Israeli strike on Gaza hospital kills six, injures 20

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli strike that targeted an area in the Lebanese coastal city of Tyre on April 8, 2026. Israel launched a series of strikes on Beirut on April 8, the most violent attack on the Lebanese capital since the start of war. (Photo by Kawnat HAJU / AFP)

An Israeli strike killed six people and wounded around 20 at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, a civil defence official told AFP on Thursday.

The Israeli military confirmed the strike, saying it targeted “a senior Hamas terrorist and additional terrorists from Hamas’s military wing” operating from the hospital.

The Gaza Strip’s civil defence, a rescue agency operating under Hamas authority, said the bodies of those killed and “more than” 20 people wounded in the strike had been recovered from a building at the medical complex.

“The death toll from the Israeli strike inside Nasser Medical Complex, west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, has risen to six,” civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal told AFP.

Nasser Hospital confirmed the six deaths in a statement.

The Israeli army 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”.

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Israel and Hamas have accused each other of violating the ceasefire that came into effect in October 2025, after two years of war triggered by an attack of unprecedented scale carried out by the Palestinian Islamist movement against Israel on October 7, 2023.

On Tuesday, Israeli forces killed seven people, including a 13-year-old boy, in the Gaza Strip, according to local emergency services, while the Israeli military said it had targeted “military operatives”.

More than 1,590 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.