Israeli Airstrikes Hit Near Gaza City Hospitals as Military Continues Campaign Against Hamas Leadership

On May 15, 2025, Israeli airstrikes hit the European Hospital in Khan Younis — Gaza's last facility providing cancer treatment and cardiac surgery — rendering it non-operational [1]. The Israeli military said it was targeting a Hamas command center beneath the building [1]. Six people were killed. The strike followed a pattern that has repeated across Gaza's medical infrastructure for more than 19 months: an Israeli claim of militant use, a strike on or near a hospital, and a facility knocked out of service.

Since October 7, 2023, the World Health Organization has documented 735 attacks on healthcare in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 917 people and injuring 1,411 [2]. At least 34 of Gaza's 36 hospitals have sustained damage [2]. The result is a healthcare system that has, by most measures, ceased to function at anything approaching normal capacity — with consequences that extend far beyond the immediate casualties of each strike.

The Scale of Hospital Strikes

The WHO's surveillance system for attacks on healthcare — maintained since well before the current conflict — has recorded an average of roughly one attack per day on Gaza's medical infrastructure since hostilities began [2]. These incidents range from direct airstrikes on hospital buildings to damage from nearby explosions, forced evacuations, and restrictions on medical supply deliveries.

Source: WHO

Data as of Jun 11, 2025CSV

By comparison, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria documented Russia and Syrian government forces deliberately targeting hospitals in Aleppo over a four-month aerial campaign in 2016, an operation that the commission found amounted to war crimes [3]. In the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017), U.S.-led coalition operations resulted in over 9,000 civilian deaths, with hospitals sustaining significant indirect damage from explosive weapons with wide-area effects [4]. The rate and cumulative scale of documented attacks on medical facilities in Gaza, however, exceeds both of those campaigns by a substantial margin.

In April 2025, a UN News report documented an Israeli strike that put a Gaza City hospital out of action, with a child patient who had head trauma dying during the evacuation [5]. By August 2025, Shifa Hospital was operating at 250 percent capacity, Nasser at 180 percent, Al-Rantisi at 210 percent, and Al-Ahli at over 300 percent [6].

What Israel Says — and What Evidence Shows

Israel's central claim is that Hamas has systematically embedded military infrastructure inside and beneath hospitals, using their protected status as a shield. The IDF and Shin Bet have stated that strikes targeted command-and-control centers operated by Hamas underneath medical facilities [7]. The United States has backed this position, with U.S. officials stating they were "confident that Hamas used al-Shifa hospital as a command center" [8].

Some evidence supports the claim that Hamas has used hospital proximity for military purposes. A New York Times investigation, based on classified Israeli intelligence documents, concluded that Hamas "used the hospital for cover, stored weapons inside it, and maintained a hardened tunnel beneath the complex that was supplied with water, power, and air-conditioning" at al-Shifa [9]. The IDF also uncovered a 10-kilometer tunnel network with entrances near the Turkish Hospital in central Gaza in February 2024 [10].

However, the evidence has also been contested at multiple points. The Washington Post analyzed Israel's publicly released material from al-Shifa and found rooms connected to a tunnel network that showed "no immediate evidence of military use by Hamas," concluding that the tunnel "did not match the Israeli description of a Hamas command center" [8]. A Haaretz investigation in May 2025 found that the IDF had claimed a tunnel was discovered beneath the European Hospital, but the aerial footage released by the military actually showed a tunnel located beneath a nearby school [11]. Most strikingly, a Reuters investigation found that Israel falsely claimed a "Hamas camera" was the target of a deadly strike on Nasser Hospital that killed 22 people — the camera actually belonged to Reuters and had been used by one of its journalists [7].

Egypt's representative to the UN Security Council stated that "there is no evidence supporting Israel's claims that hospitals in Gaza are being used for other purposes" [12]. The UN Security Council debated the issue in a session focused on Israeli attacks on hospitals allegedly misused by Hamas, with sharp disagreements between member states [12].

The Legal Framework

International humanitarian law grants hospitals special protection under the Geneva Conventions. Medical facilities may never be attacked unless they are used, outside their humanitarian function, "to commit acts harmful to the enemy" [13]. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has specified that this is a high threshold: treating wounded combatants does not constitute harmful use, nor does the presence of unarmed persons seeking shelter [13].

Even when a hospital loses its protection, procedural safeguards apply. A warning must be issued, reasonable time must be allowed for the misuse to stop, and in cases of doubt, the hospital must be presumed protected [14]. British barrister Geoffrey Nice stated that the IDF's failure to issue warnings in several documented cases "possibly went against international humanitarian law" [7]. Legal expert Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne added that attacks would only be lawful if "sufficient warnings were given and civilian harm was proportional to military advantage" [7].

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has published a legal primer arguing that current protections for medical services under IHL are insufficient given the pattern of attacks observed in Gaza [15]. The Lancet published a similar assessment, calling existing legal frameworks inadequate for the scale of hospital targeting in modern conflicts [16].

On the other side of the legal debate, Israel and its allies argue that Hamas's documented practice of using civilian infrastructure — including hospitals — for military purposes imposes a responsibility on Hamas for the resulting harm. Israel has characterized this as Hamas "transforming hospitals into tools for terror, exploiting their sanctity to shield its murderous aims" [12].

