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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Israeli military: Iran used missile with multiple warheads in attack

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19 days ago
20250619
Smokes rise from a building of the Soroka hospital complex after it was hit by a missile fired from Iran in Beersheba, Israel, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Smokes rise from a building of the Soroka hospital complex after it was hit by a missile fired from Iran in Beersheba, Israel, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Leo Correa

The Is­raeli mil­i­tary has as­sessed that Iran used a mis­sile with mul­ti­ple war­heads in its at­tack, ac­cord­ing to an Is­raeli mil­i­tary of­fi­cial. That pos­es a new chal­lenge to de­fences.

The of­fi­cials spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty in line with mil­i­tary reg­u­la­tions.

In­stead of hav­ing to track one war­head, mis­siles with mul­ti­ple war­heads can pose a more dif­fi­cult chal­lenge for air de­fence sys­tems, like Is­rael’s Iron Dome.

There was no im­me­di­ate in­de­pen­dent analy­sis that could be made.

Is­rael’s de­fence min­is­ter overt­ly threat­ened Iran’s supreme leader on Thurs­day af­ter the lat­est mis­sile bar­rage from Iran dam­aged the main hos­pi­tal in south­ern Is­rael and hit sev­er­al oth­er res­i­den­tial build­ings near Tel Aviv. Is­rael mean­while struck a heavy wa­ter re­ac­tor that is part of Iran’s nu­clear pro­gram.

At least 240 peo­ple were wound­ed by the Iran­ian mis­siles, four of them se­ri­ous­ly, ac­cord­ing to Is­rael’s Health Min­istry. The vast ma­jor­i­ty were light­ly wound­ed, in­clud­ing more than 70 peo­ple from the Soro­ka Med­ical Cen­tre in the south­ern city of Beer­she­ba, where smoke rose as emer­gency teams evac­u­at­ed pa­tients.

In the af­ter­math of the strikes, Is­raeli De­fence 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.”

U.S. of­fi­cials said this week that Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump had ve­toed an Is­raeli plan to kill Khamenei. Trump lat­er said there were no plans to kill him “at least not for now.”

Is­rael car­ried out strikes on Iran’s Arak heavy wa­ter re­ac­tor, in its lat­est at­tack on the coun­try’s sprawl­ing nu­clear pro­gram. The con­flict be­gan last Fri­day with a sur­prise wave of Is­raeli airstrikes tar­get­ing mil­i­tary sites, se­nior of­fi­cers and nu­clear sci­en­tists.

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 over 400 mis­siles and hun­dreds of drones, killing at least 24 peo­ple in Is­rael and wound­ing hun­dreds.

Mis­sile hits main hos­pi­tal in south­ern Is­rael

Two doc­tors told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that the mis­sile struck al­most im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter air raid sirens went off, caus­ing a loud ex­plo­sion that could be heard from a safe room. They spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they were not au­tho­rised to brief me­dia.

The hos­pi­tal said the main im­pact was on an old surgery build­ing that had been evac­u­at­ed in re­cent days. Af­ter the strike, the med­ical fa­cil­i­ty was closed to all pa­tients ex­cept for life-threat­en­ing cas­es, it said. Soro­ka has over 1,000 beds and pro­vides ser­vices to around 1 mil­lion res­i­dents of Is­rael’s south.

There were no se­ri­ous in­juries from the strike on the hos­pi­tal.

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu con­demned the at­tack and vowed a re­sponse, say­ing: “We will ex­act the full price from the tyrants in Tehran.”

Iran has fired hun­dreds of mis­siles and drones at Is­rael, though most have been shot down by Is­rael’s mul­ti-tiered air de­fences, which de­tect in­com­ing fire and shoot down mis­siles head­ing to­ward pop­u­la­tion cen­tres and crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture. Is­raeli of­fi­cials ac­knowl­edge it is im­per­fect.

Many hos­pi­tals in Is­rael ac­ti­vat­ed emer­gency plans in the past week, con­vert­ing un­der­ground park­ing to hos­pi­tal floors and mov­ing pa­tients un­der­ground, es­pe­cial­ly those who are on ven­ti­la­tors or are dif­fi­cult to move quick­ly.

