Bombings at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younes left one person dead and several injured, health authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said on Thursday, February 15. Videos posted online show images of chaos, punctuated by screams and gunfire in the dust and smoke-filled corridors of the hospital building.
Israeli forces announced that they had entered the hospital in the southern Gaza Strip. “The aim of this precise and limited operation is to target Hamas terrorists, including those suspected of involvement in the October 7 massacre,” the army said in a message posted on Telegram.
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The army says it has “credible information” that Hamas was holding hostages at the hospital and that their bodies may still be inside. A Hamas spokesman condemned “lies” by Israel, which regularly accuses it of using hospitals and other civilian structures to protect its fighters.
A refuge for thousands of civilians
Health authorities in the Gaza Strip accuse Israel of forcing the evacuation of displaced people and families of health workers. Thousands of civilians had sought refuge in this hospital, the largest in southern Gaza, besieged by Israeli tanks, where doctors describe a desperate situation.
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Most of the displaced people have fled in recent days following an army evacuation order and have found themselves “without anywhere to go,” in an “apocalyptic landscape” where bombings are “part of daily life,” doctors said Thursday Without Borders a team continues to work in the hospital.
The Palestinian enclave has been the target of a large-scale Israeli air and land offensive since the Hamas attack that claimed 1,200 lives in southern Israel on October 7. The latest death toll from the conflict on the Palestinian side, announced by the Gaza Strip Health Ministry on Thursday, stands at 28,663 dead.