KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli airstrike hit one of the main hospitals still operating in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing six people, including a surgeon and a 13-year-old boy, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
The Israeli military said the strike on Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza was targeting a Hamas commander and other militants. The commander it identified was not among the dead.
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The strike hit the hospital's surgical wing, the ministry and witnesses said. Footage showed several wards and operating rooms heavily damaged or destroyed, with debris scattered across hospital beds and equipment and rebar dangling from holes in the ceiling. At least 28 people were wounded.
Among the dead were Dr. Rizk Abu Shaira, a general surgeon, and at least two patients, one of them the 13-year-old, according to the ministry.
Gaza's healthcare infrastructure has been decimated by a yearslong war whose trajectory is not expected to be altered by the outcome of Israel’s recent election. The Israeli military has raided or laid siege to hospitals across the territory, accusing Hamas of using them as command centers and to hide fighters. Israel has also destroyed medical equipment and supplies and killed or detained hundreds of healthcare workers.
In armed conflict, hospitals and their staff are protected under international humanitarian law. A hospital can lose its protected status, however, if it is used for military purposes.
British surgeon Goher Rahbour, who is volunteering at Nasser Hospital, said that the strike occurred just after midnight and shook the whole building.
“It was extremely smoky,” said Rahbour, who was on the fourth floor of the surgical department at the time. The recovery area on the same floor was reduced to rubble, he said.
He said he had been operating alongside Abu Shaira just hours before the strike. “Lovely guy, happy and smiling,” Rahbour said.
Ahmed al-Farra, a doctor and the general director of the hospital, said no warning came before the attack, but the Israeli army said it had warned “on several occasions, including recently, that the military activity at the hospital be halted."
Al-Farra said surgeries and other services had been suspended because of damage to the building where medical personnel were already struggling to provide care due to supply shortages and “miserable” conditions.
He said other nearby medical facilities were not equipped to do the type of “specialized surgeries” that Nasser Hospital had been providing, leaving patients in need of them to “face an unknown fate.”
He said an attack on a hospital should be met with a forceful response from the international community. “Imagine if this event happened in another country in the world. Would the world fall silent about it? No, by God, no.”
“No one’s safe here,” he added, switching from Arabic to English.
A report from the United Nations, World Bank and European Union said in April that more than 1,800 medical facilities in Gaza have been partially or completely destroyed since the conflict began.
Israeli forces have previously attacked Nasser Hospital. In 2025, the military killed 22 people when it struck a gathering point for local reporters at the complex. Among the dead were five journalists, including Mariam Dagga, who worked for The Associated Press.
Hamas security men have been seen in hospitals during the war, controlling access to certain areas. In a statement on Thursday, the Israeli military said Hamas had “established a presence within the hospital complex” and that the commander had turned it “into a headquarters.”
The World Health Organization said Gaza's health facilities should never be militarized or attacked. “Health needs remain immense in Gaza and will only grow as winter sets in,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
The Trump administration-backed Board of Peace said similar attacks are inevitable unless both Israel and Hamas honor commitments made under a stalled ceasefire plan the board has struggled to move forward.
The war in Gaza started on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage. Since then, Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 74,600 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, maintains detailed records, and its figures are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. It does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its toll but says women and children make up around half the dead.
Israel has continued to strike Gaza despite a U.S.-backed ceasefire and controls at least 60% of the enclave. Since the truce went into effect in October 2025, Israeli strikes and gunfire have killed 1,622 people, health authorities say. Five Israeli soldiers have also been killed during that period.
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Ezzidin reported from Cairo.
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Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
