水果派AV

BEERSHEBA, Israel 鈥� Israel's defense minister threatened Iran's supreme leader on Thursday after Iranian missiles crashed into a major hospital in southern Israel and hit residential buildings near Tel Aviv, wounding at least 240 people. As rescuers wheeled patients out of the smoldering hospital, Israeli warplanes launched their latest attack on Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz blamed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for Thursday's barrage 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."

In Washington, the White House announced that U.S. President Donald Trump will decide within two weeks whether to join Israel's campaign against Iran's military and nuclear program, signaling that Trump still sees a window for diplomacy to address Israeli and U.S. concerns about Iran's nuclear program.

"Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks," Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, told reporters, reading out Trump's statement.

Trump has been weighing whether to attack Iran by striking its well-defended Fordo uranium enrichment facility, which is buried under a mountain and widely considered to be out of reach of all but America's "bunker-buster" bombs.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he trusted that Trump would "do what's best for America."

"I can tell you that they're already helping a lot," Netanyahu said from the rubble and shattered glass around the Soroka Medical Center in Israel's southern city of Beersheba.

The open conflict between Israel and Iran erupted last Friday with a surprise wave of Israeli airstrikes targeting nuclear and military sites, top generals and nuclear scientists. At least 639 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 1,300 wounded, according to a Washington-based Iranian human rights group.

Iran retaliated by firing hundreds of missiles and drones, killing at least 24 people in Israel and wounding hundreds.

At least 240 people were wounded by the latest Iranian attack on Israel, including 80 patients and medical workers wounded in the strike on the Soroka Medical Center. The vast majority were lightly wounded, as much of the hospital building was evacuated in recent days.

Iranian officials said they didn't seek to strike the hospital and claimed the attack hit a facility belonging to the Israeli military's elite technological unit, called C4i. The website for the Gav-Yam Negev advanced technologies park, about 2 miles from the hospital, said C4i had a branch campus in the area.

The Israeli army did not respond to a request for comment. An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that there was no specific intelligence that Iran planned to target the hospital.

Many hospitals in Israel, including Soroka, activated emergency plans in the past week. They converted parking garages to wards and transferred vulnerable patients underground.

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

Doctors at Soroka said the Iranian missile struck almost immediately after air raid sirens went off, causing a loud explosion that could be heard from a safe room. The strike inflicted the greatest damage on an old surgery building and affected key infrastructure, including gas, water and air-conditioning systems, the medical center said.

The hospital, which provides services to about 1 million residents of Israel's south, was caring for 700 patients at the time of the attack. After the strike, the hospital closed to all patients except for life-threatening cases.

Iran has fired 450 missiles and 1,000 drones at Israel since the conflict began, according to Israeli army estimates, though most have been shot down by Israel's multitiered air defenses.

Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. Israel is widely believed to be the only country with a nuclear weapons program in the Middle East, but has never acknowledged the existence of its arsenal.

In the last few days the Israeli air campaign targeted Iran's enrichment site at Natanz, centrifuge workshops around Tehran, a nuclear site in Isfahan and what the army assesses to be most of Iran's ballistic missile launchers. The destruction of those launchers has contributed to the steady decline in Iranian attacks since the start of the conflict.

On Thursday, anti-aircraft artillery was clearly audible across Tehran and witnesses in the central city of Isfahan reported seeing anti-aircraft fire after nightfall.

In announcing that he would take up to two more weeks to decide whether to strike Iran, Trump opened up diplomatic options with the apparent hope Iran would make concessions after suffering major military losses.

But at least publicly, Iran has struck a hard line.

Iran's supreme leader on Wednesday rejected U.S. calls for surrender and warned that any American military involvement by the Americans would cause "irreparable damage to them."

Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf on Thursday criticized Trump for using military pressure to gain an advantage in nuclear negotiations.

"The delusional American president knows that he cannot impose peace on us by imposing war and threatening us," he said.