An Israeli airstrike hit a building of the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City early on Sunday morning, destroying surgery facilities and an oxygen generation station for intensive care units, the civil defense agency in the -run said.
There were no reports of casualties, with the agency saying the attack came “minutes after the [Israeli] army’s warning to evacuate this building of patients, the injured and their companions.”
Hospitals are protected under international law but have been repeatedly hit by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip since in response to deadly militant raids in Israel on October 7, 2023.
The Israeli military accuses Hamas of using hospitals as command centers to plan and carry out attacks, something the Palestinian militant group denies.
What did Palestinian officials say about the incident?
In a statement, the Hamas-run government media office described the attack as a “heinous and filthy crime.”
It said Israel had “deliberately destroyed and rendered out of service 34 hospitals as part of a systematic plan to dismantle what remains of the health care sector in the Gaza Strip.”
Medics said the building was evacuated after the warning from the Israeli army.
Previous deadly blast
An explosion in the car park of the same hospital in October 2023 killed scores of people.
Palestinian officials blamed the deaths on an Israeli airstrike, while Israel said the blast resulted from a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group, which denied responsibility.
The Israeli military has told the AFP news agency it was looking into Sunday’s incident, which comes amid following the collapse of a ceasefire in mid-March.
On March 28, the said 22 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals were partially functional.
Edited by: Roshni Majumdar
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