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A satellite image of the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Facility, taken in 2020 [Maxar]<\/p>\n
An Iranian missile strike has hit the town of Dimona in southern Israel, near to a nuclear facility.<\/p>\n
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it was not aware of any damage to the nuclear research facility located about eight miles (13km) outside Dimona.<\/p>\n
Iranian state TV said the strike was in response to a reported attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility earlier on Saturday. The IAEA said “no increase in off-site radiation levels” had been reported after that incident.<\/p>\n
Rafael Grossi, the IAEA’s director general, said “maximum military restraint should be observed, in particular in the vicinity of nuclear facilities”.<\/p>\n
Israel’s ambulance service said it was treating 40 people following the strike in Dimona, including 37 with mild injuries and a 10-year-old boy in serious condition.<\/p>\n
It said 68 others were being treated following a separate strike in the nearby town of Arad, including 47 with mild injuries and 10 in serious condition.<\/p>\n
“This is a very severe scene,” emergency medical technician Yakir Talkar said in a statement describing Arad, adding there were “many wounded with varying degrees of injury”.<\/p>\n
Israeli authorities are now investigating how missiles made it through air defence systems.<\/p>\n
“In both Dimona and Arad, interceptors were launched that failed to hit the threats, resulting in two direct hits by ballistic missiles with warheads weighing hundreds of kilograms,” Israeli firefighters said.<\/p>\n
The Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center – located in the Negev desert – is often referred to colloquially as the “Dimona reactor”. It is long accepted as holding Israel’s undeclared arsenal of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n
Officially, the site is said to focus solely on research. But for around six decades, it has been an open secret that Israel developed a nuclear bomb there, even if each succeeding government has maintained a position of ambiguity over this.<\/p>\n
It has meant that Israel is the only nuclear power in the Middle East. So, any indication that it is being targeted is taken with the utmost seriousness by Israel.<\/p>\n
Both Israel and the US have set the elimination of any possible Iranian capacity to develop a nuclear bomb as the key aim of the war.<\/p>\n
Iran’s own Atomic Energy Organisation (AEOI) described the attack on Natanz as a violation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, though it said “no leakage of radioactive materials” was reported and there was “no danger to residents of the surrounding areas”.<\/p>\n
Natanz was also targeted in the first days of the war, which started on 28 February, by US-Israeli strikes, as well as during the 12-day war in June.<\/p>\n
Asked about Natanz on Saturday, the Israel Defence Forces told Israeli and international media that it was not aware of a strike in the area.<\/p>\n
More on the Iran war<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A satellite image of the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Facility, taken in 2020 [Maxar] An Iranian missile…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13058,34,37,14176,13934,14175,14174,269,2605,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-30230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tehran","8":"tag-iaea","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-israeli-authorities","12":"tag-natanz-nuclear-facility","13":"tag-nuclear-facilities","14":"tag-nuclear-facility","15":"tag-nuclear-weapons","16":"tag-southern-israel","17":"tag-tehran"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116269771877650400","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}