Israel kills six in Gaza hospital strike as 9-month-old baby freezes to death

Israel kills six in Gaza hospital strike as 9-month-old baby freezes to death An overnight Israeli air strike on Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza killed at least six Palestinians Thursday, including a teenage boy and a surgeon, medics said. Elsewhere in the devastated Palestinian territory, a nine-month-old baby died from the cold as families flee worsening flooding. An Israeli air strike on southern Gaza's main hospital overnight killed at least six Palestinians including a surgeon and a teenage boy, medics said, the latest Israeli attack to undermine a year-old ceasefire in the ravaged territory. The strike hit a building containing surgery wards at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Israel's military alleged it had targeted a senior Hamas commander and accused the militants of using the hospital complex to plan attacks, which the group denied. Medics and witnesses said two missiles crashed through the roof of the five-storey building, causing extensive damage. The surgery department, which serves half of Gaza's 2 million people, was knocked out of service. Twenty others were wounded. Ayman Abu Obeid, a doctor who was wounded in the attack, said he was on an overnight shift in the hospital when an explosion ripped through the room where he and others were sleeping. "All of a sudden the world turned upside down. It went dark all at once," he said from a hospital bed. Near him, piles of mangled furniture and medical equipment could be seen covered in dust from blown-out concrete. Torn wires hung down from the ceiling. Among those killed was Rezik Abushira, a surgeon who was featured in a 2026 documentary, "American Doctor", working alongside three visiting US doctors who help provide medical care for Palestinians in Gaza. The dead also included a 13-year-old boy, according to Gaza's education ministry. Three more Palestinians were killed later on Thursday in separate incidents. Two were killed and several wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a car in Gaza City, and one other person was killed by Israeli gunfire in central Gaza's Bureij refugee camp, medics said, taking Thursday's death toll to at least nine. Commenting on the vehicle strike, the Israeli military said it hit a Hamas militant without giving further details. It did not comment on the other incident. In a statement on the hospital strike, Israel's military said it targeted a person named Muhammad Abu Ismail, describing him as "the commander of Hamas' Khan Younis Brigade". The military alleged he and other militants "were hiding inside the Nasser Hospital". The military accused the militants of "turning the Nasser Hospital compound into a headquarters and operating from there". Hamas rejected the military's claim that it had used the hospital as a base for operations. It did not immediately comment on whether a leader from the group had been targeted, wounded or killed in the strike. Israel's military has struck the Nasser Hospital complex at least seven times since the start of the Gaza war, hospital officials say. Nine-month-old baby freezes to death Heavy rain last week flooded tens of thousands of people's tents in the Palestinian territory, where virtually the whole population has been displaced at least once by three years of Israeli bombardment. Five people, including three children, died the day after the flooding when a sandy embankment collapsed onto their tents. The worsening weather continues to take a heavy toll. A nine-month-old baby died of hypothermia on Thursday, his father and a doctor told AFP. The doctor, who saw the child and spoke on condition of anonymity, said that nine-month-old Kinan Ahmed Raqiq "died from hypothermia inside his family's displacement tent" in Khan Younis. Ahmed Raqiq told AFP that his son Kinan died of cold during the night in their tent in southern Gaza. "I woke up only to see his skin had turned blue so I rushed him to Nasser hospital, but he had already died from hypothermia and frozen to death," he said. "I am in complete shock. I found myself holding my son wrapped in burial shroud," he said outside the hospital, dried tears on his face as he held his son wrapped in a white sheet. Read morePalestinians struggle to find food in Gaza a year after ceasefire Hundreds of displaced families have been seen fleeing camps in parts of Gaza City and central and northern areas of the territory after they were inundated by rainwater. James Elder, spokesman on Gaza for the UN children's agency, UNICEF, warned that the flooding was just the beginning of the cold season. "It's very important to know how bad things are in Gaza. It's not yet winter," Elder said. "We're weeks away from winter, so we are getting unprecedented rain and cold." The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that as of November 8, 26,000 households were affected by storms. Around 65 percent of Gaza's people are still living displaced in tents or other temporary shelter, OCHA said. Israel and Hamas declared a ceasefire on October 10, 2025 but Israel has kept striking the territory, vowing to kill anyone involved in the Hamas-led October 7 attack, the deadliest in Israel's history. (FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters) Keywords for this article