Israeli strike on Gaza hospital deadliest since election

Israeli fire killed 10 people in Gaza Thursday, six of whom died in the bombing of Nasser hospital in south Gaza early in the day, health officials said, the deadliest single strike since Israel's elections last month.

The Israeli military confirmed the attack on the medical complex, saying they targeted "a senior Hamas terrorist and additional terrorists from Hamas's military wing" who it said were operating from the hospital, which it has long accused the Palestinian Islamist movement of using to shelter militants.

Hamas has denied this, and both parties frequently accuse each other of violating the terms of a US-backed ceasefire agreement that took effect in October 2025.

Nasser Hospital, located in Khan Yunis, confirmed the six deaths in a statement, while a doctor there said that nearly 30 were wounded.

Goher Rahbour, a British surgeon volunteering at the Hospital, told AFP that Palestinian doctor Rizeq Abu Sheikh, with whom he had conducted a surgery Wednesday evening, was among those killed in the strike Thursday.

"I was on my phone just doing a bit of reading and the strike occurred just after midnight. It was very loud, very quick. The building shook, there was a lot of smoke that came up," Rahbour told AFP.

Gaza's civil defence agency said the bodies from the strike had been recovered from the targeted building, which a medical source said was the surgery ward of Nasser Hospital, a sprawling medical complex in the southern city of Khan Yunis.

The rescue agency reported four more deaths Thursday. One person was killed by "Israeli gunfire" near the al-Bureij camp and another in an "Israeli drone strike" targeting a vehicle near Deir al-Balah, both in central Gaza.

Read More

Heavy rains leave tens of thousands without shelter in Gaza

Two more people were killed in an Israeli strike on a vehicle near Gaza City's al-Shifa hospital, bringing Thursday's total death toll to 10.

Israel's military said it struck a militant in Deir al-Balah and another in Gaza City, but denied that the second strike took place near al-Shifa Hospital.

Israel is currently led by a caretaker government under Benjamin Netanyahu following an inconclusive election, with opposition bloc head Gadi Eisenkot officially tasked with forming a new administration.

Netanyahu, who has held power on-and-off for nearly 20 years and has led Israel throughout the war in Gaza, has played up security threats to the country throughout the election period and called for a unity government.

'Without prior warning'

An AFP journalist at the scene of the hospital strike reported that one of the building's exterior staircases had partially collapsed and that indoors an entire floor was damaged, with broken concrete from collapsed walls mixed with broken medical equipment.

"The surgery building was bombed by F-16 aircraft without any prior warning, resulting in a large number of patients being wounded, and many patients and doctors being killed," paramedic Ezzedin Abu Sabha told AFP.

The Israeli military said it carried out an "aerial strike to eliminate the threat they posed, after the Hamas terrorist organisation had established a presence within the hospital complex and used it as a command centre".

It said in a separate statement that Mohammed Abu Ismail, a Hamas commander for the Khan Yunis brigade, was killed in the strike.

Hamas in a statement denied using the hospital for military purposes, saying Israel put forward "a false narrative" to justify airstrikes.

Hazem Qassem, spokesman for the Palestinian Islamist movement, called the strike a war crime, adding that Hamas held the US-backed Board of Peace in charge of overseeing Gaza's ceasefire plan responsible for failing to prevent the strike.

Israel has struck Nasser Hospital on numerous occasions since the start of the war sparked by Hamas' unprecedented attack on October 7, 2023, accusing the movement of harbouring militants in the large medical complex.

In August 2025, Israeli strikes on the hospital killed 20 people including five journalists in one day, according to the civil defence.

While the 2025 ceasefire has largely subdued the fighting, Israel has kept up a steady rate of strikes in the territory.

More than 1,600 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the ceasefire, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, which operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

During the same period, the Israeli military has reported the loss of seven soldiers, as well as one civilian contractor.