The center was reportedly used to plan and coordinate attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers.
Medics claimed that two Israeli missiles hit a building inside a main Gaza hospital, destroying the emergency and reception department and damaging other structures.
Health officials at the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital evacuated the patients from the building after one person said he received a call from someone who identified himself with the Israeli security shortly before the attack took place.
Measures were taken to minimize civilian harm, including advance warnings, precise munitions, and aerial surveillance, the IDF claimed.
The IDF emphasized that Hamas continues to violate international law by operating within civilian infrastructure and using the population as human shields. Military officials reiterated their demand for an end to terrorist activity in Gaza’s medical facilities and stated their operations against Hamas would continue to protect Israel.
Hamas condemns attacks
Images circulating on social media, which Reuters could not immediately authenticate, showed dozens of displaced families leaving the place. Some of them dragging sick relatives on hospital beds.
In its statement, the Hamas-run government media office condemned the attack as a “heinous and filthy crime,” saying that 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 Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital killed hundreds of people. Palestinian officials blamed an Israeli air strike for the blast. Israel said the blast was caused by a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group, which denied blame.
