The Israeli military carried out an airstrike on a hospital in Gaza City early Sunday, after telling staff and patients to evacuate ahead of the overnight attack, one of a series of strikes that Israel said was targeting Hamas operational centers.
According to the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security agency, the strike had targeted a Hamas command center embedded within the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.
No casualties were reported in the hospital strike, with Israel issuing a warning to evacuate the facility before the attack.
Another Hamas command center was also struck in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah around noon Sunday, as numerous Hamas operatives were at the facility, the IDF and Shin Bet said.
Palestinian media reported that the strike hit Deir al-Balah’s municipality building and that three people were killed in the strike.
The IDF and Shin Bet said Hamas used both compounds — at the hospital and in Deir al-Balah — to plan and carry out attacks against troops and Israeli civilians.
In both strikes, the military said it took steps to mitigate civilian harm, including using “precision munitions” and aerial surveillance. At the hospital, the IDF also provided an early warning to civilians in the area.
“The Hamas terrorist organization systematically violates international law, while brutally exploiting civilian buildings and the civilian population as human shields for terrorist operations,” the army said, calling on the terror group to cease using medical facilities as cover.
Medics at Al-Ahli said two Israeli missiles had hit a building at the medical center overnight, destroying the emergency and reception department and damaging other structures.
Hospital officials evacuated the patients from the building after one person said he had received a warning call from someone who identified himself with Israeli security forces shortly before the attack took place.
The Baptist Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, which oversees the hospital, said in a statement that the IDF had ordered all patients, employees and displaced people to evacuate the premises 20 minutes before the attack.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry claimed that the hospital was now out of operation because of the attack.
“Hundreds of patients and injured people had to be evacuated in the middle of the night, and many of them are now out in the streets without medical care, which puts their lives at risk,” Khalil Al-Deqran, the ministry’s spokesperson, told Reuters.
According to the Baptist Church, the two strikes destroyed the hospital’s two-story Genetic Laboratory, damaged the Pharmacy and Emergency Department buildings, and caused collateral damage to surrounding structures, including the St. Philip’s church building.
“We call upon all governments and people of goodwill to intervene to stop all kinds of attacks on medical and humanitarian institutions,” said the Church, adding that it was “appalled” by the attack.
The Church said Sunday’s IDF strike was the fifth attack on the medical center since the Gaza war was sparked on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.
Ten days later, an explosion, which Hamas blamed on an Israeli airstrike, killed dozens of people at the hospital. Evidence has shown that the blast was caused by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket. Hamas officials also initially falsely claimed that the explosion had killed some 500 people.
Other IDF strikes killed at least 18 people across the Strip on Sunday, according to Palestinian media.
At least 10 people in the southern Gaza Strip, including the head of Hamas’s Khan Younis police station, media affiliated with the terror group reported.
Meanwhile, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority’s WAFA news network reported another seven people killed in a strike on a vehicle in the central city of Deir Al-Balah, and one woman killed by a drone in Jabalia in the Strip’s north. There was no immediate Israeli comment on those reports.
The strikes came after Israel on Saturday announced that it had captured the Morag Corridor in southern Gaza, cutting off the southernmost city of Rafah from Khan Younis.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 50,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting in Gaza so far. The toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the Hamas onslaught.