Tel Aviv, Israel — An Iranian missile slammed into the main hospital in southern Israel early Thursday, wounding people and causing “extensive damage,” according to the medical facility. Israeli media aired footage of blown-out windows and heavy black smoke.
Another missile hit a high-rise building and several other residential buildings in at least two sites near Tel Aviv. Journalists with the French news agency AFP reported hearing “violent, sustained explosions” in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
JOHN WESSELS / AFP via Getty Images 
Haim Bublil, a local police commander, told reporters several people were lightly wounded in the strike on the hospital. He said there was a fire in a six-story building that was hard to access, and that rescuers were still searching various buildings and moving patients to safer areas of the hospital.
Many hospitals in Israel activated emergency plans in the past week, converting underground parking to hospital floors and move patients underground, especially those who are on ventilators or are difficult to move quickly.
Israel, meanwhile, carried out strikes on Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, in its latest attack on the country’s sprawling nuclear program, on the seventh day of a conflict that began with a surprise wave of Israeli airstrikes targeting military sites, senior officers and nuclear scientists.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the strike on the hospital and vowed a response, saying: “We will exact the full price from the tyrants in Tehran.”
Amir Cohen / REUTERS 
The developments came as President Trump was mulling whether the United States would directly take part in Israel’s efforts to destroy Tehran’s nuclear program.
The hospital asked people not to head there for treatment.
Israeli officials said the part of the hospital that was hit directly had been evacuated before the strike.
The director general of Magen David Adom — Israel’s emergency rescue service — said, “Last night, the Ministry of Health gave instructions to further clear the floor that was damaged in Soroka. Many lives were saved.”
Israeli Health Minister Uriel Bosso called the attack “an act of terrorism and a crossing of a red line. A war crime by the Iranian regime that was deliberately committed against innocent civilians and medical teams dedicated to saving lives. The Ministry of Health was prepared in advance, and thanks to the immediate actions we took, a very serious disaster was averted.”
The hospital has over 1,000 beds and provides services to the approximately 1 million residents of southern Israel, according to its website.
Iranian state television said there was “no radiation danger whatsoever” at the Arak reactor. A reporter for the state TV, appearing live in the nearby town of Khondab, said the facility had been evacuated and there was no damage to civilian areas around the reactor.
Israel had warned earlier Thursday morning it would attack the facility and urged the public to flee the area.
The Israeli military said Thursday’s round of airstrikes targeted Tehran and other areas of Iran, without elaborating. It later said Iran fired a new salvo of missiles at Israel and told the public to take shelter.
Israel’s seventh day of airstrikes on Iran came a day after Iran’s supreme leader rejected U.S. calls for surrender and warned that any military involvement by the Americans would cause “irreparable damage to them.” Israel also lifted some restrictions on daily life, suggesting the missile threat from Iran on its territory was easing.
Already, Israel’s campaign has targeted Iran’s uranium enrichment site at Natanz, centrifuge workshops around Tehran and a nuclear site in Isfahan.
A Washington-based Iranian human rights group said at least 639 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 1,300 wounded. In retaliation, Iran has fired some 400 missiles and hundreds of drones, killing at least 24 people in Israel and wounding hundreds. Some have hit apartment buildings in central Israel, causing heavy damage.
The Arak heavy water reactor is 155 miles southwest of Tehran.
Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. That would provide Iran another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, should it choose to pursue the weapon.
Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign the facility to relieve proliferation concerns.
In 2019, Iran started up the heavy water reactor’s secondary circuit, which at the time didn’t violate Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
Britain at the time was helping Iran redesign the Arak reactor to limit the amount of plutonium it produces, stepping in for the U.S., which had withdrawn from the project after President Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally pull America out of the nuclear deal.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, has been urging Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites. IAEA inspectors reportedly last visited Arak on May 14.
Due to restrictions Iran imposed on inspectors, the IAEA has said it has lost “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s heavy water production — meaning it couldn’t absolutely verify Tehran’s production and stockpile.
As part of negotiations around the 2015 deal, Iran agreed to sell off its heavy water to the West to remain in compliance with the accord’s terms. Even the U.S. purchased some 32 tons of heavy water for over $8 million in one deal. That was one issue that drew criticism from the pact’s opponents.
