KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — An Israeli airstrike overnight into Thursday hit the surgical building at Nasser Hospital, the largest hospital in southern Gaza, killing at least six people and wounding around 20, the health ministry and civil defense service in the Hamas-governed territory said.
Health officials listed doctors, patients and family members keeping watch at bedsides among those who died, one of them a surgeon on the hospital staff. The territory’s education ministry reported that a 13-year-old boy was also killed.
Hospital director Dr. Ahmed al-Fara told reporters that two missiles struck the al-Yasin surgery building, which also holds intensive care units, and that only one of them detonated. He said the hospital got no warning, and that this was the seventh time the complex had been hit during the war. Medical workers said the strike knocked the surgery department, which serves about half of Gaza’s roughly 2 million people, out of service.
The Israeli military said it carried out a precise strike aimed at Mohammed Abu Ismail, whom it identified as commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade, along with other fighters it said were using the hospital as a base to plan attacks on its troops. It said it had issued warnings in advance. Hamas denied the hospital was being used for military operations.
Hospitals hold protected status under international law, though that protection can be lost under certain conditions. Strikes in Gaza have continued nearly every day since a U.S.-brokered ceasefire took hold in October 2025. The health ministry puts the death toll since then at more than 1,600 Palestinians, while Israel reports that several of its soldiers have been killed there since the truce began.
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