Lorenzo Tondo
The Guardian / March 24, 2025
Ismail Barhoum and medics die in attack, which Israel says was based on extensive intelligence.
Jerusalem – An Israeli airstrike on Sunday night hit the largest hospital in southern Gaza, killing five people, including a Hamas political leader and Palestinian medics, the militant group has said, in an attack that wounded others, causing a large fire.
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The Gaza health ministry said the strike hit the surgery department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. The Israeli military said its attack followed extensive intelligence and used precise munitions to minimise harm at the site.
Hamas said a member of its political office, Ismail Barhoum, had been killed.
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, confirmed the target was Barhoum. The military did not name the target, which it described only as “a key terrorist” in Hamas.
Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV said Barhoum was being treated at the hospital for wounds sustained in a previous attack.
Video on social media showed a fire blazing on the third storey of what appeared to be the hospital. Reuters could not immediately verify the footage.
Sunday’s Israeli attack was the second on a health facility in Gaza in three days.
On Friday, Israel blew up central Gaza’s Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital, Gaza’s only specialised cancer treatment hospital, which had already been severely damaged by Israeli airstrikes since October 2023.
Reached by The Guardian, Steve Cutts, CEO for Medical Aid for Palestinians, whose doctors were operating at Nasser hospital, said the attack “demonstrates once again that nowhere is safe in Gaza. At least eight people, including medical staff, were injured in the strike and a 16-year-old boy recovering from earlier surgery was killed.”
He added: “Coming just two days after Israeli forces completely destroyed the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital, it is clear that, having broken the ceasefire, Israel has resumed attacks on Palestinian healthcare facilities, thereby endangering the lives of health workers, patients and other civilians. Thankfully, on this occasion, our emergency medical team personnel who were in the hospital at the time of the attack were uninjured. Hospitals must be protected, and healthcare must not be a target.”
He called for attacks on Palestinian health facilities to be investigated and “any perpetrators held to account”.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using hospitals as hiding places for weapons and command centres, a charge the Palestinian militant group denies.
Palestinians in Gaza have again been fleeing for their lives after Israel launched its new offensive in the territory, which started on Tuesday with a wave of airstrikes that killed more than 400 people, mostly civilians, ending two months of relative calm. On Sunday, Palestinian officials said the total death toll from nearly 18 months of conflict had passed 50,000.
Another leader in Hamas, Salah al-Bardawil, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the city of Khan Younis on Sunday.
Both Bardawil and Barhoum were members of the 19-member Hamas decision-making body, the political office, 11 of whom have been killed since the start of the war in late 2023, according to Hamas sources.
Explosions echoed throughout the north, central and southern Gaza Strip early on Sunday, as Israeli planes hit targets in those areas in what witnesses said was an escalation of the attacks that began earlier in the week.
Signalling it could escalate its actions further, the Israeli military said on Sunday one of its divisions that had operated in Lebanon, where Israel had fought Hamas’s Iranian-backed ally, Hezbollah, was preparing for possible action in Gaza.
It distributed video of tanks unloaded in a field and a caption that read: “Preparations of the 36th Division for Operations in the Gaza Strip.”
At least 45 Palestinians had been killed in Israeli strikes on Rafah and Khan Younis so far on Sunday, Gaza health authorities said.
Palestinian officials on Sunday put the death toll from nearly 18 months of conflict at more than 50,000.
The Israeli military said it did its best to reduce harm to civilians and questioned the death toll provided by health authorities in the Hamas-run territory.
Most of the dead in Gaza have been civilians, according to health officials. Israel said they included about 20,000 fighters. Hamas does not disclose casualty figures.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said the aim of the war was to destroy Hamas as a military and governing entity. The ambition of the new campaign was to force the group to give up remaining hostages, he said on Tuesday.
Large protests have been taking place in Israel, with more than 100,000 demonstrating against efforts by Netanyahu to fire both the head of the internal security service, Ronen Bar, and the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara.
Bar, as the head of the Shin Bet, has been investigating Netanyahu’s close aides for alleged breaches of national security, including allegations of leaking classified documents to foreign media and taking money from Qatar, which is known to have given significant financial aid to Hamas.
Baharav-Miara, who has frequently clashed with the government, warned the prime minister he could not fire the domestic intelligence chief before her office had reviewed his motives for doing so.
In an unprecedented step on Sunday, after accusing her of blocking the government’s policies, Israel’s cabinet voted unanimously in favour of a no-confidence motion against Baharav-Miara.
After the vote, the justice minister, Yariv Levin, called on her to resign.
The cabinet’s decision was condemned by opposition parties and thousands of protesters, who took to the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for the sixth day in a row, and who described Netanyahu’s move as an attempt to undermine Israel’s democratic system.
The decision to dismiss Bar has already been challenged at the supreme court, which issued an injunction that froze the move until further hearings. In the coming weeks, the court will be expected to rule on whether the dismissal was legal and whether there was a conflict of interest in light of the Qatar investigation.
With the attorney general, the government passed a largely symbolic decision on Sunday calling for her dismissal. A committee, which is expected to be stacked with Netanyahu’s allies, will hear the government’s and Baharav-Miara’s positions before issuing a recommendation. Only then will Netanyahu’s government make its final decision on her fate.
If the committee goes ahead with her dismissal, it is likely to face a challenge in the supreme court over this too. Once again, it is expected to decide whether Netanyahu has a conflict of interest because he is firing the official who serves as the head of the public prosecution’s office that is trying him for corruption.
It is unclear whether the government would accept a decision it does not like.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, spoke to Netanyahu to “emphasise US support for Israel”, a state department spokesperson said. They discussed Israel’s continuing military operations in Gaza, efforts to bring hostages home and US strikes against Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen, the spokesperson added.
Meanwhile, officials say Egypt has introduced a new proposal to try to get the Israel-Hamas ceasefire back on track.
Hamas would release five living hostages, including an American-Israeli, in return for Israel allowing humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip and a weeks-long pause in the fighting, an Egyptian official said on Monday. Israel would also release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
A Hamas official said the group had “responded positively” to the proposal, without elaborating.
Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after Hamas fighters stormed southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
“Israel’s military offensive has caused an appalling loss of life,” said the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas. “As long as this war continues, both sides lose.”
Kallas added Israel must respect civilian lives and that threats to annex parts of Gaza were unacceptable.
Lorenzo Tondo is a Guardian correspondent
Reuters, AP and AFP contributed to this report
