An Israeli airstrike took place Friday near the entrance to Gaza City’s Al Shifa Hospital, killing several people, according to Gazan and Israeli officials, just as Palestinians said a convoy of ambulances was preparing to leave the hospital and transported injured people to the Gaza border. to go to Egypt for treatment.
The Israeli army said it carried out the attack on an ambulance “used by a Hamas terrorist cell,” adding in a statement that “a number of Hamas terrorist operatives were killed during the attack.” An Israeli military spokesman, Major Nir Dinar, confirmed it was the same attack that caused the explosion outside the hospital.
The head of Al Shifa Hospital, Dr. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, said 13 people had been killed and many injured. He said paramedics and patients in the evacuation convoy were among the injured, but there were no fatalities. The death toll could not be independently verified.
According to local reports, the explosion occurred around 4:30 p.m.
Hours earlier, Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra had announced at a press conference that a convoy carrying “a large number of injured people” would head south on Al Rasheed, a coastal road, towards the Rafah Border Crossing at 4 p.m. A number of seriously injured people have been brought to Egypt in recent days for medical treatment that is not available in the Gaza Strip.
At a later news conference, Mr al-Qudra said the convoy had left the hospital and reached a nearby roundabout, Ansar, when it was hit by an airstrike. The convoy turned back and when it returned to the entrance to Al Shifa it was hit again, he said. He said 15 people had been killed and 60 injured.
Al Shifa Hospital has been the focus of numerous claims and crises since the start of the war. Israel says Hamas, which controls Gaza and orchestrated a deadly attack on Israel on October 7, operates a command center beneath the hospital. Hamas has denied this.
Displaced Gazans live in and around the facility, believing it to be safer than other alternatives.
The Gaza Health Ministry and international aid groups say Al Shifa is running low on fuel and has had to curtail its activities amid an ongoing cutoff of electricity and fuel from Israel. Doctors have said they are treating large numbers of people injured in airstrikes without adequate medicine and supplies.
Ismail Alghoull, who was filming at the hospital at the time of the explosion, said he heard an explosion near the ambulances and ran outside to see what had happened. He saw dozens of victims, he said.
Salama Maarouf, the spokesman for the Hamas-led government in Gaza, said one of his employees, Haytham Harara, was among the dead.
Ali Jadallah, a photographer for Turkey’s state agency Anadolu, said he was in hospital with his sister. They were visiting their mother, who had been seriously injured in an attack that destroyed their family home and killed four of their siblings and their father. They were near the hospital entrance when the explosion occurred, he said. His sister was hit by shrapnel.
Yousur Al-Hlou, Neil Collier, Patrick Kingsley and Nader Ibrahim contributed reporting.