Israeli forces have targeted Gaza’s al-Ahli Hospital with missiles, destroying the emergency unit and putting the only functioning hospital in northern Gaza out of service, according to Al Jazeera correspondents.
Health officials at the hospital evacuated patients, while some of them, including critically ill patients, were forced to flee after the Israeli military issued a warning before the attack.
The air strike came “minutes after the army’s warning to evacuate this building of patients, the injured and their companions”, the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza said in a statement on Sunday.
“The bombing led to the destruction of the surgery building and the oxygen generation station for the intensive care units,” it added.
Hospitals, protected under international humanitarian law, have repeatedly been hit by Israeli air raids in Gaza since the start of the war on the enclave on October 7, 2023.
“Critically ill patients, including those in the surgical and emergency units, are now left without shelter or oxygen,” Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah in northern Gaza, said.
Razan al-Nahhas, an emergency doctor currently working in central Gaza who previously worked at al-Ahli Hospital, said at least three people, including a 12-year-old boy with a head injury, were reported dead following the forced evacuation.
The Israeli military said the hospital was targeted because it was being used as a “command and control” centre by the “terrorist organization Hamas”.
In its statement, Gaza’s Government Media Office condemned the attack as a “heinous and filthy crime”, saying Israel “deliberately destroyed and rendered out of service 34 hospitals as part of a systematic plan to dismantle what remains of the healthcare sector in the Gaza Strip”.
In October 2023, an attack on the hospital had killed hundreds of people.
Israel has repeatedly attacked hospitals in the Palestinian enclave with impunity throughout its devastating war.