The air at the bombed-out Tehran hospital room hung thick with dust and the metallic tang of recent destruction carried out by the United States and the Israeli regime.

Against a backdrop of shattered concrete, two newborns clung precariously to life. Their breaths were being measured by the rhythmic beep of monitors connected by vital wires.

Amid the dust-choked room following the dastardly US-Israeli aggression, Iranian Red Crescent personnel worked to sever the fragile connection to the damaged infrastructure, to take the infants out of the wreckage.

The Gandhi Hospital in central Tehran, along with a nearby residential building, sustained catastrophic damage from strikes carried out by the United States and Israel late Sunday night, a day after the aggression was launched without provocation.

Immediately following the attack, harrowing footage depicted medical personnel urgently transferring the tiny newborns from their compromised incubators to ambulances.

Hope for new life, IVF centre targeted

The tragedy deepened with confirmation from hospital authorities later about the massive damage incurred by a specialized IVF center there, which lay in ruins.

The IVF centre was a sanctuary where hundreds of hopeful couples had invested their futures, their deepest desires for parenthood.

The US-Israeli aggression destroyed their dreams for future generations that had been painstakingly planned.

“The ledger of violated human rights in this war will be written in blood and shame,” Hossein Kermanpour, Health Ministry spokesman, wrote in a post on his X account.

“For the first time in my life, I am witnessing something I never even saw during the Iran-Iraq War. Patients being carried in their caregivers’ arms, fleeing into smoke-filled streets after missiles exploded beside their hospital,” Kermanpour added.

The assault was not limited to Gandhi Hospital. Reports confirmed that Khatam al-Anbiya Hospital and Motahari Hospital were also directly targeted in Tehran.

Furthermore, several missiles struck near Abuzar Hospital in the southern city of Ahvaz, forcing the immediate evacuation of 21 patients, including those in intensive care, requiring 30 ambulances to reroute them to other centers.

Images from Ahvaz captured the evacuation under dire circumstances. Emergency personnel were moving the sick through the thick plumes of smoke while the terrifying sounds of aerial bombardment still echoed overhead.

The American and Israeli regimes also targeted three emergency medical bases in Sarab, Chabahar, and Hamedan following the Abuzar attack.

A member of the Iranian Parliament said five hospitals and medical centers have been damaged or destroyed during the US-Israeli terrorist attacks on the Islamic Republic.

“Unfortunately, this illegal act of aggression resulted not only in the destruction of the buildings of hospitals and medical centers but also the injury of a number of students and local residents,” Fatemeh Mohammad Beigi, a member of the Parliament’s Health and Treatment Commission, said in a statement on Monday.

She added that a number of these medical centers have been evacuated in fear of more attacks.

Assault on life itself

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian denounced the US-Israeli strikes on civilian infrastructure, stating that the attacks on medical facilities “affect life itself and assaults on educational centers jeopardize the future of a nation.”

He made this reference following a US-Israeli strike on an elementary school in the southern Hormozgan Province that killed 171 girls.

He added that “targeting patients and children blatantly violates humanitarian principles.”

The Iranian president called upon the international community to censure the atrocities.

The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, expressed extreme concern over the damage to Gandhi Hospital in Tehran.

Following the bombing, he posted on X, stating, “Reports of Tehran’s Gandhi Hospital being damaged during today’s bombardment of the Iranian capital are extremely worrying.”

Ghebreyesus reiterated that “all efforts must be taken to prevent health facilities from being caught up in the ongoing conflict,” emphasizing that “Health facilities are protected under international humanitarian law” with the hashtag “#healthisnotatarget.”

Strike on hospitals, a pattern

However, this event is part of a disturbing pattern. This is not the first time Israel has attacked medical facilities in the Islamic Republic. During the 12-day military aggression in June, nearly a dozen hospitals were targeted in clear violation of international conventions.

The Geneva Conventions, long considered the bedrock of humanitarian protection in wartime, have been repeatedly flouted by both the US and Israel.

In Gaza, an entire health system has been systematically crippled, and doctors have been killed while on duty since the genocidal war was launched in October 2023.

According to chilling WHO figures, 94 percent of hospitals in Gaza were destroyed by Israel during its two-year-long genocide.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) announced early Wednesday that its aerospace force targeted the critical Israeli military infrastructure with heavy Khorramshahr-4 ballistic missiles in the 19th wave of True Promise 4 Operation.

In a statement, the IRGC said the super-heavy missiles, each fitted with a one-ton class warhead, were launched in the pre-dawn hours.

The targets of the strike were central Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion Airport and Squadron 27 of the Israeli Air Force at the airport, according to the statement.

It said the strategic salvo was preceded by attack drones and that the strike package penetrated “seven layers” of regional and domestic air defenses to reach its objectives.

Khorramshahr-4 is one of Iran’s most advanced weapons, a roughly 13-metre missile with a boost weight of nearly 30 tonnes and a maneuverable re-entry warhead (MaRV) capable of carrying over 1,000 kilograms of explosive payload.

