Israeli fire kills 10 in Gaza, health officials say

Gaza health officials said Israeli fire killed 10 people on Thursday, including six in a strike on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis that the Israeli military confirmed and said targeted Hamas members operating from the medical complex.

Nasser Hospital confirmed the six deaths and said nearly 30 people were wounded. Gaza civil defence said bodies were recovered from the targeted building, which a medical source said was the surgery ward of the southern Gaza hospital.

Goher Rahbour, a British surgeon volunteering at Nasser Hospital, said Palestinian doctor Rizeq Abu Sheikh, with whom he had performed surgery the previous evening, was among those killed.

An AFP journalist at the scene saw one exterior staircase partly collapsed and an entire floor damaged, with broken concrete and medical equipment inside. Paramedic Ezzedin Abu Sabha said the surgery building was bombed without prior warning and that patients and doctors were among the casualties.

The Israeli military said it carried out an aerial strike to eliminate a threat posed by “a senior Hamas terrorist and additional terrorists from Hamas's military wing”. It said Hamas had established a presence inside the hospital complex and used it as a command centre. In a separate statement, the military said Mohammed Abu Ismail, a Hamas commander for the Khan Younis brigade, was killed in the strike.

Hamas denied using the hospital for military purposes and said Israel was using “a false narrative” to justify air strikes. Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem called the strike a war crime and said the US-backed Board of Peace overseeing Gaza's ceasefire plan had failed to prevent it.

Gaza civil defence said four other people were killed in Israeli fire on Thursday: one by gunfire near al-Bureij camp, one in a drone strike on a vehicle near Deir al-Balah and two in a strike on a vehicle near Gaza City's al-Shifa hospital. Israel's military said it struck a militant in Deir al-Balah and another in Gaza City, but denied that the Gaza City strike took place near al-Shifa hospital.

Israel and Hamas have accused each other of violating the ceasefire that came into effect in October 2025, after two years of war triggered by the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Gaza's health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations, says more than 1,600 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire began. The Israeli military has reported seven soldiers and one civilian contractor killed in the same period.