Shielding Soldiers with Patients? Soroka’s Role Under the Spotlight

Occupied Palestine (Quds News Network)- As Israel intensifies its attacks on Iran , Iranian officials and reports have denied claims that Iranian missiles targeted a hospital in southern Israel, adding the main target was military intelligence facilities.

Israeli reports and officials claimed on Thursday that an Iranian missile struck Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba city in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

Soroka Hospital has been used by the Israeli military to treat soldiers wounded during the ongoing genocide in Gaza, according to The Guardian.

However, Iranian sources said that the hospital itself was not the intended target.

The Iranian news agency IRNA said the “main target” of the Beersheba attack “was the large [Israeli army] Command and Intelligence (IDF C4I) headquarters and the military intelligence camp in the Gav-Yam Technology Park”. The facility is next to the Soroka Medical Center, it said, adding the health facility suffered only minor damage from the shockwave resulting from the missile strike.

According to Israeli media reports, a building next to the hospital described as “sensitive” sustained heavy damage.

While the hospital sustained damage from nearby blasts, it was not directly hit, Iranian reports emphasized. They have accused the Israeli occupation government of engaging in psychological warfare by falsely linking the missile strike to civilian infrastructure, in order to deflect attention from the damage inflicted on its military command network.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also confirmed Iran’s targeting of military targets nearby the hospital.

“Our powerful Armed Forces accurately eliminated an Israeli Military Command, Control & Intelligence HQ and another vital target,” Araghchi said on X.

Araghchi added that Soroka was used primarily to treat Israeli soldiers “engaged in the Genocide in Gaza 25 miles away, where Israel has destroyed or damaged 94% of Palestinian hospitals.”

Ori Goldberg, an Israeli political commentator, told Al Jazeera that Israel was focusing on the hospital attack and trying to send a “message that the Iranians target hospitals”.

“Of course, Israelis target hospitals as well. It’s important to mention that there really are very sensitive installations and headquarters very near to the hospital because Israel places its military headquarters in the midst of civilian neighbourhoods and towns,” he added, speaking from Tel Aviv.

Moreover, in recent days, Israeli strikes targeted two hospitals in Iran, one in Tehran and another in Kermanshah, an action they said has drawn little international condemnation.

Iran’s Thursday morning missile barrage was a “precise and direct” strike against military assets, not civilian targets, Iranian sources stated.

“This false narrative is part of a psychological campaign aimed at sanitizing Israel’s military image and concealing the extent of the blow to its intelligence infrastructure.”

Meanwhile in Gaza, Israel has repeatedly struck hospitals since the beginning of its assault on the enclave in October 2023.

Andrew Cayley, who is leading the International Criminal Court (ICC) Palestine investigation, questioned the reliability of claims about Hamas’s military activity in Gaza’s hospitals which have been made by the Israeli military to justify the attacks on healthcare facilities in the war-torn enclave.

The World Health Organization warned on Tuesday that Gaza’s health system is “at a breaking point,” citing Israeli military operations, mass displacement, and blocked humanitarian access pushing medical services across the strip toward collapse.