Military says strike came without an evacuation warning
The Israeli military said its strike on the surgical wing of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis targeted Muhammad Abu Ismail, the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade, as well as other militants which it didn’t name. The military said Ismail operated from the hospital and that troops used precision munitions to mitigate harm to civilians. The strike came without an evacuation warning, according to the military.
Hamas told mediators after the strike that it hadn’t been planning attacks on Israel and that the group was committed to the ceasefire. It also said Israel is continuing to violate the agreement, according to Arab officials. The group said the continued violations would lead the militant group to escalate, the officials said.
The overnight strike killed at least six people and wounded dozens, according to local health authorities. The attack killed healthcare workers and patients, the authorities said. A Palestinian surgeon, Dr. Rizk Abu Shaira, was killed in the strike, Gaza health officials said.
The strike came as progress on President Trump’s Gaza peace plan, which came into effect in October 2025, remains stuck, despite pressure on Israel to move forward by the U.S. and the Board of Peace, a body created by Trump to oversee Gaza’s postwar transition, according to officials familiar with the matter. Winter storms have begun to hit the enclave as well, worsening conditions for the two million Palestinians who live there and lack supplies for colder weather.
Gaza health authorities have reported more than 1,600 Palestinian deaths since the Trump-brokered ceasefire went into effect a year ago, without saying how many were combatants. They put the overall casualty toll from the war at more than 74,000 Palestinians.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in August that Israel rejected the next phase of the Gaza peace plan, which includes the decommissioning of Hamas’s weapons in exchange for a phased Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the entry of a Palestinian technocratic committee to assume governance of Gaza. Board of Peace senior envoy Tony Blair met with Netanyahu earlier this month to push for progress now that the Israeli elections are over, according to people familiar with the matter.
Videos from the hospital verified by Storyful, which is owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, showed extensive damage inside the hospital building. Debris littered the floors. What appeared to be pipes and wires hung out of the ceiling.
Hospitals have been a flashpoint during the war between Israel and Hamas. Nasser Hospital and others were sites of extended battles that caused widespread damage to Gaza’s healthcare system. Many international organizations, as well as Israeli groups, condemned Israel for attacking hospitals, citing their protected status in international law. Israel said Hamas used hospitals, including Nasser Hospital, to hide senior militants, as well as plan and launch attacks. Hamas denies it uses hospitals that way.
Doctors Without Borders said it suspended all noncritical services at Nasser Hospital in January, alleging that the facility was being used by armed men, some masked, to intimidate and arrest patients.
Humanitarian conditions in Gaza, including a lack of healthcare and shelter for those living there, remain dire. They have worsened amid winter storms that have flooded the enclave, despite warnings from humanitarian officials.
The Board of Peace issued an unusual admonishing statement this week, calling on Israel to authorize the entry of essential winter materials such as temporary shelters and waste management into the enclave while describing Israel’s response so far as insufficient. The board called the situation following the storms an “immediate humanitarian emergency.”
“We call on the leadership of the current government of Israel to act immediately to facilitate the entry of all necessary winterization and humanitarian supplies and to fully implement its commitments under the President’s Comprehensive Peace Plan,” the Board of Peace said.
Netanyahu said that Israel had allowed the entry of many supplies into Gaza including tarpaulins, blankets and tents.
The Israeli military has expanded its control of Gaza from 53% under the terms of the deal drawn up as part of Trump’s peace plan to around 70% now, according to Netanyahu. That has pushed Gaza’s population to a shrinking piece of territory.
Around 75% of prewar buildings in the enclave have been damaged or destroyed since the start of the war in 2023, according to a damage analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Conflict Ecology at Oregon State University.
Demolitions continue on the Israeli-controlled side of Gaza as the Israeli military digs in with over 30 military bases, the Journal has reported. During a recent embed into Gaza with the Israeli military, the Journal didn’t see any buildings remaining on the Israeli side of the line in the outskirts of Shuja’iyya, a neighborhood of Gaza City.