Israel launched airstrikes across Gaza on Palm Sunday, killing 21 people—including children—and striking part of the last fully functional hospital in Gaza City.
Two airstrikes in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, killed at least 10 people—one hitting a car and killing seven charity workers, including six brothers, and another striking a municipal building, killing three more.
Another airstrike in the densely populated Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza killed at least seven people, including two women, while a separate strike in Khan Younis claimed the lives of at least three more.
Israel said it struck over 90 locations in the past 48 hours, justifying the bombardment of civilian areas by asserting it was targeting “militants” in “command and control centers, tunnels, and weapons facilities.”
The predawn shelling of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City destroyed the intensive care and surgery departments, according to witnesses. Video posted online showed smoke and flames pouring from the building after missiles struck the two-story facility.
Footage showed people pushing hospital patients in their beds out into the street to escape the destruction. Hospital Director Dr. Fadel Naim told the Associated Press that the emergency room, pharmacy and surrounding buildings were severely damaged, impacting more than 100 patients and dozens of staff.
The Gaza Health Ministry reported that a child being treated for a previous head injury died during the evacuation because staff were unable to provide the urgent care required.
In a statement, the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, which runs Al-Ahli Hospital, condemned the attack, saying it was “appalled at the bombing of the hospital now for the fifth time.” The diocese noted that Israel had deliberately struck on “Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week, the most sacred week of the Christian year.”
Once again, Israel justified the targeting of the only functioning hospital in northern Gaza by claiming—without providing any evidence—that it housed “a command and control center used by Hamas.”
Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that 33 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals had been damaged, with only 21 remaining partially functional. On Saturday, the WHO warned that Gaza’s hospitals also face an imminent medicine shortage, as Israel has blocked aid deliveries for six consecutive weeks.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed it had taken steps “to mitigate harm to civilians or to the hospital compound,” citing advance warnings “in the area of the terror infrastructure,” along with the use of “precise munitions” and “aerial surveillance.”
A local journalist at the hospital reported that the IDF called a doctor working in the emergency department and ordered an immediate evacuation. “All patients and displaced people must go out to a safe distance,” the IDF officer reportedly said. “You have only 20 minutes to leave.”
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that the hospital was taken out of service following the evacuation order and attack, according to information from the facility’s director. The hospital is currently unable to receive new patients until repairs are completed.
Dr. Ghebreyesus said:
Hospitals are protected under international humanitarian law. Attacks on healthcare must stop.
The BBC reported the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, said in a statement:
For the only Christian hospital in Gaza to be attacked on Palm Sunday is especially appalling. I share in the grief of our Palestinian brothers and sisters in the Diocese of Jerusalem. I pray for the staff and patients of the hospital, and for the family of the boy who tragically died during the evacuation.
In October 2023, 500 people were killed when the IDF bombed this same hospital less than two weeks after the genocide in Gaza began with the full backing of the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden.
The latest stage of the US-Israeli ethnic cleansing operation involves expanding ground operations deep into Gaza and establishing a large buffer zone along the border with Israel. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians are being forced into an increasingly confined area along the Mediterranean coast.
Over the weekend, the IDF announced it had seized the Morag Corridor, cutting off Rafah from the rest of Gaza. On Sunday night, the IDF declared it had “completed the occupation of the Morag axis” and that the northern border area in Gaza was also being expanded as part of Israel’s planned “security zone.” This occupation severs the connection between Rafah and Khan Younis—the two major cities in southern Gaza—and marks a significant expansion of Israel’s control over the enclave.
Fascist Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz claimed the ethnic cleansing operation was intended to pressure Hamas into accepting “the outline of releasing the hostages,” warning that “the more Hamas persists in its refusal, the more IDF activity will intensify.” In reality, Israel has repeatedly shown that the lives of the hostages are valued only as political instruments in its broader campaign to depopulate Gaza of Palestinians entirely.
This strategy has been pursued even more openly since Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January and especially following last week’s meeting between the butcher Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the US president.
Netanyahu has been given the green light by the Trump administration to advance Israel’s goal more aggressively through a combination of mass slaughter, extermination by starvation and forced relocation. This was confirmed during an Oval Office press briefing following their meeting, where Netanyahu stated that the two were “working on” Trump’s “bold vision” of expelling the Palestinians from Gaza.
The active participation of the US government in the genocide was confirmed by Fox News Digital, which reported that a senior Israeli security official stated the occupation of Gaza is being carried out in close coordination with Washington.
The official said:
Everything is coordinated with the Americans—both the negotiations and the operational activity. ... We now have a free hand to act, and no longer facing the threat of a veto at the UN Security Council, unlike during the previous administration.
The Fox News Digital report also referred to a shift in policy that has “enhanced Israeli leverage.” The Israeli official said:
Unlike the previous administration, the US is not forcing 350 aid trucks into Gaza every day. That gives us leverage.
Javed Ali, a former senior director at the US National Security Council and now a professor at the University of Michigan, confirmed that phrases like “bringing home the hostages” and “defeating Hamas” serve as euphemisms for expelling Palestinians from Gaza.
Speaking to Fox News, Ali stated:
Now that we’re almost a full month into the resumption of high-intensity IDF operations in the Gaza Strip against Hamas, Israel’s military strategy appears to be focused on clearing and holding remaining pockets of known Hamas elements, which at the same time is displacing Palestinians throughout the territory.
In another development, the Guardian reported on Sunday that Assad al-Nsasrah, a Palestinian paramedic who had been missing since the IDF massacred a group of aid workers in March 23, is being detained by Israel.
Fifteen Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers were executed at close range “one by one” in the attack by Israeli troops. Their bodies, along with the rescue vehicles, were then buried in a mass grave by a military bulldozer in an attempted cover-up of the killings. Witnesses who dug up the bodies said the aid workers were found in their uniforms and some with their hands tied.
Nsasrah, 47, was from Gaza and had worked with the Palestinian Red Crescent for 16 years. In an interview with the Guardian, another survivor, Red Crescent volunteer Munther Abed, 27, said he witnessed Nsasrah being taken away alive and blindfolded by Israeli officers at the scene of the killings.
On Sunday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it had “received information that the PRCS medic Assad al-Nsasrah has been detained in an Israeli place of detention.”
The ICRC spokesperson confirmed that Israel had not granted access to visit him, saying:
The ICRC has not been able to visit any Palestinian detainees held in Israeli places of detention since 7 October 2023. The ICRC continues to call for access to all places of detention and reiterates publicly and privately that all detainees must always be treated humanely and with dignity.
The IDF initially claimed troops opened fire on vehicles that were “advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency signals. However, after mobile phone video from a medic, who was among those who were killed, showed the ambulances were clearly marked with the Red Crescent logo and driving with flashing red emergency lights and headlights on their vehicles, the Israeli narrative changed to a re-examination of the “operational information” reported previously.
Additionally Abed, the medic who survived, provided a detailed description of how he was held for several hours by Israeli forces and was fully stripped, beaten multiple times and interrogated about his past before he was released.