KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli airstrike hit the surgical wing of a major hospital in southern Gaza on Thursday, killing six people, including a doctor, and wounding at least 28 others, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas commander and other militants, without providing evidence.
Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis is one of the few functioning medical facilities left in Gaza, whose healthcare infrastructure
has been decimated by a yearslong war.
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. It has also destroyed medical equipment and supplies and killed or detained hundreds of healthcare workers.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Thursday’s strike killed general surgeon Rizk Abu Shaira. Inside the building, parts of several floors were either severely damaged or destroyed. Debris was scattered across hospital beds and equipment, and rebar dangled from the ceiling.
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. He said surgeries had been suspended, as had work in the radiology department and the laboratory, 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.
The Israeli military has raided or laid siege to hospitals across Gaza, accusing Hamas of using them as command centers and to hide fighters. It 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.
In a statement on Thursday, the military said Hamas had “established a presence within the hospital complex” and that the commander had turned it “into a headquarters.”
Israeli forces have previously attacked Nasser Hospital. In 2025, the military killed five journalists — including Mariam Dagga, who worked for The Associated Press — when it struck a gathering point for local reporters at the complex.
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.
___
Ezzidin reported from Cairo.
___
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
