Hundreds killed as Israel strikes Gaza hospital, Hamas health officials say

An Israeli air strike on Tuesday killed hundreds of Palestinians at a Gaza City hospital crammed with patients and displaced people, health authorities in the besieged enclave said.

The reported strike was the bloodiest single incident since Israel launched an unrelenting bombing campaign against Gaza in retaliation for a deadly cross-border Hamas assault on southern Israeli communities on October 7.

A civil defence chief in Hamas-ruled Gaza said on Al-Jazeera television that more than 300 people were killed at Al-Ahli al-Arabi Hospital. A Gaza health ministry official said at least 500 people were killed and injured.

Hamas said the blast at the hospital mostly killed displaced people. The victims included patients, women and children.

“There are scores of dismembered and crushed bodies, baths of blood,” Izzat El-Reshiq, a senior Hamas member, said.

The Israeli military said it did not have any details on the reported bombing.

Earlier on Tuesday, the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said an Israeli air strike had killed at least six people at one of its schools that has been functioning as a shelter for displaced people.

The reported hospital attack drew condemnation from the World Health Organization and international leaders.

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“WHO strongly condemns the attack on Al Ahli Arab Hospital”, the UN health agency’s Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

Qatar’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the “expansion of Israeli attacks over the Gaza Strip to include hospitals, schools, and other population centres is a dangerous escalation”.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday said the reported Israeli strike was “horrific and absolutely unacceptable”.

Hospitals had been attractive refuges for the displaced because they had been relatively spared from the Israeli bombing raids.

Health authorities in Gaza say at least 3,000 people have been killed in Israel’s 11-day bombardment since Hamas militants rampaged into Israeli towns and kibbutzes on October 7, killing more than 1,300 people, mainly civilians.

The violence raged as Washington announced that US President Joe Biden would visit Israel on Wednesday to show support for its war on Hamas.

Israel has flattened parts of densely urbanised Gaza with air strikes, driven around half of its 2.3 million population from their homes, and imposed a total blockade on the enclave, halting food, fuel and medical supplies.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse