The pre-dawn strike on Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City was the latest of several attacks on northern Gaza’s last major hospital providing critical health care.
Hospital director Dr Fadel Naim said the emergency room, pharmacy and surrounding buildings were severely damaged, affecting over 100 patients and dozens of staff.
One patient, a girl, died during the evacuation following an Israeli warning because staff were unable to provide urgent care, Gaza’s Health Ministry said. Israel said it struck a Hamas command and control centre at the hospital. Hamas denied the allegations.
Al-Ahli Hospital is run by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, which condemned the attack, saying in a statement it happened on “Palm Sunday, the start of the Holy Week, the most sacred week of the Christian year.”
Palm Sunday commemorates Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, and worshippers in Gaza City marked it in a church whose gilded trim and intact walls were a contrast to the widespread debris elsewhere.
Hours later Sunday, a strike on a car in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza killed at least seven people including six brothers, according to staff at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies. The youngest brother was 10.
Their father, Ibrahim Abu Mahadi, said his sons worked for a charity that distributes food to Palestinians. “For what sin were they killed?” he said.
AP reporters saw the mangled, bloodied car as relatives wept over the bodies. Israel’s military asserted that it killed the deputy head of a Hamas sniper cell.
An airstrike Sunday afternoon hit a house in the urban Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, killing at least seven people including two women, according to the Indonesian hospital.
Israel’s military said in a statement it had struck over 90 militant targets over the past 48 hours including command and control centres, tunnels and weapons. The military also said it had intercepted a projectile fired from Gaza. (AP)
