Iran’s leader should ‘no longer exist’ - Israel defence minister

Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz has said Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, “can no longer be allowed to exist” after the Soroka hospital was hit during an Iranian missile attack, according to local media and the AFP news agency.

Speaking to journalists in Holon, near Tel Aviv, Israel Katz reportedly said: “Khamenei openly declares that he wants Israel destroyed, he personally gives the order to fire on hospitals.

“He considers the destruction of the state of Israel to be a goal...Such a man can no longer be allowed to exist.”

Earlier, Iranian state media said the main target of this morning’s missile strike was a military site next to Soroka Hospital, not the hospital itself.

Meanwhile, the director-general of Soroka Medical Centre said several wards at the hospital were “completely demolished” after it was hit by an Iranian missile this morning.

“There is extensive damage across the entire hospital, with damage to buildings, structures, windows, ceilings, across the medical centre,” Shlomi Kodesh said.

He said patients had been evacuated from the northern surgical building before the strikes. “This specific building, because it’s an older building, was evacuated by us in the past few days,” he says, adding that the department “was empty at the time it was hit”.

But other departments that still had patients in them were also affected, Kodesh said.

“We have 40 injured people from people who were in the hospital at the time. The vast majority of these staff and patients are likely wounded from broken glass, falling ceilings, and other effects.”

The hospital will transfer over 200 patients to other medical centres while teams assess the damage, he added.

Source: BBC

- Agencies