By Artorn Pookasook

REHOVOT, Israel (Reuters) -Researchers at Israel's prestigious Weizmann Institute of Science have been scrambling to save their experiments after an Iranian missile destroyed a building containing dozens of cutting-edge laboratories.

The missile struck the institute's campus at Rehovot, on the southern periphery of Tel Aviv, in the early hours of Sunday, damaging multiple buildings and prompting researchers to clamber into the ruins to save samples even as fire raged.

No one was hurt as the campus was empty overnight, but one part of a building collapsed entirely, while in the remaining part the walls were blown out, exposing a tangle of twisted metal, blasted debris and blackened cement.

"We did our best to save as much of the samples as we could from the labs, from the buildings, while we were fighting the fire," physicist Roee Ozeri, Weizmann's vice president for development and communications, told Reuters.

Israel began attacking Iran last Friday, saying its longtime enemy was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran, which says its nuclear programme is only for peaceful purposes, retaliated with missile and drone attacks on Israel.

Israel's strikes have killed several prominent Iranian nuclear scientists, wiped out the top echelon of Iran's military command, damaged nuclear capabilities and killed hundreds of civilians.

Iran's attacks have killed 24 civilians in Israel and damaged hundreds of structures, including a hospital in the southern city of Beersheba.

Iran has not said if or why it targeted the Weizmann Institute.

While most of the institute's research is in areas with potential benefits for medicine and scientific knowledge, it also has connections with defence. It announced in October 2024 a collaboration with Israel's largest defence firm Elbit on "bio-inspired materials for defence applications".

A multidisciplinary institution which carries out research in fields including genetics, immunology and astrophysics, Weizmann was founded in 1934 and is considered world-class within the international scientific community.

It is Israel's most important science research institute, with 286 research groups, 191 staff scientists and hundreds of PhD students, master's students and postdoctoral fellows.

'EVERYTHING IS LOST'

The Iranian missile hit the work of researchers such as Eldad Tzahor, who focuses on regenerative medicine with particular relevance to adult heart diseases. He said many samples and tissues that had been part of long-running experiments had been destroyed.

"Everything is lost," he told Reuters TV. "I would estimate that it will take us about a year to get into a full year of research and with everything working again."

In financial terms, the damage is estimated at $300-$500 million, according to the institute, which operates costly, complex machines, often shared between several labs or research groups.

Jacob Hanna, who runs a molecular genetics team focused on embryonic stem cell biology, told the scientific journal Nature that his lab's ceiling had collapsed and the staircase had detached.

His students managed to save hundreds of frozen mouse and human cell lines by transferring them to back-up liquid-nitrogen tanks that Hanna had stored in the basement, Nature reported.

"I was always worried that if a war actually happens, I don't want to lose these," he said.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell; Writing and additional reporting by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Alison Williams)