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The Israeli military killed seven people in a missile attack on a hospital in the eastern part of Gaza City, Palestinian civil defence officials said on Sunday.
The Israeli missile was reported to have hit the fifth floor of Al-Wafaa Hospital, injuring others and prompting a panicked evacuation of the building.
Israeli military officials, offering a different version, said the hospital was not being used at the time of the attack and was instead functioning as the command centre of a Hamas air defence unit which was targeted with a precision attack.
Information from both sides could not be independently verified.
Also on Sunday, Israeli shelling of Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp killed nine people, among them women and children, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.
Another 15 people were reportedly injured in what was the latest of a string of aerial attacks on the central Gazan camp housing displaced Palestinians in recent weeks.
The spokesman for the Israeli army, speaking in Arabic, called on the inhabitants of several districts northwest of the city of Gaza to seek shelter in the centre of the city of Gaza.

Since the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023, Israel has repeatedly hit Gaza’s hospitals, school buildings and refugee camps with missiles, saying that Hamas fighters and weapons are hidden there.
On Saturday the Israeli military ended a three-day operation at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern city of Beit Lahia, during which it said it arrested 240 Hamas fighters.
The patients were evacuated, the hospital ceased operations, and parts of the buildings were gutted by fire.
At least 33 hospitals in Gaza have had to close since the start of the war on October 7, 2023, according to Palestinian health officials.
Under international law, warring parties are not allowed to attack or repurpose hospitals for military reasons, and international law experts have argued that even if hospitals are used for military purposes, this does not allow the other side to target them.
The well-being of patients, medical staff and others in need of protection must always be taken into account, they say.


Meanwhile, an Israeli air strike on the outskirts of Damascus on Sunday killed 11 people, according to a war monitor, as Israel continues to target Syrian weapons and military infrastructure even after the ousting of former President Bashar al-Assad.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the air strike targeted a weapons depot that belonged to Assad’s forces near the industrial town of Adra, northeast of the capital. The observatory said at least 11 people, mostly civilians, were killed.
Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV also reported the strike but put the death toll at six. The Israeli military did not comment on the strike Sunday.
Israel, which has launched hundreds of air strikes over Syria since the country’s uprising-turned-civil war broke out in 2011, rarely acknowledges them. It says its targets are Iran-backed groups that backed Assad. Israel also wants to remove a threat posed by weapons in Syria, which is now governed by Islamists.
Syrian insurgents who ousted Assad in a lightning offensive in early December have demanded that Israel cease its attacks.
Elsewhere, Turkish-backed Syrian rebels attacked near the strategic northern border town of Kobani, which is under the control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, following weeks-long clashes.
The SDF shared a video of a rocket attack that destroyed what it said was a radar system south of the city of Manbij, which the Turkish-back group captured earlier this month. The Kurdish-led group is Washington’s key ally in Syria, where it is heavily involved in targeting sleeper cells belonging to the extremist group Islamic State.

Also on Sunday, Syrian state-run media said a mass grave was found near the country’s third-largest city of Homs. SANA said civil defence workers were sent to to the site in al-Kabo, one of many suspected mass graves where tens of thousands of Syrians are believed to have been buried during a brutal crackdown under Assad and his network of security agencies.
Egyptian activist Abdulrahman al-Qardawi, wanted by Cairo on charges of incitement to violence and terrorism, was detained by Lebanese security forces after crossing the porous border from Syria, according to two judicial and one security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to to talk to the press.
Al-Qardawi lives in Turkey and is an outspoken critic of Egypt’s government. He had reportedly visited Syria to join celebrations after Assad’s downfall. His late father, Youssef al-Qaradawi, was a controversial top Egyptian cleric revered by the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. He had lived in exile in Qatar for decades.
In Lebanon, security forces apprehended an armed group in the northern city of Tripoli that kidnapped a group of 26 Syrians who were recently smuggled into Lebanon, two Lebanese security officials said on condition of anonymity. The Syrians included five women and seven children, and security officials are working to return them to Syria.
Additional reporting by Associated Press


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Damage is seen after an Israeli strike on Al-Wafaa hospital in Gaza City on Sunday. Photo: Reuters

A wounded Palestinian is brought to at Al-Awda Hospital on Sunday following an Israeli strike on Nuseirat refugee camp. Photo: APA Images via Zuma Press Wire / dpa

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Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan hospital, shows the damage inside the hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza on December 18. On Saturday, Gaza’s health ministry said Abu Safiya had been arrested by Israeli soldiers on Friday. Photo: Reuters

Ambulances transport wounded Palestinians from Kamal Adwan Hospital to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Saturday. Photo: AFP

Israeli army troops reportedly preparing to enter the Beit Hanoun area in northern Gaza on Saturday. Photo: Israeli Army / AFP

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A fire seen through a window from Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. On Friday, Gaza’s health ministry said Israeli troops forcibly removed staff and patients from the hospital. Photo: Reuters

A wounded Palestinian is treated at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza earlier this month. Photo: Reuters

Palestinian Ata al-Hassumi sits with four of his eight children outside his tent at a camp for internally displaced Palestinians on the beachfront in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, on Friday. Photo: AP

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Badly damaged Palestinian houses during the ongoing Israeli military operation in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters

A fire burns as seen through a window from Kamal Adwan hospital, during the ongoing Israeli military operation. Photo: Reuters

Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan hospital, shows the damage inside the hospital. Photo: Reuters

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UN-branded vehicles are parked at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip. Photo: AFP

Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan hospital, shows the damage inside the hospital, during the ongoing Israeli military operation in the northern Gaza Strip on December 18. Photo: Reuters

A Palestinian man walks past rubble from the area around Kamal Adwan hospital. Photo: Reuters

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Middle East

Israeli said Al-Wafaa Hospital was not being used at the time of the attack and was instead functioning as a Hamas command centre


Israeli said Al-Wafaa Hospital was not being used at the time of the attack and was instead functioning as a Hamas command centre.
