The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns the new crime committed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) this morning, Wednesday 04 June 2025, repeatedly targeting Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip Within less than an hour, Israeli drones launched three successive strikes on the hospital. PCHR emphasizes that the international community’s silence towards such repeated crimes, particularly the targeting of hospitals and healthcare facilities, constitutes complicity and a grave disregard for international law obligations. Accordingly, PCHR reiterates its urgent call for immediate action to end the impunity of Israeli leaders and to reaffirm the principles of justice and human dignity.
According to PCHR’s investigations, Israeli drones targeted the roof of al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital’s administration building with three successive missile strikes, each separated by only half an hour, starting at 09:30. Despite the severity of the attack, no injuries were reported among patients or medical staff. However, the repeated airstrikes caused severe damage to the water tanks and their pipelines, and enticed fear and panic among the medical teams, patients, and companions. This forced the hospital administration to evacuate parts of the hospital’s facilities and partially suspend work, despite the large influx of injured people due to the ongoing Israeli bombardment.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital is a major medical facility providing emergency and healthcare services to the population of the central Gaza Strip, which is experiencing a catastrophic collapse of its health infrastructure. PCHR emphasizes that this crime is not an isolated incident, but is part of a systematic policy pursued by the Israeli authorities to undermine the health system in the Gaza Strip. Since the resumption of their recent military operations, the IOF have deliberately forced all northern Gaza Strip’s hospitals out of service and targeted the Gaza European Hospital, forcing it out of service as well despite its vital role. The IOF have recently issued evacuation orders for large areas in Khan Younis that include main hospitals such as Nasser Medical Complex, the only hospital containing a blood bank in southern Gaza Strip.
The healthcare situation in the Gaza Strip has become catastrophic by all standards, particularly with the continued shutdown of many hospitals and the suspension of vital departments in the remaining operational hospitals due to direct targeting and severe shortages affecting 43% of essential medicines and 64% of medical consumables.1 Testimonies obtained by PCHR’s researchers from doctors indicate that there is a complete shortage of blood units for the wounded and sick. Most of those asked to donate blood already need a transfusion themselves due to malnutrition amid the ongoing deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.
According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO) – Health Cluster in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, since the onset of the Israeli aggression, the Gaza Strip’s health system has been subjected to at least 720 documented attacks as of 22 May 2025. These attacks included the destruction or damage of 597 healthcare facilities and the direct targeting of 186 medical transport vehicles, including ambulances, leading to the disruption of life-saving emergency services. As a result, 917 healthcare workers have been killed, while 70 patients and over 300 medical personnel have been arrested while performing their humanitarian duties.2
The targeting of medical facilities constitutes a crime and a blatant violation of international humanitarian law, particularly under the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit any form of attack on medical facilities or disruption of their operations. Such repeated attacks are part of a broader policy that may amount to a crime of genocide under Article II of the Genocide Convention, which criminalizes “the infliction of serious bodily or mental harm with intent to destroy a population, in whole or in part”. It also constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which criminalizes deliberate attacks against hospitals and civilian objects, as well as the deprivation of the civilian population of the basic means of life.
PCHR warns of the devastating humanitarian consequences of the ongoing undermining of the Gaza health system and emphasizes the need for the international community to urgently provide protection for health facilities and medical staff in the Gaza Strip and to ensure respect for the rules of international humanitarian law. It also stresses the importance of activating international justice mechanisms to hold Israeli leaders accountable and bring them before the ICC, as they are responsible for systematic crimes against civilians and civilian medical facilities.
The governments in the Middle East and beyond that have remained silent or failed to take effective action while watching the Israeli atrocities in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, will soon or later face the adverse consequences of indifference and inaction. The Zionist regime’s crimes will sure have catastrophic global consequences.