Israel Strikes One of Gaza's Last Functioning Hospitals, Killing Surgeon Featured in US Documentary

An airstrike on Nasser hospital's surgery department killed six including a surgeon, knocked out four departments, and deepened the collapse of Gaza's healthcare system — now 90% destroyed.

An Israeli airstrike hit the surgery department of Nasser hospital in Khan Younis at 12:30am Thursday, killing six people — among them Dr. Rizk Abu Shaira, a 52-year-old general surgeon featured in the documentary *American Doctor*, and one of his own post-operative patients. Twenty-eight others were wounded. The Israeli military claimed it struck a Hamas commander and fighters at the site but provided no evidence.

The strike destroyed part of the surgery department and forced the suspension of four critical departments: radiology, laboratories, surgical operations, and inpatient surgical wards. Dr. Ayman Abu Ubaid, a surgical specialist wounded in the blast, described thick smoke, fires, and patients — all surgical cases awaiting operations — caught in their beds without warning. The ceiling of one ward caved in. A bomb punched a hole clean through the floor. Nasser hospital has now been attacked seven times since October 2023. It is one of the last functioning healthcare facilities in the strip, already operating without 80% of its essential medicines and supplies. Among the dead was Seif Ghazi Abu Hatab, 29, admitted Monday after being injured clearing rubble and scheduled for surgery Thursday morning. He had already lost two brothers and his father in the war. The strike fits a documented pattern. About 90% of Gaza's health infrastructure has been destroyed or damaged by Israeli bombing, a systematic destruction UN experts have termed "medicide." More than 1,700 healthcare workers have been killed. Doctors Without Borders reports Israel has detained hundreds of medics since October 7, 2023, with at least 95 still in custody. Attacking healthcare facilities is illegal under international humanitarian law; the protection lapses only if a facility is actively used for military operations, which Hamas denies. The timing compounds the damage. Winter rains have displaced people from tents, driving a spike in communicable diseases across overcrowded encampments — precisely when functioning hospitals are most needed. With Nasser's surgical capacity now gutted, southern Gaza has effectively lost its last reliable surgical pipeline. Israel launched its campaign after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack that killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostage. At least 74,645 people have since been killed in Gaza. The UN independent international commission of inquiry has found Israel carried out a genocide in the strip. Since the October 2025 ceasefire, more than 1,600 additional people have been killed in ongoing Israeli airstrikes. The calculus here is stark: each hospital strike does not merely kill the people inside it. It removes capacity that cannot be rebuilt under bombardment, compounding mortality from every subsequent injury, illness, and complication across the civilian population. Nasser hospital's surgical department served not just Khan Younis but the broader southern Gaza population with nowhere else to go.