Historical Pattern: Hamas and Hospital Infrastructure

Hamas's use of civilian infrastructure, including medical facilities, for military purposes has been documented across multiple conflicts. The practice predates the current war. During the 2014 Gaza conflict, the IDF published evidence of tunnel shafts near hospital complexes, and subsequent investigations by multiple parties confirmed some degree of dual-use of certain sites [9].

The February 2024 discovery of a 10-kilometer tunnel network beneath a hospital and university in central Gaza represented some of the most concrete physical evidence of the practice [10]. The tunnels were documented with video footage and confirmed by multiple media organizations that were given access to the sites.

This historical pattern is central to the debate over burden of proof. Defenders of Israel's position argue that Hamas's documented record of using hospitals justifies a presumption that current claims are credible. Critics counter that a historical pattern cannot substitute for specific, verified evidence in each individual case — particularly when multiple Israeli claims have been shown to be inaccurate or misleading [7][11].

Operational Collapse of Gaza's Healthcare System

Before October 2023, Gaza operated 36 hospitals. As of May 2025, only 19 remained even partially functional, and those facilities were operating far beyond designed capacity [2][6].

Source: WHO / OCHA

Data as of Aug 1, 2025CSV

The collapse extends beyond physical damage to buildings. At least 1,581 healthcare workers have been killed since October 2023 — an average of roughly two per day [17]. Essential supplies, including surgical equipment, anesthetics, generator fuel, and antibiotics, have been chronically unavailable due to restrictions on aid delivery and damage to supply routes [6].

The WHO reported in May 2025 that Gaza's health system was "at a breaking point," with fewer than half of hospitals and under 38 percent of primary healthcare centers partially functioning — most at minimal levels [2]. Four major facilities — Kamal Adwan Hospital, Indonesia Hospital, Hamad Hospital, and the European Gaza Hospital — suspended medical services entirely due to proximity to hostilities and direct attacks [18].

The Downstream Health Crisis

The consequences of hospital incapacitation extend well beyond the direct casualties of strikes. By October 2025, 463 Palestinians had died from malnutrition alone, including 157 children [18]. Projections indicated that at least 132,000 children would suffer from acute malnutrition by June 2026, with 41,000 severe cases carrying a high risk of death [18].

Maternal health has been severely affected. The number of high-risk pregnancies in Gaza doubled, with an estimated 55,000 women pregnant and one-third facing high-risk pregnancies as of late 2025 [19]. The UN warned that Gaza's "maternal and newborn health system has been decimated," with sharp rises in maternal deaths, miscarriages, and newborn fatalities linked directly to the destruction of hospital capacity [19].

Disease outbreaks have surged. WHO documented alarming increases in acute watery diarrhea, with fears of broader waterborne disease outbreaks driven by poor hygiene conditions and the near-total collapse of sanitation systems [18]. Communicable diseases, already a concern in Gaza's dense population, have spread rapidly in the absence of functioning primary healthcare centers.

Epidemiologists from Brown University's Costs of War project estimated that as of early 2025, roughly 8,540 excess non-violent deaths had occurred — deaths from treatable conditions that would not have been fatal with functioning medical infrastructure [20]. The true figure is likely higher, as data collection itself has been severely impaired by the destruction of the health system that would normally track such statistics.

International Accountability Mechanisms

Multiple international bodies have called for independent investigations. The ICC appeals chamber rejected Israel's legal challenges seeking to block an investigation into actions in Gaza in December 2025, and arrest warrants issued for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant remain in place [21].

The UN Human Rights Council's Independent International Commission of Inquiry found Israel responsible for four of the five acts specified in the Genocide Convention, including murder, causing serious bodily harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy a group [22]. The commission recommended that genocide charges be added to existing ICC arrest warrants [22].

Israel rejected the commission's findings, calling the ICC's continued investigation "politics in the guise of international law" [21]. The United States has also expressed skepticism toward the ICC's jurisdiction over the conflict.

The track record of international accountability mechanisms in analogous conflicts is mixed. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia secured convictions for attacks on civilian infrastructure during the Balkans wars, but proceedings took years. ICC investigations into crimes in Afghanistan, Myanmar, and other contexts have faced persistent delays and enforcement challenges. No ICC case has yet produced a conviction related to attacks on medical facilities specifically.

Humanitarian organizations including MSF, the ICRC, and Human Rights Watch have called for independent, on-the-ground investigations with full access to affected sites — something that has been effectively impossible given Israeli restrictions on access to Gaza [15].

What Comes Next

The conflict has produced what WHO officials describe as the most severe destruction of a healthcare system documented in modern conflict [2]. Rebuilding will take years, even assuming hostilities end. The WHO has outlined plans to increase bed capacity across selected hospitals and expand deployment of international health workers, but these efforts depend on access, security, and sustained funding that remain uncertain [6].

The legal and political questions are equally unresolved. The ICC investigation continues, but enforcement of any eventual rulings depends on state cooperation that Israel and its allies have signaled they will not provide [21]. The UN Commission of Inquiry's genocide finding has been rejected by Israel and the United States but has been cited by dozens of other member states as grounds for further action.

Meanwhile, Gaza's remaining hospitals continue to operate at several times their designed capacity, staffed by surviving healthcare workers who face daily risks to their own lives, treating patients with supplies that arrived weeks or months ago if they arrived at all. The downstream toll — in preventable deaths, untreated chronic conditions, and a generation of children whose injuries went without adequate surgical care — will continue to accumulate long after the last airstrike.