Israel-Iran latest: Israeli hospital suffers ‘extensive damage’ in Iran attack

US president Donald Trump has reportedly approved plans to attack Iran, but has not made a final decision to strike the country.

Mr Trump yesterday told reporters, “I may do it, I may not do it”, when asked a question about US involvement in Iran.

The US president gave private instructions to military chiefs in the situation room inside the White House yesterday, CBS reported, citing sources.

Mr Trump told reporters: “I have ideas on what to do but I haven’t made a final – I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due, because things change, especially with war.”

“Things change with war. It can go from one extreme to the other.”

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this morning Iran’s “terrorist tyrants” launched missiles at Soroka hospital in Beer Sheba and at civilian population in central Israel.

An Iranian missile hit the main hospital in southern Israel, wounding people and causing “extensive damage,” the medical facility said. Israeli media aired footage of blown-out windows and heavy black smoke.

Separate Iranian strikes hit a high-rise apartment building in Tel Aviv and other sites in central Israel.

At least 40 people were wounded, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service.

North Korea this morning condemned Israel’s attack on Iran while warning the US and European nations against “fanning up the flames of war”.

Kim Jong Un expressed “serious concern” over “Israel’s military attack and resolutely denounces it”, a North Korean foreign ministry spokesperson said.

North Korea said Israel’s killing of civilians amounted to “an unpardonable crime against humanity”.

“The illegal act of state-sponsored terrorism by Israel is raising the danger of a new all-out war in the Middle East region,” the foreign ministry added.

Israel has attacked Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, Iranian state television said this morning.

The report said there was “no radiation danger whatsoever” and that the facility had already been evacuated before the attack.

Israel on X warned it would attack the facility and urged the public to flee the area. It included a satellite image of the plant in a red circle, like other warnings that preceded strikes.

The Arak heavy water reactor is 250km 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 did not violate Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

The UK at the time was helping Iran redesign the Arak reactor to limit the amount of plutonium it produces, stepping in for the US, which had withdrawn from the project after President Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw America from the nuclear deal.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, has been urging Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites.

An Iranian missile barrage targeted Israel this morning, including a “direct hit” on a hospital.

Soroka Medical Center, Israel’s main hospital in the south, was directly targeted by the Iranian military.

A spokesperson for the hospital in Beer Sheba said the hospital suffered “extensive damage” in different areas and people were wounded in the attack.

The hospital has requested people not come for treatment.

The hospital has over 1,000 beds and provides services to the approximately 1 million residents of Israel’s south, according to the hospital’s website.

Donald Trump has claimed that Iran was “just weeks away” from having a nuclear weapon in contradiction to a US intelligence report, which found that Tehran was not rushing to build a bomb.

“I have been saying for 20 years, maybe longer, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I have been saying this for a long time and I think they were a few weeks away from having one,” the US president said.

“Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. Too much devastation. And they’d use it. You know, I believe they’d use it. Others won’t use it, but I believe they’d use it,” he claimed.

However, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said in March that Iran had not made a decision to build nuclear weapons despite having stockpiles of enriched uranium.

Israel has attacked Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, Iranian state television said this morning.

The report said there was “no radiation danger whatsoever” and that the facility had already been evacuated before the attack.

Israel warned earlier it would attack the facility and urged the public to flee the area.