Israel strikes southern Gaza hospital as it targets Hamas operative in escalation of renewed offensive

(CNN) — An Israeli airstrike hit a hospital in southern Gaza on Sunday night, leaving a part of the hospital in flames and causing multiple casualties, two doctors working at Nasser Medical Complex told CNN, as the country pressed a renewed offensive in the embattled enclave.

The Israeli military confirmed it carried out a strike on a “key terrorist in the Hamas terrorist organization who was operating inside” the hospital but did not share the target’s identity.

Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV reported that Ismail Barhoum, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, and his nephew Ibrahim were killed in the strike on Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.

Barhoum was receiving medical treatment for injuries sustained during an Israeli strike on March 18, according to Al-Aqsa TV. Hamas later confirmed Barhoum’s death which it said illustrates Israel’s “disregard for all international norms and agreements.”

Hospitals are entitled to special protections during armed conflict under international humanitarian law and can only be targeted under extremely limited circumstances, such as if they are being used to actively commit “an act harmful to the enemy,” according to the Geneva Conventions.

The strike comes after Israeli operations intensified in southern Gaza, with the military saying earlier on Sunday that it had encircled an entire district and ordered evacuations.

The Israeli military resumed air and ground operations in Gaza earlier this week, blamed on Hamas for refusing to agree to revised terms on extending the first phase of the ceasefire. Gaza health officials meanwhile said the toll from the fighting since October 7 has passed 50,000.

Nasser Medical Complex, the largest functioning hospital in Gaza, has previously seen intense bombardment and raids from Israeli forces accusing the facility of harboring Hamas operatives.

On Sunday, the second floor of the hospital was struck, Dr. Tanya Haj Hassan, a pediatrician from Medical Aid for Palestinians, told CNN following the attack.

The strike hit the men’s surgical unit, resulting in multiple casualties, according to Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an American doctor currently in Gaza. He said European and American teams were working at the hospital when the airstrike hit.

Images of the aftermath show a fire burning and smoke billowing as crowds gathered on the streets outside of the hospital.

A video shared with CNN by Dr. Perlmutter shows the interior of the hospital after the strike. Dazed individuals are seen walking among debris in a hallway, with smoke in the air and power knocked out.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza blamed Israel for the strike, saying “occupation forces have just targeted the surgical building inside Nasser Medical Complex, which houses many patients and injured individuals, resulting in a large fire at the location.”

The Israeli military on Sunday accused Hamas of exploiting “civilian infrastructure while brutally endangering the Gazan population” and vowed to “continue to operate against the Hamas terrorist organization and to remove any threat to Israeli civilians.”

Encircled district

The Israeli military said Sunday that troops had concluded the encirclement of Tel al-Sultan, a district to the west of Rafah that has seen multiple Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operations in the past year, a testament to the difficulties of dislodging Hamas.

The purpose of the operation was to “reinforce control and expand the security zone in southern Gaza,” the IDF said in a statement Sunday.

“During the night, the troops encircled the area, eliminated several terrorists, and conducted a targeted raid on a terror infrastructure site that was used over the past few months as a command and control center of Hamas terrorists,” the IDF said.

The military earlier issued a warning to people to leave the Tel al-Sultan area immediately as troops launched their offensive.

The IDF instructed civilians to move north to the Mawasi area, but would not permit movement in vehicles, forcing those evacuating to do so by foot.

The Israeli military forcibly displaced thousands of already displaced people from their tents in the Tel al-Sultan district under heavy gunfire, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank said in a post on social media.

Gaza’s Civil Defense warned of a “grave and imminent danger threatening the lives of more than 50,000 civilians” in the Al-Baraksat area, west of Rafah, after they were “besieged by Israeli occupation forces.”

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said four of its ambulances had been surrounded after responding to an Israeli attack in Rafah. Contact had been lost with a civil defense crew west of Rafah that was trying to rescue an ambulance crew.

Also in the south, Hamas-affiliated media reported that three people had been killed when a municipal vehicle in Khan Younis was struck.

Hamas said Salah al-Bardawil, a member of the group’s political bureau, was killed along with his wife in an Israeli strike on tents for the displaced in the area.

Israel blocked aid going into Gaza ahead of its renewed operations, in an attempt to force Hamas to accept the new terms and release the hostages it is still holding.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said no food, water, medicines or fuel have entered Gaza in three weeks, marking a longer siege than what was in place in the first phase of the war. “Every day without food inches Gaza closer to an acute hunger crisis,” UNRWA said in a social media post on Sunday.

The IDF is also continuing its ground operations in northern Gaza. It said on Saturday that troops had begun operating in the Beit Hanoun area “to target Hamas’ terror infrastructure sites in order to expand the security zone in northern Gaza.”

It added that fighter jets struck several Hamas targets.

On Sunday, the Health Ministry in Gaza said that 41 more deaths in the past 24 hours as the death toll in Gaza surpassed 50,000, marking a grim milestone for a war with no end in sight.

The ministry said that 50,021 people have been killed in Gaza since the October 7 attacks in its latest update.

CNN’s Ibrahim Dahman, Mike Schwartz, Tim Lister contributed reporting

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