An Israeli strike killed a security guard and wounded 10 patients at a field hospital in southern Gaza on Tuesday, according to the director of the medical facility.
The deadly attack on the grounds of the Kuwait Specialty Field Hospital in Khan Younis came two days after an Israeli strike hit one of the enclave’s last functioning medical centers: the Ahli Arab Hospital compound in Gaza City. The strikes highlighted the precarious state of Gaza’s health care sector, which has been decimated by the war.
Israel’s military — which has said the strike on Ahli Arab hospital targeted a Hamas command center, without providing evidence — said it was looking into the reports about an attack on the Kuwait Specialty Field Hospital.
Dr. Suhaib al-Hamss, the field hospital’s director, said that the guard was killed protecting the entrance to the facility. Four of the wounded suffered serious injuries, he added, noting the attack hit the edge of the hospital grounds.
“It was a powerful strike,” Dr. al-Hamss, 37, said in a phone interview. “Everything fell over.”
Others at the hospital said the strike prompted patients to flee the hospital.
“It was a terrifying moment,” said Mohammed Abu Ghali, a field coordinator for HEAL Palestine, an American nongovernmental organization that funds the field hospital.
Israel’s military offensive has caused immense damage to hospitals and the health care system in the enclave. The World Health Organization reported last month that 33 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals had been damaged and that only 21 remained partly functional. On Saturday it warned that hospitals in Gaza face a looming medicine shortage because Israel has blocked aid deliveries for six weeks.
Israeli officials say that medical centers have been targeted because Hamas fighters embed themselves within and under the facilities, and that it is the only way to root out the armed group. Hamas and medical workers have denied this accusation.
Evidence examined by The New York Times suggests that Hamas has used Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City — which the Israeli military has raided — for cover and stored weapons inside it. The Israeli military has not presented similarly expansive evidence about most of the other health care centers it has attacked.
Dr. al-Hamss said that the Kuwait Specialty Field Hospital’s location was known to the Israeli authorities as it had been shared through intermediaries before the attack. He added that staff were vetted and that Hamas government offices were not hosted at the medical facility.
“We’re not doing anything other than medicine,” he said.
The Kuwait Specialty Field Hospital was treating a minimum of 3,500 patients every day, according to Dr. al-Hamss.
“The hospital,” he said, “is providing a solution to the people in light of the collapse of the heath sector in Gaza.”
Since the collapse last month of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, Israel’s military has embarked on a major bombing campaign and seized territory in Gaza. Israeli officials have said the offensive is a bid to compel Hamas to release more hostages held in the enclave.
More than 1,600 people have been killed in Gaza since the cease-fire fell apart — among the more than 51,000 killed since the start of the war, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its casualty counts.
Doctors at hospitals in Gaza have said that many of those wounded and killed in recent weeks have been children. On April 3, more than a dozen wounded children were seen in the emergency room of the Ahli Arab Hospital following Israeli strikes on a nearby school turned shelter. The Israeli military — which has also accused Hamas of embedding in schools — later said those strikes were targeting well-known militants in a Hamas command center, without naming them.
Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting to this article.
