A hospital and several other buildings were hit after an Iranian ballistic missile hit the Israeli city of Ramat Gan just east of Tel Aviv shortly after 7 a.m. local time (00.00 ET) on Thursday.
The missile, which struck the location, shredded the facades of buildings and blew out windows in high-rise blocks. Debris from the explosion dangled from the windows of several buildings, while falling wreckage damaged cars on the streets below and covered the entire area in shrapnel and dust.
The missile that struck Ramat Gan was part of an assault that saw missiles hit a hospital in Beer Sheva, southern Israel, and in Holon to the south of Tel Aviv.
Iran Insists Hospital Not Planned Target
Iran’s IRNA state news agency has claimed the “principal target” of the missile strike which damaged the Israeli hospital was a nearby technology park it said was used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
The Gav-Yam Negev technology park, is less than a mile from Soroka Medical Center, the Be’er Sheva hospital which was damaged in the strike.
The technology park’s is described as “Israel’s most advanced center of research and development… adjacent to the Ben Gurion University campus and the IDF C4i Branch campus.” The C4i directorate is the IDF’s elite technological unit and the park connects “veterans of the IDF’s elite technological units, graduates of Ben Gurion University, the high-tech industry” as well as investors and academics.
