The Israeli military launched strikes early Saturday against military targets in Iran, officials said.

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

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

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

It also did not elaborate on the objectives.

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

US officials said President Joe Biden had been briefed on the new strikes and was monitoring the situation closely.

Iran has launched two ballistic missile attacks against Israel in recent months.

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

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In northern Gaza, health officials reported that Israeli forces had raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few medical facilities still functioning in the area. Israel has renewed its offensive against Hamas in the north in recent weeks, and aid groups are raising the alarm over dire humanitarian conditions.

In Lebanon, Israeli strikes in the country’s southeast killed three journalists working for news outlets believed to be affiliated with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and its patron, Iran.

Israeli strikes kill dozens in Khan Younis

The Gaza Health Ministry reported that Israeli airstrikes and shelling struck the southern town of Khan Younis, killing 38 people and injuring dozens.

The Israeli military said its troops dismantled militant infrastructure and killed Hamas fighters in the southern city. It said the figures from Gaza’s health ministry “do not match the information” it has, but did not offer its own casualty estimate.

The Palestinians said the neighborhood was hit without warning.

Footage from the Palestinian Civil Defense showed rescuers pulling the bloodied bodies of nine children from the al-Farra family out of the ruins.

The victims were taken to the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis as well as to the European Hospital, where records showed that at least 15 members of the al-Farra family had been killed. Six members of the Abdeen family were also killed, health officials reported.

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

“I started screaming and screaming until my brother and dad came, and they started trying to pull me out,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about anybody.”

The medical organization Doctors Without Borders said one of its staff – identified as 41-year-old Hassan Sobh, a father of seven who had worked with the charity for five years – had been killed in the attack. It said Sobh was its eighth worker killed in the past year by the Israel-Hamas war.

Israeli forces intensify operations around the hospital in northern Gaza

In response to reports that it had stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, the Israeli military said only that it was “operating in the area” of the hospital based on intelligence indicating the presence of militants and militant infrastructure.

The children’s hospital is one of the area’s three medical facilities still operating after more than a year of war. Since the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of hospitals amid its renewed attack on Hamas militants in northern Gaza, doctors have warned that severe shortages of food and medical supplies have triggered a humanitarian emergency.

The Gaza-based health ministry reported that Israeli troops on Friday rounded up medical staff and displaced people sheltering at the hospital and forced the men to undress, a common practice Israel says is intended to ensure prisoners do not hide weapons. The ministry said some Palestinians were detained, without specifying how many.

The Palestinian Civil Defense said Israeli forces arrested two of its workers, 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 staff at Kamal Adwan, where some had been the night before to deliver supplies and help transfer patients to the Shifa hospital in Gaza City. The Israeli military body overseeing aid distribution in Gaza, COGAT, said it was facilitating the UN health agency’s efforts to deliver aid and fuel to Kamal Adwan and evacuate patients.

“This development is deeply concerning given the number of patients being served and people being sheltered 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 voice messages sent late Thursday, Abu Safiya described dire conditions.

“Patients are still lying on the floors of the reception and emergency areas, with many in a critical condition. There are no resources, supplies or specialists to save these children’s lives,” said Abu Safiya. “We appeal to the world to intervene.”

Gaza’s health ministry said two children receiving life support in the intensive care unit died after the hospital’s generator was shut down and Israeli fire hit the oxygen tanks. It said Israeli soldiers conducted searches of the hospital, sparking panic and chaos in the complex full of about 600 patients, doctors and displaced people.

The United Nations has said hundreds of thousands of people have been trapped with little food or supplies as Israeli forces close in on the northern town of Jabaliya. The UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, said Friday that Israeli military actions in the north “risk emptying the area of ​​all Palestinians.”

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

The Israeli military accuses Hamas fighters of using hospitals and tunnels beneath them as bases. Hamas and Palestinian doctors have denied that claim.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not say how many were combatants but says women and children make up more than half of the deaths.

Israel’s military announced on Friday that three more soldiers were killed in Gaza this week, without giving details. It brings the number of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza since the start of the country’s ground invasion to 359.

Israel’s attacks on Lebanon kill three journalists

A rare Israeli airstrike in southeastern Lebanon hit a residence where journalists were staying on Friday, leveling the building and killing three media workers who were sleeping there. Thick dust collected by the bombing cars marked “PRESS” parked outside the ruins of the guest house.

Al-Manar TV, which is run by Hezbollah, and Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV, an outlet considered aligned with the militant group, said its staff were among those killed.

The Israeli army said it was aware of reports that the three journalists were killed in the airstrike, which it said had targeted a Hezbollah military structure. “The incident is under review,” it added, without elaborating.

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

On Friday, at least two people were killed in northern Israel by shrapnel during a barrage of rockets from Lebanon, according to Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency services. The rockets struck in Majd Al-Krum, an Arab town in the north of the country, hitting a gym. Six others were injured, emergency services added, including an 80-year-old man who remained in serious condition.