IDF says it hit a Hamas command center embedded in Gaza City hospital

The Israeli military carried out an airstrike on a hospital in Gaza City early Sunday, after telling staff and patients to evacuate ahead of the overnight attack, one of a series of strikes that Israel said was targeting Hamas operational centers.

According to the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security agency, the strike targeted a Hamas command center embedded within the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.

No casualties were reported in the hospital strike, with Israel issuing a warning to evacuate the facility before the attack.

Another Hamas command center was also struck in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah around noon Sunday, as numerous Hamas operatives were at the facility, the IDF and Shin Bet said.

Palestinian media reported that the strike hit Deir al-Balah’s municipality building and that three people were killed in the strike.

The IDF and Shin Bet said Hamas used both compounds — at the hospital and in Deir al-Balah — to plan and carry out attacks against troops and Israeli civilians.

لحظة قصف طائرات الاحتلال المستشفى المعمداني وسط مدينة #غزة #غزة_تباد pic.twitter.com/LIVdS7WaWY

— Newpress | نيو برس (@NewpressPs) April 13, 2025

In both strikes, the military said it took steps to mitigate civilian harm, including using “precision munitions” and aerial surveillance. At the hospital, the IDF also provided an early warning to civilians in the area.

“The Hamas terrorist organization systematically violates international law, while brutally exploiting civilian buildings and the civilian population as human shields for terrorist operations,” the army said, calling on the terror group to cease using medical facilities as cover.

Medics at Al-Ahli said two Israeli missiles had hit a building at the medical center overnight, destroying the emergency and reception department and damaging other structures.

Hospital officials evacuated the patients from the building after one person said he had received a warning call from someone who identified himself with Israeli security forces shortly before the attack took place.

The Baptist Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, which oversees the hospital, said in a statement that the IDF had ordered all patients, employees and displaced people to evacuate the premises only 20 minutes before the attack.

One child who previously suffered a head injury died as a result of the rushed evacuation process, the church said.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry claimed that the hospital was now out of operation because of the attack.

“Hundreds of patients and injured people had to be evacuated in the middle of the night, and many of them are now out in the streets without medical care, which puts their lives at risk,” Khalil Al-Deqran, the ministry’s spokesperson, told Reuters.

According to the Baptist Church, the two strikes destroyed the hospital’s two-story Genetic Laboratory, damaged the Pharmacy and Emergency Department buildings, and caused collateral damage to surrounding structures, including the St. Philip’s church building.

“We call upon all governments and people of goodwill to intervene to stop all kinds of attacks on medical and humanitarian institutions,” said the Church, adding that it was “appalled” by the attack.

The church said Sunday’s IDF strike was the fifth attack on the medical center since the Gaza war was sparked on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.

Ten days later, an explosion, which Hamas blamed on an Israeli airstrike, killed dozens of people at the hospital. Evidence has shown that the blast was caused by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket. Hamas officials also initially falsely claimed that the explosion had killed some 500 people.

The Jerusalem church in its Palm Sunday statement condemned the Israeli air strike and called on the international community to prevent such attacks on medical facilities.

“Israel’s attacks on medical facilities have comprehensively degraded access to healthcare in Gaza,” UK Foreign Minister David Lammy wrote Sunday in a short post on social media. “Al-Ahli Hospital has been attacked repeatedly since the conflict began. These deplorable attacks must end. Diplomacy, not more bloodshed, is how we will achieve a lasting peace.”

Other IDF strikes killed at least 18 people across the Strip on Sunday, according to Palestinian media.

At least 10 people in the southern Gaza Strip, including the head of Hamas’s Khan Younis police station, media affiliated with the terror group reported.

Meanwhile, Palestinian media reported another seven people killed in a strike on a vehicle in Deir al-Balah, and one woman killed by a drone in Jabalia in the Strip’s north.

According to the IDF, the strike on the car in Deir al-Balah targeted Ubayd Allah Na’im al-Hadhud Musa, who the military identified as the deputy commander of a Hamas sniper cell.

The IDF said it took steps to mitigate civilian harm in the strike, including by using “precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence.”

In a statement Sunday afternoon, the IDF said it carried out over 90 strikes in the past 48 hours, including a Hamas command center in the area of the Gaza City neighborhoods of Daraj and Tuffah. The site included a weapons depot used to store explosives that Hamas operatives used in attacks on troops, according to the military.

Palm Sunday statement on the Israeli airstrikes at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza last night.

Al-Ahli Hospital was one of the few remaining hospitals in the area supporting over 500,000 citizens. pic.twitter.com/TA92AQTKrU

— Hamza (@HowidyHamza) April 13, 2025

The other targets included a rocket launching site used to fire a projectile at southern Israel Saturday night, weapon depots, cells of operatives, and other Hamas infrastructure, the IDF added.

Additionally, the military said troops recently destroyed a 1.2-kilometer-long tunnel in the northern Gaza Strip. The tunnel was located by the Gaza Division’s Northern Brigade, which is operating under the 252nd Division in north Gaza.

Soldiers of the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit demolished the tunnel, which reached depths of some 20 meters below the ground, according to the IDF.

Footage shows the inside of a Hamas tunnel in the northern Gaza Strip and its demolition by the IDF, in a video published on April 13, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)

The IDF said the Northern Brigade troops also located a nearby weapons depot where some 20 explosive devices, an anti-tank launcher, and other weapons were stored.

During operations in the area, the military said troops using a drone spotted a cell of terror operatives trying to plant a bomb in the ground near the forces. An Israeli Air Force drone struck and killed the operatives a short while later.

Footage released by the IDF on April 13, 2025, shows a group of terror operatives planting a bomb in the ground in northern Gaza. (Israel Defense Forces)

Also Sunday, terrorists in Gaza fired a rocket at southern Israel, setting off sirens in Kibbutz Re’im near the border. The military said the projectile was downed by air defenses and no one was injured by the rocket, the fifth to be launched from the Strip over the past day.

In response to the rocket fire, the IDF issued an evacuation warning for Palestinians in the Khan Younis area. In a post on X, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, Col. Avichay Adraee, published a map of the area that is to be evacuated, saying that it was a “final warning” before the IDF carried out strikes there.

#عاجل ‼️ إلى جميع سكان قطاع غزة المتواجدين في مناطق خان يونس وفي الأحياء: قيزان النجار، قيزان ابو رشوان، السلام، المنارة، القرين، معن، البطن السمين، جورت اللوت، الفخاري وأحياء بني سهيلا الجنوبية
????هذا انذار مسبق وأخير قبل الهجوم!????
⭕️سنهاجم بقوة شديدة كل منطقة يتم إطلاق قذائف… pic.twitter.com/ycLm7H8svE

— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) April 13, 2025

Israel on Saturday announced that it had captured the Morag Corridor in southern Gaza, cutting off the southernmost city of Rafah from Khan Younis.

The IDF said Sunday that the 36th Division destroyed weapons and other Hamas infrastructure and directed strikes on Hamas operatives in the Morag Corridor. It also reported that the Gaza Division located additional weapons and infrastructure and killed operatives in Rafah’s Tel Sultan neighborhood.

In northern Gaza, the military said the 252nd Division destroyed additional Hamas infrastructure, including tunnel shafts and buildings used by the terror group, and killed several operatives trying to plant a bomb.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 50,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting in Gaza so far. The toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the Hamas onslaught.