Israel strikes Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital, displacing hundreds, incapacitating medical facility

Israeli forces struck the Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in central Gaza City late on Saturday night, forcing dozens of patients to evacuate into the surrounding streets in the dark.

A sick child died during the evacuation, as medics were unable to continue supplying him with oxygen, the hospital’s director, Dr. Fadel Naeem, told Mada Masr.

Eyewitness Nader Harb said he carried his brother, who is suffering with a serious head injury, out of the hospital on his back to spend the night on the street, “with nowhere to go.”

Israel’s airstrike was part of a broader campaign of bombardment and ground maneuvers it resumed in March that has rendered northeastern Gaza uninhabitable, pushing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes and into an increasingly small area on the coast.

The hospital was left completely out of service following the strike, Gaza Health Ministry General Director Mounir al-Borsh told Mada Masr.

The emergency room, reception, pharmacy, intensive care units and oxygen station were all damaged, Naeem told Mada Masr, while Borsh added that surgical facilities also went out of service in the wake of the attack.

Given that the hospital is small, said Borsh, striking a single building effectively incapacitated the entire facility.

The hospital was treating between 300-500 wounded and sick patients daily, said Naeem, while 100 critically ill and wounded patients were permanently housed there.

The Israeli military issued an evacuation notice for the hospital before the strike, which it said it conducted to target a Hamas operative.

Borsh told Mada Masr the notice gave the dozens of people present only 18 minutes to evacuate, describing it as utterly insufficient and noting that no medical equipment could be salvaged or evacuated.

Borsh said the Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital had been the only remaining central hospital in Gaza City following the destruction of the Shifa Medical Complex and other hospitals in northern Gaza, adding that Israel had grown emboldened in its repeated targeting of hospitals “because the world has let us down.”

The Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital was the first medical facility targeted by Israel in its genocidal war on the strip in 2023.

Since then, the Occupation has raided and destroyed the Shifa Medical Complex, the strip’s largest medical facility, along with the Indonesian Hospital, the Nasser Medical Complex and others.

A report commissioned by the United Nations concluded that Israel has pursued a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of its assault on Palestinians in the coastal enclave.