"Hospitals are protected under international humanitarian law. Attacks on healthcare must stop", writes Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, on X.
The target of the attack was a "hidden command center" belonging to the terrorist-stamped Hamas inside the hospital, claims Israel without presenting any evidence. Hamas denies and calls it "lies to justify Israel's barbaric crimes", writes the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Two projectiles are said to have hit al-Ahli hospital, located in Gaza City, and left several buildings in ruins. In pictures, facades are gaping empty and concrete and bent metal are scattered among the debris.
"A massive explosion"
The attack on Sunday morning occurred shortly after Israel ordered immediate evacuations of the hospital. No one was injured in the attack itself. But a patient – a girl – died during the evacuation when her care was interrupted.
Exactly when we reached the hospital gates, they bombed. It was a massive explosion, says Naela Imad, who had sought shelter at the hospital, to AFP.
Eye witness Mohammed Kashko describes chaos and destruction.
I heard children and people fleeing screaming and crying on the street. It was fire and devastation, he says to AFP.
Tedros at WHO says that medical staff were forced to move 50 patients to other hospitals, while 40 critically injured patients could not be moved.
"We repeat: patients, medical personnel, and hospitals must be protected", writes Tedros on X.
Hundreds of hospital attacks
With the attack, Israel has destroyed large parts of one of the last remaining functioning hospitals in the Gaza Strip – according to Palestinian reports, the very last functioning one in northern Gaza.
According to WHO, the emergency department, a laboratory, X-ray machines, and a pharmacy were destroyed.
Israel has directed hundreds of attacks against a total of about 30 hospitals and healthcare facilities in Gaza, noted the UN in December. According to the UN and several human rights organizations, only a very small number of Gaza Strip's 36 hospitals are now – partially – functioning.
On Sunday, at least 21 people were killed in various Israeli attacks along the Gaza Strip, writes the news agency AP.
In Dayr al-Balah in central Gaza, at least seven people – six of them brothers – were killed when Israel attacked a car. During an air raid on Sunday afternoon, a house in a refugee camp in Jabaliya was hit. At least seven people were killed, according to AP.
