast of the country killed three journalists working for news outlets believed to be linked to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and its patron, Iran.

Israeli attacks kill dozens of people in Khan Younis

Gaza’s Health Ministry said Israeli airstrikes and shelling hit the southern city of Khan Younis, killing 38 people and wounding dozens.

The Israeli military said its soldiers were dismantling militant infrastructure and killing Hamas fighters in the southern city. It said Gaza’s Ministry of Health figures “do not match information” it had, but did not provide its own casualty estimates.

Palestinians say their area was hit without warning.

Footage from the Palestinian Civil Defense shows rescuers pulling the bloody bodies of nine children from the al-Farra family from the ruins.

The victims were taken to the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, as well as to the European Hospital, where at least 15 members of al-Farra’s family were killed, according to reports. Health officials said six members of Abdeen’s family also died.

Saleh al-Farra, who lost his 17-year-old brother and 15-year-old sister in the attack, said the shock from the bombing sent his family members running to the center of the house for shelter. The next thing he knew, he said, he woke up in the ruins of what had been his home.

“I started screaming and screaming until my brother and father came and started pulling me out,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about anyone.”

The medical organization Doctors Without Borders said one of its employees – identified as 41-year-old Hassan Sobh, a father of seven who had worked for the organization for five years – died in the attack. It said Sobh was the eighth employee of the organization to die in last year’s war between Israel and Hamas.

Israeli forces intensify operations around hospital in northern Gaza

In response to reports of the storming of Kamal Adwan Hospital, the Israeli military said only that it was “operating on the premises” of the hospital based on intelligence that indicated the presence of militants and combat infrastructure.

The pediatric hospital is one of three medical facilities in the area that is still functioning after over a year of war. Since the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of hospitals following a renewed attack on Hamas militants in the northern Gaza Strip, doctors have warned that severe shortages of food and medical supplies have created a humanitarian emergency.

The Gaza-based Ministry of Health said that on Friday, Israeli soldiers rounded up medical staff and displaced persons hiding in a hospital and forced the men to undress, a common practice that Israel says is intended to ensure that detainees are not hiding weapons. The ministry said that some Palestinians were detained, without specifying how many.

The Palestinian Civil Defense said Israeli forces arrested two employees, 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 had lost contact with Kamal Adwan staff, where some had been the night before to deliver supplies and help transfer patients to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The Israeli military body overseeing aid distribution in Gaza, COGAT, said it facilitated the UN health agency’s efforts to deliver aid and fuel to Kamal Adwan and evacuate patients.

“This situation is deeply concerning given the number of patients being served and the people taking refuge there,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on social media platform X about Friday’s loss of communications.

Kamal Adwan Hospital director Hussam Abu Safiya could not be reached on Friday. In voicemails sent late Thursday evening, Abu Safiya described devastating conditions.

“Patients are still lying on the floors of reception and emergency departments, and many of them are in a critical condition. There are no resources, supplies or specialists who could save the lives of these children,” Abu Safiya said. “We are calling on the world to intervene.”

Gaza’s health ministry said two children on life support in an intensive care unit died after a generator at the hospital shut down and Israeli fire hit oxygen tanks. It said Israeli soldiers were conducting searches at the hospital, causing panic and chaos in the compound that housed about 600 patients, doctors and displaced persons.

The UN said hundreds of thousands of people were trapped with little food and supplies as Israeli forces advanced on the northern town of Jabaliya. UN human rights chief Volker Türk said on Friday that Israeli military actions in the north “threaten to empty the area of all Palestinians.”

Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 – in which Palestinian militants killed approximately 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and dragged another 250 back to Gaza – Gaza hospitals have come under attack. A year ago, Kamal Adwan was besieged and attacked by Israeli forces.

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

More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive in Gaza, but says more than half of the fatalities are women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were combatants.

The Israeli military announced on Friday that three more soldiers had been killed in Gaza this week, without providing details. This brings the number of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza since the beginning of the ground invasion to 359.

Three journalists were killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon

A rare Israeli airstrike in southeastern Lebanon hit a residence where journalists were staying Friday, leveling the building and killing three media workers who were sleeping there. Thick dust kicked up by bomb-covered cars marked “PRESS” parked in front of the ruins of a guesthouse.

Al-Manar TV, operated by Hezbollah, and Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV, believed to be affiliated with the militant group, said its employees were among the dead.

The Israeli army said it was aware of reports of the deaths of three journalists in an airstrike that targeted Hezbollah’s military structure. “The incident is being analyzed,” he added, without going into details.

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

On Friday, at least two people in northern Israel were killed by shrapnel from rocket fire from Lebanon, according to Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency services. Rockets hit Majd Al-Krum, an Arab town in the north of the country, hitting a gymnasium. Emergency services added that six other people were injured, including an 80-year-old man who remains in a serious condition.