An Israeli airstrike on Sunday night hit the largest hospital in southern Gaza, killing five people, including a Hamas political leader.
The Gaza health ministry said the strike hit the surgery department at Nasser hospital in the city of Khan Younis. The Israeli military said its attack followed extensive intelligence and used precise munitions to minimise harm at the site.
Hamas said a member of its political office, Ismail Barhoum, had been killed. Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, confirmed the target was Barhoum.
Hamas’s al-Aqsa TV said Barhoum was being treated at the hospital for wounds sustained in a previous attack. Video on social media showed a fire blazing on the third storey of what appeared to be the hospital.
Palestinian health authorities said Israeli strikes had killed at least 65 people in the territory in the past 24 hours.
Sunday’s strike on Nasser hospital was the second on a health facility in Gaza in three days. On Friday, Israel blew up central Gaza’s Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital, Gaza’s only specialised cancer treatment hospital, which had already been severely damaged by Israeli airstrikes since October 2023.
Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a volunteer in a Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) team working at Nasser hospital, said medics in the emergency department were awaiting some casualties when a massive blast shook the building.
“Everybody ran out to see what happened until one of my colleagues screamed ‘They hit surgery,’ Haj-Hassan said in a voice message. “There was so much smoke and fire. I ran across to the building next door, where the paediatric ICU is, just to grab my portable ultrasounds and a few things, knowing that we’d be receiving casualties.
“As I walked out, I could see the second floor of the building on fire.”
Steve Cutts, the chief executive of MAP, said the attack “demonstrates once again that nowhere is safe in Gaza”.
Cutts said a 16-year-old boy recovering from earlier surgery was also killed and at least eight people, including medical staff, were injured.
“Coming just two days after Israeli forces completely destroyed the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital, it is clear that, having broken the ceasefire, Israel has resumed attacks on Palestinian healthcare facilities, thereby endangering the lives of health workers, patients and other civilians.
“Thankfully, on this occasion, our emergency medical team personnel who were in the hospital at the time of the attack were uninjured. Hospitals must be protected and healthcare must not be a target.”
He called for attacks on Palestinian health facilities to be investigated and “any perpetrators held to account”.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using hospitals as hiding places for weapons and command centres, a charge the Palestinian militant group denies.
Palestinians in Gaza have again been fleeing for their lives after Israel launched its new offensive in the territory, which started on Tuesday with a wave of airstrikes that killed more than 400 people, mostly civilians, ending two months of relative calm.
On Sunday, Palestinian officials said the total death toll from nearly 18 months of conflict had passed 50,000. The Israeli military said it did its best to reduce harm to civilians and questioned the death toll provided by health authorities in the Hamas-run territory. Most of the dead in Gaza have been civilians, according to health officials. Israel said they included about 20,000 fighters. Hamas does not disclose casualty figures.
Another Hamas leader, Salah al-Bardawil, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis on Sunday. Both Bardawil and Barhoum were members of the 19-member political office, the group’s decision-making body, 11 of whom have been killed since the start of the war in late 2023, according to Hamas sources.
Signalling it could escalate its actions further, on Sunday the Israeli military said one of its divisions that had operated in Lebanon, where Israel fought Hamas’s Iranian-backed ally, Hezbollah, was preparing for possible action in Gaza. It distributed a video of tanks unloaded in a field and a caption that read: “Preparations of the 36th division for operations in the Gaza Strip.”
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said the aim of the war was to destroy Hamas as a military and governing entity. The ambition of the new campaign was to force the group to give up the remaining hostages, he said on Tuesday.
Large protests have been taking place in Israel, with more than 100,000 demonstrating against efforts by Netanyahu to fire both the head of the internal security service, Ronen Bar, and the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara.
Bar, as the head of the Shin Bet, has been investigating Netanyahu’s close aides for alleged breaches of national security, including allegations of leaking classified documents to foreign media and taking money from Qatar, which is known to have given significant financial aid to Hamas.
Baharav-Miara, who has frequently clashed with the government, warned the prime minister he could not fire the domestic intelligence chief before her office had reviewed his motives for doing so.
In an unprecedented step on Sunday, after accusing her of blocking the government’s policies, Israel’s cabinet voted unanimously in favour of a no-confidence motion against Baharav-Miara.
After the vote, the justice minister, Yariv Levin, called on her to resign.
Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
