Israeli strike kills six and injured 20 at southern Gaza hospital: civil defence

GAZA CITY: An Israeli strike killed six people and wounded around 20 at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, a civil defence official told AFP on Thursday.The Gaza Strip’s civil defence, a rescue agency operating under Hamas authority, said the bodies of those killed and “more than” 20 people wounded in the strike had been recovered from a building at the medical complex.

“The death toll from the Israeli strike inside Nasser Medical Complex, west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, has risen to six,” civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal told AFP.The Israeli army said it carried out an “aerial strike to eliminate the threat they posed, after the Hamas terrorist organization had established a presence within the hospital complex and used it as a command center”.

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 an attack of unprecedented scale carried out by the Palestinian Islamist movement against Israel on October 7, 2023.

On Tuesday, Israeli forces killed seven people, including a 13-year-old boy, in the Gaza Strip, according to local emergency services, while the Israeli military said it had targeted “military operatives”.