Israeli strike leaves Gaza City’s last fully functioning hospital out of service as offensive escalates

By Abeer Salman, Dana Karni, Ibrahim Dahman and Tim Lister

(CNN) — An Israeli air strike early on Sunday has incapacitated the last fully functioning hospital in Gaza City as the military expands and intensifies its campaign across the territory.

No casualties were reported from the strike but the Anglican church in Jerusalem – which runs the Al-Ahli Baptist hospital – said a boy with a head injury died in the rushed evacuation of patients. It said that the hospital had received only 20 minutes warning ahead of the strike and was forced to take patients into the streets.

Parts of the hospital – including the emergency room and reception area – were extensively damaged. There was also damage to the adjoining St Philip’s church, according to video received by CNN.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that they had struck “a command-and-control center used by Hamas” in attack, without offering proof. They said steps had been taken ahead of the strike to mitigate harm to civilians. Hamas denied the allegation the hospital was being used for military purposes.

The Israeli military is extending its ground operations deep into Gaza, creating a large buffer zone between the Strip and Israeli territory and pushing hundreds of thousands of civilians into an ever-smaller area on the Mediterranean coast. In the south, the military announced it seized the Morag corridor, cutting off Rafah from the rest of Gaza. On Sunday night the defense ministry said the IDF had “completed the occupation of the Morag axis” and that the northern border area in Gaza was also being expanded as part of Israel’s “security zone.”

“The main goal is to exert heavy pressure on Hamas in favor of returning to the outline of releasing the hostages – and the more Hamas persists in its refusal, the more IDF activity will intensify,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said.

In all, according to the United Nations, some 400,000 people have been told to move over the past three weeks, with hospitals often used as a place of shelter throughout the conflict.

One patient in the Al-Ahli Baptist hospital, Mohammed Abu Naser, told CNN he was still inside when it was struck.

“We expected that we would all die inside the hospital… I have no treatment or anything right now. We have no option but to travel abroad for treatment,” Abu Naser added.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health said that the hospital was temporarily closed and directed people to three other hospitals.

The Jerusalem diocese condemned the strike and said that in addition to the damage to the emergency department the two-storey Genetic Laboratory was demolished. The diocese said it was the fifth time the hospital had been struck since October 2023.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said the now “out of service” hospital’s pharmacy was also destroyed and that it was forced to move 50 patients to other hospitals – while 40 critical patients could not be moved. Hospital Director Fadel Naim said the child who died during evacuation had succumbed to “lack of oxygen and severe cold.”

As health facilities across Gaza come under pressure for lack of medicine and equipment, the WHO said that two missions – to Al-Ahli and the Indonesian hospital – had been denied by the Israeli authorities.

In a post on X, the organization said hospitals in Gaza are “in dire need, yet the shrinking humanitarian access is obstructing WHO’s ability to resupply them and preventing patients from safely receiving life-saving care.”

Samer Attar, an American doctor with the Palestinian American Bridge working in the Al-Ahli hospital, told CNN that the attack had created a “desperate situation.”

“The people here are exhausted, they’re hungry, they’re tired, they’re wounded, not just physically but also psychically,” he said.

Al-Ahli is one of the few functioning hospitals across Gaza, treating up to 1,000 patients a day. An Israeli siege left Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City – the largest in the territory – in ruins last year. It began accepting some patients months later.

The strike drew international condemnation including from the UK, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Deadly strikes in central Gaza

The Israeli military says its forces are operating in several areas of Gaza. The IDF said Sunday that it had attacked a weapons storage compound in northern Gaza early on Sunday and announced that over the previous 48 hours, the air force had struck more than “90 terror targets belonging to terrorist organizations throughout the Gaza Strip.”

Video also showed another airstrike on a building in the area of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.

The IDF said the building was another Hamas control center and at the time it was struck “numerous Hamas terrorists were operating from within the compound.” In a later statement, the military said it killed “Ubayd Allah Na’im al-Hadhud Musa, who served as the deputy head of a Hamas sniper cell in the area of Deir al-Balah.”

Dr. Khalil Al-Daqran, spokesman for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, told CNN that three bodies had been brought to the hospital after the strike. He said a strike on a vehicle in the same area on Sunday had killed seven people, six of them brothers.

Another strike later Sunday appeared to have hit the Deir al-Balah municipal building, killing a senior member of the Hamas-run justice ministry, according to local journalists.

The Israeli military meanwhile said it had intercepted another rocket fired from Gaza. In response, it issued another evacuation order for several areas of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, saying on X: “We will attack with extreme force every area from which rockets are launched.”

Israel says it is expanding its campaign in Gaza as part of efforts to force Hamas to free its remaining hostages.

One of them – American-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander – appealed directly to President Donald Trump in the second proof-of-life video of the captive released by Hamas Saturday.

Alexander – who is almost certainly speaking under duress in the three-minute propaganda video – says he believed Trump would succeed in bringing him out of Gaza.

It’s unclear when the video was shot, but Alexander references being in Gaza for 551 days, which would indicate the video was recorded quite recently. The video was released on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover. The Hostage and Missing Families Forum asked Jewish families to leave an empty place setting for the hostages to mark their time in captivity.

“Each moment grows more unbearable. You can see it in his face – his fear, his desperation,” Alexander’s parents Yael and Adi said on Sunday. “President Trump, our hope and trust rest with you now.”

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CNN’s Oren Liebermann, Kareem El Damanhoury and Khader Al-Za’anoun of Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, contributed to this report.