Large slabs of concrete were all that remained from what was once the top floor of the hospital building. Rubble and shattered glass blanketed the surrounding area, even hundreds of feet away. Melted plastic and burned wiring filled the air with a foul smell.

Hours after an Iranian missile hit part of the Soroka Medical Center, a major hospital complex in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Thursday, firefighters brought the blaze under control while rescue teams scoured the site and medical teams transferred patients to other facilities.

“There was a massive boom and blast wave,” said Dr. Vadim Bankovich, head of the Orthopedics Department, whose office faces the floor of the old surgical building that took a direct hit.

Shlomi Codish, the director general of the hospital, said that much of the building had been evacuated in recent days. Mr. Codish said that all patients and medical staff had been in protected spaces when the missile struck, and that the hospital was treating several patients with minor injuries.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed it had targeted Israeli military facilities next to the hospital, according to the Fars news agency, an Iranian outlet affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards. It offered no evidence for the claim, and Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the claim.

When he received an alert on his cell phone warning him of incoming missile fire, Dr. Bankovich said he and his team rushed to a windowless safe space, where patients at his department were already gathering. After leaving the safe space 10 minutes later, he found cabinets toppled, ceiling panels scattered on the ground, and medical devices shattered.

“Windows blew out everywhere, even those reinforced with iron in the protected rooms,” said Dr. Bankovich, referring to the hospital’s safe rooms. He and his team had been sitting 100 feet away from the site of the missile strike. Now, the view from his office is one of destruction.

Dr. Bankovich said that his department would have to be shut down because of the damage.

“We felt the warmth of the blazes,” he said.

The strike on Soroka Medical Center came on the seventh day of the war, and was the first time a hospital has been directly hit since Iran began launching missiles and drones at Israel, in retaliation for Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and senior military commanders.

In recent days, Iran has scaled back its missile fire, and the Israeli military has eased some of its wartime directives for civilians, signaling that it believes the threat from Iran’s missile fire has diminished. But the strike on the hospital underscored that Iran can still inflict serious damage within Israel, despite the Israeli military’s strikes on missile launchers in Iran and its advanced air defense systems, which have intercepted most projectiles midair.

Since the war began on Friday, Iranian attacks have hit several population centers — including high-rise residential buildings and a research institute — killing at least 24 people and injuring more than 800, according to Israeli health authorities.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel vowed to avenge the strike on the hospital. “We will make the tyrants from Tehran pay the full price,” he said in a post on X.

Standing in a staff parking lot carpeted with rubble and shattered glass, as damaged cars were towed away, Avichay Amrami, 38, a hospital attendant, recalled how “people were running in different directions after the strike. There was chaos.”

Concerned that the hospital building was at risk of collapse, Mr. Amrami and his co-workers immediately began evacuating patients to safer areas.

“Luckily, the floor that was hit was empty,” Mr. Amrami said.

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, said on Thursday that the missile that damaged Soroka hospital in southern Israel “accurately eliminated an Israeli Military Command, Control & Intelligence HQ and another vital target,” in a post on X.

According to Araghchi, the blast caused “superficial damage to a small section” of Soroka, claiming that it is “mainly used to treat Israeli soldiers engaged in the Genocide in Gaza 25 miles away, where Israel has destroyed or damaged 94% of Palestinian hospitals.”

“It is the Israeli regime and not Iran that initiated all this bloodshed, and it is Israeli war criminals and not Iranians who are targeting hospitals and civilians,” the minister said, adding that “hundreds of innocent Iranians have been murdered” from Israeli strikes in Iran.

A strike on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant could trigger a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl, the head of Russia’s state atomic agency has warned. Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev sounded the alarm following reports that Israeli forces targeted the facility — Iran’s only operational nuclear power station — located on the Gulf coast.

An Israeli military official initially said the facility had been targeted – but another later said claimed it had been “a mistake” to make the claim. The official confirmed only that Israel had struck the Natanz, Isfahan and Arak nuclear sites — and declined to confirm or deny any attack on Bushehr itself. The Kremlin has not yet issued a formal response in light of the reported attack where Russian employees are working.

Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT

This came as, on Thursday, defence minister Israel Katz appeared to threaten Ayatollah Ali Khamemei himself following the attacks on the Soroka Medical Centre in Beersheba. Posting on X, he said: “The cowardly Iranian dictator sits deep in his fortified bunker and fires targeted shots at hospitals and residential buildings in Israel. These are war crimes of the most serious kind – and Khamenei will be held accountable for his crimes. The Prime Minister and I have instructed the IDF to increase the intensity of attacks against strategic targets in Iran and against government targets in Tehran.”

THIS IS A LIVE BLOG: SCROLL DOWN FOR REGULAR UPDATES

✕ Close Israeli hospital heavily damaged by Iran missile

On The Ground newsletter: Get a weekly dispatch from our international correspondents Get a weekly dispatch from our international correspondents Get a weekly international news dispatch Email * SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice

Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei “cannot continue to exist”, Israeli defence minister Israel Katz has said after the latest wave of Iranian missiles struck a hospital.

M Katz 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”.

US officials said this week that president Donald Trump had vetoed an Israeli plan to kill Mr Khamenei.

The main hospital in southern Israel, Soroka Medical Center in Beer Sheba, suffered “extensive damage” in a direct hit from an Iranian missile this morning, officials said. The attack wounded at least 240 people, according to Israel’s health ministry.

Israel on Thursday attacked a heavy water reactor, Arak, part of Iran’s nuclear programme, after warning locals to leave the area. Iranian media reported two projectiles hitting an area near the facility.

Around 640 people have been killed in Iran by Israeli strikes, a Washington-based rights group says, while Iranian retaliatory fire has killed two dozen civilians in Israel, authorities reported.

Donald Trump has touted the prospect of the US joining Israel’s attacks and claimed late on Wednesday that Iran was “just weeks away” from having a nuclear weapon.

Iran Israel News Live: 600 Indian Students Reach Iranian City Of Mashhad, May Leave For Delhi Tomorrow

Around 600 Indian students, including 500 from Kashmir, have safely reached Mashhad from Qom. This is the second group of students who were earlier relocated to Qom, where they stayed for three days. Their evacuation process is currently underway.

Mashhad, a border city in Iran, is located approximately 1,000 kilometre from Qom, a journey that takes around 15 hours by road. The students are from various institutions, including Islamic Azad University, Iran University of Medical University and Shahed Beheshti University. From Mashhad, they are expected to be taken to Turkmenistan, from where they will likely board flights to Delhi tomorrow.

“We are maintaining constant communication with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Indian Embassy in Iran to ensure the safety and smooth evacuation of the students,” the Jammu and Kashmir Students Association said.