Israel bombed the surgery building at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis after midnight on Thursday, killing six health workers, patients and the relatives sitting with them, among them the surgeon Dr Rizk Abu Shaira. About 20 more were wounded. The strike hit the surgery department on the second floor of the hospital's Al Yasin building, Civil Defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said.
Abu Shaira operated at one of the last hospitals still working in southern Gaza, and appeared in the documentary American Doctor. Khalid Abu Anza, 53, was also killed. The blast brought down ceilings and cables in rooms across the hospital. Of Gaza's 37 hospitals, only two are still fully working, by the World Health Organization's count.
Israel bombed the hospital with American weapons. Footage from inside shows two bombs, one of which did not explode, with a label identifying it as a GBU-39/B, a 250-pound bomb made in the United States and supplied to Israel.
Hours later Israel struck a second hospital, hitting a car at the gate of Al-Shifa, Gaza's largest hospital, in Gaza City, and killing Hossam Saleha and wounding several people.
The Health Ministry called the strike "a crime that affects patients and health staff". Israel's army says it was aiming at Muhammad Abu Ismail, who it says commands Hamas's Khan Younis Brigade, and claims Hamas used the hospital as "a command center". It published photos of what it says are weapons but no evidence that anyone killed was a fighter, and says it is "looking into reports" that medical workers and patients died.
Israel has offered the same justification for attacking hospital after hospital since October 2023, and the UN human rights office found a pattern of deadly Israeli attacks on and around Gaza's hospitals that had destroyed most of them, and said attacking a hospital that is not a military objective is a war crime. Israel struck Nasser before, in August 2025, hitting it twice and killing at least 20 people, journalists and rescuers among them.
Israel has killed 1,622 Palestinians in Gaza during the so-called ceasefire that began in October 2025, and on Thursday it bombed the surgical wing of a working hospital with a surgeon inside.
