KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — An Israeli airstrike struck Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza early Thursday, killing six people including a surgeon, Gaza’s Health Ministry said, as reported by The Associated Press.
Parts of several floors at the hospital were heavily damaged or totally demolished, the ministry reported. The rubble littered the beds and the equipment, and steel reinforcement rods dangled from the ceiling after the explosion of the missile. The strike tore into the hospital’s surgical wing.
According to Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal quoted by Reuters, there are 20 people wounded. At least a dozen people got hurt, according to the Health Ministry. Basal reported that the bomb targeted the surgical wing, causing severe damage.
The two news agencies spelled the name of the dead surgeon differently. As reported by The Associated Press, the name is Rizk Abu Shaira. Reuters cited medics working at the hospital giving Rezik Abushira.
Video footage taken inside the building and provided to Reuters showed debris and furniture scattered in the rooms, wires hanging from the ceilings, and hospital staff carrying injured patients on stretchers through the corridors cluttered with debris. Dead bodies were also being carried out from the hospital. Firefighters operated outside.
Israeli side and response by Hamas
Israel’s military said it struck a Hamas commander and other militants. According to the statement released by the Israeli military on Thursday, Hamas had “established a presence within the hospital complex” and the commander had turned it “into a headquarters.”
According to the fuller version of the statement, published by Reuters, the military accused Hamas of running the complex as a command centre – storing weapons there, having command-and-control rooms, and using wards as observation posts and shelters for fighters. As mentioned by The Associated Press, the military did not provide any evidence. As stated by Reuters, it was unable to verify the claims independently.
A Hamas spokesperson condemned the strike as a “fully-fledged war crime.”
Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis is one of the few operating medical facilities in Gaza, where years of war have seriously damaged the health care infrastructure. Hospitals and their staff are protected under international humanitarian law; however, a hospital can lose that protection if it is used for military purposes.
Continued strikes despite the ceasefire
This is not the first time Nasser Hospital has been hit. In 2025, an Israeli strike on a gathering point for local reporters at the complex killed five journalists, one of whom was AP contributor Mariam Dagga.
Although there is a U.S.-backed ceasefire, which became effective in October 2025, Israel continues to attack Gaza and controls at least 60% of the enclave. According to health authorities, Israeli strikes and gunfire have killed 1,622 people since the beginning of the truce. Israel claims that Hamas is trying to regroup and rebuild its arsenal. Hamas claims that it observes the year-old ceasefire and accuses Israel of trying to break it.
The war broke out on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the Palestinian death toll since then is more than 74,600. The ministry sits inside the Hamas-run government, but its statistics are generally treated as credible by the international community.