When the bombing of hospitals was still taboo in October 2023, Israel denied bombing al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. This time, Israel claims it targeted a Hamas command-and-control center at the hospital. It has not provided any evidence.

By Tareq S. Hajjaj April 13, 2025

 Aftermath of an Israeli strike on the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on April 13, 2025. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)

Zeinat al-Jundi, 56, was staying at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City with her husband, who was injured in a bombing in the city’s Shuja’iyya neighborhood last week. Doctors had amputated his legs as a result of his injuries, and he remained at the hospital during his recovery period. Al-Jundi is her husband’s only companion, staying with him all night to attend to his needs.

At 1:00 a.m. on Sunday, as al-Jundi was preparing to lie down on the floor next to her husband after a long day of caring for him, a man entered the hospital’s reception area, shouting that the Israeli army was speaking to him on the phone and ordering everyone to evacuate. 

Once the evacuation order was confirmed, everyone attempting to leave the hospital ended up injured in the rush. An injured child died during the evacuation as he could not receive urgent medical treatment. “There were mutilated bodies, children — I swear they were children — with their hands torn and amputated,” al-Jundi told Mondoweiss, stating that everyone in the ward was already wounded from last week’s airstrikes. “More than 10 wounded children were in the ward. Everyone was bleeding.”

“Those who could get up and leave, left. Some dragged their patients on the hospital bed to the street, and others like me couldn’t move; I couldn’t carry my husband and take him out of the hospital, so I waited for death alongside him,” al-Jundi said. 

The Israeli army bombed the Anglican-run al-Ahli Arab Hospital — locally known by its former name, the Baptist Hospital — in the predawn hours of Sunday morning. According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, two airstrikes targeted the hospital’s only reception building, the radiology department, the hospital pharmacy, the laboratories, and even a church inside the hospital, which had been converted into an additional reception area for the wounded.

It is not the first time the Israeli army has targeted al-Ahli Hospital; it was bombed on October 17, 2023, in a massacre that killed over 400 displaced people taking shelter in the hospital’s crowded courtyard. At the time, directly bombing hospitals was still taboo, so the Israeli army denied targeting the hospital, instead claiming, without evidence, that an allegedly misfired Islamic Jihad rocket had struck the hospital.

In the most recent strike on al-Ahli, the Israeli army this time admitted targeting the hospital but claimed to have been attacking a Hamas command-and-control center. The Israeli army made similar claims in 2023 and 2024 about al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. After the two invasions of al-Shifa in November 2023 and March 2024, no evidence could be provided to substantiate these claims.

The Israeli army has not so far provided any evidence of a Hamas command center in al-Ahli Arab Hospital.

Run by the Anglican Church, al-Ahli Arab Hospital is located near the Church of Saint Porphyrius, where Palestinian Christians in Gaza were celebrating Palm Sunday today. The Israeli army had earlier bombed the Church of Saint Porphyrius in October 2023 in an airstrike that killed 17 people.Aftermath of an Israeli strike on the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on April 13, 2025. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)

Al-Ahli Hospital out of service as Israeli army expands attacks

“We were forced to halt services,” Dr. Fadel Naim, director of al-Ahli, told Mondoweiss. “The hospital was already suffering before this strike. Now, it cannot provide even the bare minimum of services. The destruction is extensive and difficult to repair. It may require weeks or months.”

The hospital director pointed out that the strike directly impacted the ability of the health system in northern Gaza to provide adequate healthcare services to residents. Al-Ahli was the last functioning hospital in the area after the destruction of al-Shifa in March 2024 and Kamal Adwan Hospital in December 2024.

“The Arab Baptist Hospital provided CT scans, the equipment for which is only available here in northern Gaza,” the hospital director said. “Over the past year, we have taken 25,000 CT scans, meaning more than 2,000 monthly scans. The cessation of these services will have a significant impact on patients and the wounded.”

“We will have to distribute patients to other hospitals,” he says, noting that the Israeli army is raiding areas near the hospital and expanding its military operations in the al-Daraj and al-Sha’af neighborhoods in eastern Gaza City. “But none of the other hospitals are equipped to provide health services. This could lead to the loss of patients’ lives and limbs, causing permanent disabilities.”

Muhammad Abu Nasser, 34, was injured in a bombing in the Zeitoun area east of Gaza City and was transferred to al-Ahli for treatment. The injury left him unable to walk or move, and he was alone when the evacuation warning came. He failed to leave the hospital.

“We are sleeping in the safest place on earth. It is a hospital, a hospital where there are only people in pain and moaning all night over the loss of their loved ones and limbs, bleeding and spitting blood,” Abu Nasser told Mondoweiss. “They bombed the reception area where the wounded are admitted, and they bombed the pharmacy that supplies us with medicine. What’s left for us?”

Abu Nasser’s injury prevented him from moving and he had no companions accompanying him. He said that the night of the bombing was terrifying for him. “We lived through a horrific night. All the patients were crying loudly and screaming in fear. We were all taking our last breaths, expecting to die at any moment. We all gathered in one place and surrendered to what was about to happen because there was nothing we could do.”

Abu Nasser explained the situation the patients were experiencing after the attack, noting that he, like everyone inside the hospital, needed treatment at a time when the hospital had stopped providing health services to patients due to the bombing.

“I can’t live without treatment. I can’t walk or move. There’s nowhere else to go. There aren’t even dressings for wounds anymore,” he said. “We’ve been left here to die slowly. Even with the few medications we were given, the occupation deprived us of them by bombing the pharmacy. The hospital has collapsed.”