Israeli strike on Gaza hospital kills 11 in deadliest attack since election

Israeli fire killed 11 people in Gaza on Thursday, six of them 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, saying they targeted “the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis brigade Muhammad Abu Ismail and additional terrorists hiding inside of Nasser hospital”.

The hospital, located in the southern city of Khan Younis, confirmed the six deaths in a statement, while a doctor there said the targeted building was the surgery ward and that nearly 30 people had been wounded.

Goher Rahbour, a British surgeon volunteering at the hospital, told Agence France-Presse that a Palestinian doctor with whom he had conducted a surgery on Wednesday evening was among those killed in the strike.

“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 said.

The army said Abu Ismail was “responsible for directing terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops and for holding numerous hostages captive throughout the war”, though it did not confirm whether he had died in the strike.

His name did not appear in a list of the victims provided by Gaza’s civil defence rescue service.

The army accused Hamas in a statement of using the hospital as a command-and-control centre, to store weapons, and to conduct “interrogations and torture”.

The group, however, denied using the facility for military purposes, saying Israel put forward “a false narrative” to justify its air strikes.

The civil defence reported five other deaths on Thursday. One person was killed by “Israeli gunfire” near the al-Bureij camp, and another in an “Israeli drone strike” targeting a car near Deir al-Balah, both in central Gaza.

Two more people were killed in an Israeli strike on a vehicle near Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital, and one was killed in a drone strike in Jabalia in northern Gaza, bringing Thursday’s death toll to 11.

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 – played up security threats to the country throughout the election period and has since called for a unity government.

An Agence France-Presse journalist at the scene of the Nasser 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 said.

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem called the strike a war crime, adding that the movement held the US-backed Board of Peace – in charge of overseeing Gaza’s ceasefire plan that took effect in October 2025 – responsible for failing to prevent the attack.

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The Board of Peace lamented in a statement the “tragic loss of life” and called for US President Donald Trump’s peace plan to be implemented “immediately”.

“Otherwise, we will continue to see tragedies in which Hamas alleges deliberate Israeli attacks on hospitals, Israel maintains that Hamas exploits these facilities for terrorist operations, and innocent Gazans ultimately pay the price,” it said.

Israel has struck Nasser hospital on numerous occasions since the start of the war sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on October 7, 2023.

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

While the US-backed October 2025 ceasefire has largely subdued the fighting, Israel has kept up regular strikes in the territory. Both parties have accused each other of breaking the truce.

More than 1,600 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the ceasefire, according to the Gaza health ministry, 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.