The IRGC statement also said that in the previous wave its forces had successfully struck some 20 US military targets across Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

The statement described the strikes as part of coordinated, multi-axis action by Iran’s armed forces that exceeded US and Israeli expectations and had altered the operational calculus of the ongoing war imposed on the Islamic Republic.

In the statement, the IRGC further said American troops were fleeing regional bases and seeking shelter in hotels in host countries, while decrying the US military for using civilian facilities in Persian Gulf states as cover for military activity.

The statement also warned that such movements are under constant intelligence surveillance and that Iranian forces remain prepared to target aggressor troops.

The IRGC says at least 560 American troops have been killed in retaliatory operations and many more injured since Saturday.

• China defence budget to rise 7%, lowest rate since 2021.
• China pledges development of ‘advanced combat capabilities’.
• Premier reiterates goal of “reunification” with Taiwan.
  

China will boost defence spending by 7% in 2026, it said on Thursday, the lowest rate in five years but still outpacing wider economic growth targets and the rest of Asia at a time of growing regional tension, including over Taiwan.

Security analysts and regional military attaches are watching China’s budget closely as it scrambles to modernise the military by 2035, while stepping up deployments across East Asia and purging the top brass to tackle graft.

China will improve combat readiness and accelerate the development of “advanced combat capabilities”, Premier Li Qiang said at the opening of parliament’s annual meeting, at which he unveiled a broader GDP growth forecast of 4.5% to 5%.

“All these steps will boost our strategic capacity to safeguard China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests,” Li said in his work report, adding that President Xi Jinping held ultimate command responsibility.

The figure of 7%, which follows three years of annual rises of 7.2% and is the lowest since 6.8% in 2021, is part of a spending campaign in which China’s military has developed new advanced missiles, ships, submarines and surveillance methods.

This year’s increase showed Beijing was keeping to a long-held principle of balancing economic growth with national defence goals, said James Char of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

“Essentially, the People’s Liberation Army budget has been growing at a fairly consistent rate as a percentage of GDP … roughly the rate of GDP growth plus inflation,” added Char, a China defence scholar.

It comes amid the highest-profile purge of upper military ranks in decades, with the two most senior generals ensnared in disciplinary investigations.

Zhang Youxia, a veteran military ally of Xi, was placed under investigation in January, while another, He Weidong, was expelled in October last year.

The purge leaves just two members of the usual seven on the supreme Central Military Commission, Xi himself as its chair, and a newly promoted vice chairman, Zhang Shengmin.

The corruption crackdown showed “Beijing will keep a tighter watch on military spending,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a security analyst based in Taiwan, although it was clear all levels of government were getting more frugal.

The government remains committed to the ruling Communist Party’s “absolute leadership over the armed forces”, Li added.

“Guided by the principle of ensuring political loyalty in the military, we will continue to improve military political conduct and make major strides towards the centenary goals of the People’s Liberation Army.”

Some regional analysts believe the founding anniversary, which falls next year will bring further increases in military drills and deployments around Taiwan, the democratically-governed island that Beijing views as its territory.

‘Reunification with Taiwan’

China would “resolutely fight against separatist forces aimed at ‘Taiwan independence’ and oppose external interference”, Li vowed, virtually reprising comments of last year.

That would “promote the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations and advance the cause of national reunification”, he added.

Taiwan says only the island’s people can decide their future. Its government said it did not see any major policy changes towards Taiwan in Li’s comments, but was concerned about China’s defence spending.

“Even under conditions of an unstable economy and weak private consumption, they are still willing to allocate a very large budget to military spending,” said Liang Wen-chieh, a spokesperson of the Mainland Affairs Council in Taipei.

“And of course, that poses a threat to Taiwan,” the spokesperson told reporters.

International environment

Li toned down a warning about the international environment from a year ago, calling it “complex and challenging” rather than “increasingly complex and severe” in comments that had cited “changes unseen in a century”.

In Tokyo, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said China was not sufficiently transparent about its continued high level of defence spending and stronger capabilities.

Despite China’s efforts to change the status quo in the East and South China Seas by “force or coercion”, Japan would keep up efforts to build constructive, stable ties with it, Kihara told a press briefing.

While the graft crackdown left gaps in the PLA’s command structure and dented short-term readiness, it was expected to keep improving capabilities and broaden modernisation, the International Institute of Strategic Studies said.

Growth in Chinese military spending was consistently outpacing the rest of Asia amid a global surge in defence budgets, the London-based IISS said in a report last month.

China’s share of Asia’s total military expenditure grew to almost 44% in 2025, up from an average of 37% between 2010 and 2020, it added.

China gives no breakdown of defence spending, though its budget of 1.91 trillion yuan ($277 billion) is just about a quarter of a $1-trillion defence bill US President Donald Trump signed into law in December.