At least 12 medical personnel were killed in an Israeli strike on a healthcare center in the southern Lebanese town of Borj Qalaouiya, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said, as cross-border hostilities with Hezbollah intensify and the wider region reels from a widening war.
The ministry said Israeli strikes have killed 826 people in Lebanon since the fighting began, including 65 women and 106 children, and wounded 2,009 others. Thirty-one paramedics are among the dead, according to the statement. In a separate incident, four people were killed in an Israeli attack on the coastal city of Sidon on Friday morning, the state-run National News Agency reported.
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Turkey condemned the escalating bombardment. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan warned that “we are frankly concerned [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is moving toward a new genocide under the pretext of fighting Hezbollah,” and urged the international community to “take immediate action.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said the Lebanese government is ready for “direct talks” with Israel and offered to host negotiations in Paris, adding that “everything must be done to prevent Lebanon from descending into chaos.”
The flare-up on Israel’s northern front came as the United States expanded its own military campaign against Iran. U.S. Central Command said American forces carried out a large-scale precision strike on Iran’s Kharg Island, hitting “more than 90 Iranian military targets” overnight. In a social media post, President Donald Trump said the United States had “totally obliterated” military targets on Kharg — the export hub for most of Iran’s crude — while adding that oil infrastructure was not targeted.
Trump warned he would “immediately reconsider” that restraint if Iran or “anyone else” interferes with the free passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for roughly a fifth of global fossil fuel supplies. He said the U.S. Navy would “soon” begin escorting tankers and urged allies to deploy warships to keep the strait “open and safe.”
Iran signaled defiance. Iranian media quoted the armed forces as saying any attack on its oil and energy infrastructure would trigger retaliatory strikes on facilities owned by companies cooperating with the United States in the region. The semi-official Fars news agency reported more than 15 explosions on Kharg Island during the U.S. strikes, citing sources who said air defenses, a naval base and airport facilities were hit, but there was no damage to oil infrastructure. Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has said the strait should remain closed as a tool of pressure.
Market anxiety deepened as the war’s ripple effects spread across key energy lanes. Some oil loading operations at the UAE’s port of Fujairah, just outside the Strait of Hormuz, were suspended after a drone attack and fire, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Traders were watching closely for any sign of lasting damage to Kharg’s terminals, pipelines and storage tanks, which could further tighten global supply.
Regional attacks mounted in parallel. The U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad was hit by a missile, Iraqi security sources said, with smoke seen rising from the area. Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, alongside Lebanon’s Hezbollah, carried out additional attacks on Israel. Inside Iran, at least 12 people were killed and several others wounded in strikes across multiple provinces, Iranian media reported.
After two weeks of war, at least 2,000 people have been killed across the region — mostly in Iran but also in Lebanon and an increasing number in the Gulf — with several million displaced from their homes, according to the reports. U.S. forces have also suffered losses, including six crew members killed when a refueling aircraft crashed in western Iraq.
Trump has alternated between projecting a short conflict and declining to estimate its duration. “It’ll be as long as it’s necessary,” he told reporters, as oil prices swung sharply on shifting assessments of the war’s path and its implications for energy and financial markets.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
