KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza. An Israeli airstrike on Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza killed at least six people, including a surgeon, and wounded about 20 others early on Thursday, according to Gaza’s Civil Defence agency and the hospital, in an attack that wrecked the surgery department of the largest hospital in the south.
Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal told Reuters the strike hit the hospital’s surgery department and caused extensive damage. The Anadolu news agency reported that the blast struck the second floor of the Al-Yasin building inside the Nasser Medical Complex in western Khan Younis, and the hospital’s director said it badly damaged the intensive care and surgical wards. Medics identified the dead surgeon as Rezik Abushira. The Associated Press, citing Gaza’s Health Ministry, also reported six deaths and said at least a dozen people were wounded.
The toll rose through the night, from four dead in early reports to six, a figure the hospital confirmed in its own statement. The strike forced the hospital to halt work in its surgical ward, the Times of Israel reported, citing Al Jazeera. The casualty figures come from the Civil Defence, a rescue agency under the Hamas-run administration in Gaza, and from the hospital itself; there has been no independent count.
The Israeli military said it had struck a senior Hamas militant and other members of the group’s armed wing who it said were operating inside the hospital. A security source told the Times of Israel that the main target was the current commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade. Israel alleged that Hamas used the complex for command and control, weapons storage and observation. The military provided no evidence with its initial statement, according to the Associated Press, said the results of the strike were still under review, and Reuters said it could not independently verify the Israeli allegations.
Nasser Hospital is one of the few major medical facilities still functioning in Gaza, and the International Committee of the Red Cross has described it as one of the south’s last big hospitals still operating, receiving patients sent from other medical units. It was hit before: a double Israeli strike on the hospital in August 2025 killed journalists and health workers among others, according to the BBC. Hospitals have special protection under the laws of war, which can be lost if a facility is used for military acts harmful to the enemy; whether that applied here is precisely what the competing claims dispute, and what has not been independently established.
The strike came 13 months into a ceasefire that took effect on October 10, 2025, and that each side accuses the other of breaching. It also landed as severe winter weather deepened the humanitarian crisis outside the hospital’s walls: torrential rain and wind flooded roughly 70,000 tents across central and southern Gaza, including Khan Younis, and relief agencies warned that up to one million displaced people now lack adequate shelter, with growing risks of hypothermia and waterborne disease, according to European news reports. Palestinian officials renewed calls for unrestricted access for winter supplies, fuel and emergency aid.
For the patients of southern Gaza, the immediate effect is simpler than the argument over the strike: the region’s main surgical ward is out of action, its staff are among the dead and wounded, and the people who would have been treated there in the coming days have few other places to go.