Is­rael al­so boasts a for­ti­fied, sub­ter­ranean blood bank that kicked in­to ac­tion af­ter Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 at­tack ig­nit­ed the on­go­ing war in the Gaza Strip.

‘No ra­di­a­tion dan­ger’ af­ter strike on re­ac­tor

Is­rael’s mil­i­tary said its fight­er jets tar­get­ed the Arak fa­cil­i­ty and its re­ac­tor core seal in or­der to pre­vent it from be­ing used to pro­duce plu­to­ni­um.

“The strike tar­get­ed the com­po­nent in­tend­ed for plu­to­ni­um pro­duc­tion, in or­der to pre­vent the re­ac­tor from be­ing re­stored and used for nu­clear weapons de­vel­op­ment,” the mil­i­tary said. Is­rael sep­a­rate­ly claimed to have struck an­oth­er site around Natanz it de­scribed as be­ing re­lat­ed to Iran’s nu­clear pro­gram.

Iran­ian state TV said there was “no ra­di­a­tion dan­ger what­so­ev­er” from the at­tack on the Arak site. An Iran­ian state tele­vi­sion re­porter, speak­ing 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.

Iran re­jects calls to sur­ren­der or end its nu­clear pro­gramme

Iran has long main­tained its pro­gram is for peace­ful pur­pos­es. How­ev­er, it al­so en­rich­es ura­ni­um up to 60%, a short, tech­ni­cal step away from weapons-grade lev­els of 90%. Iran is the on­ly non-nu­clear-weapon state to en­rich at that lev­el.

Is­rael is the on­ly nu­clear-armed state in the Mid­dle East but does not ac­knowl­edge hav­ing such weapons.

The strikes 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 had lift­ed some re­stric­tions on dai­ly life Wednes­day, sug­gest­ing the mis­sile threat from Iran on its ter­ri­to­ry was eas­ing.

Al­ready, Is­rael’s cam­paign has tar­get­ed Iran’s en­rich­ment site at Natanz, cen­trifuge work­shops around Tehran and a nu­clear site in Is­fa­han. Its strikes have al­so killed top gen­er­als and nu­clear sci­en­tists.

Iran’s For­eign Min­is­ter Ab­bas Araghchi said he would trav­el to Gene­va for meet­ings with his Eu­ro­pean coun­ter­parts on Fri­day, in­di­cat­ing a new diplo­mat­ic ini­tia­tive might be tak­ing shape. Iran’s of­fi­cial IR­NA news agency said the meet­ing would in­clude for­eign min­is­ters from the Unit­ed King­dom, France and Ger­many and the Eu­ro­pean Union’s top diplo­mat.

Trump has said he wants some­thing “much big­ger” that a cease­fire and has not ruled out the U.S. join­ing in Is­rael’s cam­paign. Iran has warned of dire con­se­quences if the U.S. deep­ens its in­volve­ment, with­out elab­o­rat­ing.

Arak had been re­designed to ad­dress nu­clear con­cerns

The Arak heavy wa­ter re­ac­tor is 250 kilo­me­tres (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 over pro­lif­er­a­tion con­cerns.

The re­ac­tor be­came a point of con­tention af­ter Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump with­drew from the nu­clear deal in 2018. Ali Ak­bar Sale­hi, a high-rank­ing nu­clear of­fi­cial in Iran, said in 2019 that Tehran bought ex­tra parts to re­place a por­tion of the re­ac­tor that it had poured con­crete in­to to ren­der it un­us­able un­der the deal.

Is­rael, in con­duct­ing its strike, sig­nalled it re­mained con­cerned the fa­cil­i­ty could be used to pro­duce plu­to­ni­um again one day.

“The strike tar­get­ed the com­po­nent in­tend­ed for plu­to­ni­um pro­duc­tion, in or­der to pre­vent the re­ac­tor from be­ing re­stored and used for nu­clear weapons de­vel­op­ment,” the Is­raeli mil­i­tary said in a state­ment.

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 lost “con­ti­nu­ity of knowl­edge” about Iran’s heavy wa­ter pro­duc­tion -- mean­ing it could not ab­solute­ly ver­i­fy Tehran’s pro­duc­tion and stock­pile.

BEER­SHE­BA, Is­rael (AP) —

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