Large slabs of concrete were all that remained from what was once the top floor of the hospital building. Rubble and shattered glass blanketed the surrounding area, even hundreds of feet away. Melted plastic and burned wiring filled the air with a foul smell.
Hours after an Iranian missile hit part of the Soroka Medical Center, a major hospital complex in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Thursday, firefighters brought the blaze under control while rescue teams scoured the site and medical teams transferred patients to other facilities.
“There was a massive boom and blast wave,” said Dr. Vadim Bankovich, head of the Orthopedics Department, whose office faces the floor of the old surgical building that took a direct hit.
Shlomi Codish, the director general of the hospital, said that much of the building had been evacuated in recent days. Mr. Codish said that all patients and medical staff had been in protected spaces when the missile struck, and that the hospital was treating several patients with minor injuries.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed it had targeted Israeli military facilities next to the hospital, according to the Fars news agency, an Iranian outlet affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards. It offered no evidence for the claim, and Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the claim.
When he received an alert on his cell phone warning him of incoming missile fire, Dr. Bankovich said he and his team rushed to a windowless safe space, where patients at his department were already gathering. After leaving the safe space 10 minutes later, he found cabinets toppled, ceiling panels scattered on the ground, and medical devices shattered.
“Windows blew out everywhere, even those reinforced with iron in the protected rooms,” said Dr. Bankovich, referring to the hospital’s safe rooms. He and his team had been sitting 100 feet away from the site of the missile strike. Now, the view from his office is one of destruction.
Dr. Bankovich said that his department would have to be shut down because of the damage.
“We felt the warmth of the blazes,” he said.
The strike on Soroka Medical Center came on the seventh day of the war, and was the first time a hospital has been directly hit since Iran began launching missiles and drones at Israel, in retaliation for Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and senior military commanders.
In recent days, Iran has scaled back its missile fire, and the Israeli military has eased some of its wartime directives for civilians, signaling that it believes the threat from Iran’s missile fire has diminished. But the strike on the hospital underscored that Iran can still inflict serious damage within Israel, despite the Israeli military’s strikes on missile launchers in Iran and its advanced air defense systems, which have intercepted most projectiles midair.
Since the war began on Friday, Iranian attacks have hit several population centers — including high-rise residential buildings and a research institute — killing at least 24 people and injuring more than 800, according to Israeli health authorities.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel vowed to avenge the strike on the hospital. “We will make the tyrants from Tehran pay the full price,” he said in a post on X.
Standing in a staff parking lot carpeted with rubble and shattered glass, as damaged cars were towed away, Avichay Amrami, 38, a hospital attendant, recalled how “people were running in different directions after the strike. There was chaos.”
Concerned that the hospital building was at risk of collapse, Mr. Amrami and his co-workers immediately began evacuating patients to safer areas.
“Luckily, the floor that was hit was empty,” Mr. Amrami said.
Natan Odenheimer is a Times reporter in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.
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