An Israeli airstrike hit a building inside the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, early on Thursday, striking the hospital's surgery department and causing extensive damage, Gaza's Civil Defence said. Eyewitnesses told the BBC that a single missile, fired from a warplane that briefly flew over the area, struck the building housing the hospital's surgical wards and intensive care units. The missile hit the second floor of the complex's Al-Yasin building in western Khan Younis, and the hospital's director said the explosion caused extensive damage to the intensive care and surgical wards.
Gaza Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said the death toll from the strike had risen to six, with more than 20 people wounded, and Nasser Hospital confirmed the six deaths in a statement of its own. The first wire reports put the dead at at least five, including a surgeon, and the wounded at 20, before rescue teams finished working through the building. Every casualty figure in this story comes from the Civil Defence — a rescue service that operates under the Hamas-run administration in Gaza — and from the hospital itself. There has been no independent count, and the BBC, which Israel prevents from reporting inside the Gaza Strip, said it was unable to verify the details of the incident.
Medics identified one of the dead as a surgeon at the hospital — named in wire reporting as Rezik Abushira, and in Palestinian reporting as Dr Rizq Abu Shaaera, of the general surgery department. Al Jazeera reported that some of those killed and wounded were patients who had been staying at the hospital ahead of operations scheduled for the following day, and a list released by the hospital's medical staff and carried by Palestinian media named a 13-year-old boy among the dead.
Palestinian sources said a senior Hamas security official, Khaled Abu Anza, was also among those killed. That name does not appear in the Reuters, BBC or AFP reporting of the strike, Israel has named no target, and the claim stands unconfirmed by any source outside Gaza.
Israel's military has not confirmed that it carried out the strike and has not said what it was targeting. Asked for comment by AFP, a military spokesperson said only that officials were checking for information on the incident. Israeli Army Radio described the strike as an “assassination operation”, according to reports by Anadolu and Middle East Eye, without giving further details. Israel says it has stepped up its attacks on the enclave because Hamas is trying to regroup and refill its arsenal; Hamas says it is committed to the ceasefire agreement and accuses Israel of trying to undermine it.
The strike landed thirteen months into the ceasefire that took effect on October 10, 2025 — the U.S.-brokered deal that ended two years of war — and that Israel and Hamas now accuse each other of violating. Gaza's health officials say at least 1,600 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since the ceasefire began. For Washington, this is America's framework being tested: the October agreement was brokered by the United States, and its next phase turns on Hamas giving up its weapons, the demand the Trump administration repeats at every turn.
In a separate development reported this week, the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had ended its work at Nasser Hospital after its teams reported armed gunmen inside the hospital. The Israel Defense Forces say they hold intelligence that Nasser Hospital is used as a headquarters and military post for senior Hamas commanders and operatives in southern Gaza — a standing Israeli claim about the hospital, made in response to the MSF announcement, and not a statement about Thursday's strike. Asked about the MSF report, a White House official said: “We can't confirm Médecins Sans Frontières' claims, but any threatening presence of Hamas is one of the reasons why we continue to emphasize that Hamas must disarm.”
Nasser Hospital is the largest hospital in southern Gaza and, by Al Jazeera's account, the only hospital still operating in Khan Younis, serving an estimated 500,000 people across the south. Al Jazeera counted Thursday's strike as the seventh reported attack on the complex; in August 2025, a double Israeli strike on the same hospital killed at least 20 people, including journalists and health workers. After Thursday's strike, the hospital halted work in its surgical ward.
For ordinary people in southern Gaza, the damage is the story. The surgical and intensive care wards of Nasser are where the wounded from every new strike are taken, where operations are performed, and where displaced families shelter because they have nowhere safer to go. When the region's main hospital has to stop operating — with patients who were waiting for surgery among the casualties — half a million people are left with one less place to survive the next emergency, and a ceasefire that was supposed to protect them looks thinner by the week.
📰 ProfiloPolitics Member News — choose your news, share it, earn credit:
https://white-curlew-963569.hostingersite.com
Never miss a story — Join our Telegram channel
Breaking U.S. political news, live as it happens — plus the stories the big outlets sit on.
Join ProfiloPolitics on Telegram