The IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) struck a Hamas command and control center located within the Al Ahli Hospital in northern Gaza on Sunday, the military announced.
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 military 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, saying that 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 location. 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, the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital was hit by a failed rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group, which denied blame.