IDF says overnight strike on Gaza hospital targeted top Hamas commander, other operatives

A senior Hamas commander and other members of the terror group were targeted in an Israeli strike at a hospital in the southern Gaza Strip overnight, the military says.

The strike on the Nasser Hospital complex in Khan Younis killed six people and wounded at least 20 others, according to Hamas authorities.

In a statement, the IDF and Shin Bet say that the strike targeted “a senior terrorist and additional Hamas terrorists as they were hiding at the Nasser Hospital,” and that the results of the strike are still under review.

A security source says the target of the strike was the current commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade. His predecessor had been killed by Israel in September.

The military says it took measures to reduce harm to civilians in the strike, including by using “precision munitions and aerial surveillance.”

The Hamas operatives were targeted to “remove a threat, as they were advancing terror plots against Israeli civilians and IDF troops, after Hamas established a presence on the hospital grounds and turned it into a headquarters for military and terror activities against IDF troops and the State of Israel,” the joint statement says.

The IDF and Shin Bet say that Hamas had stored weapons inside the hospital complex, conducted “interrogations and torture,” operated command centers from the compound, and used the medical center’s facilities as surveillance posts and shelters for operatives, all of which they say “constitutes a blatant violation of international law and cynical exploitation of civilian infrastructure.”

“The IDF and Shin Bet view Hamas’s cynical use of civilian and medical infrastructure for military purposes, while endangering the lives of patients, medical staff, and civilians, gravely,” the statement adds.