In a severe escalation reflecting a systematic effort to dismantle Gaza’s health infrastructure, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) bombed the Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital in Gaza City three times in a row on Tuesday evening. The strikes targeted the upper floors of the hospital within minutes of each other, while dozens of children lay in intensive care units.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, the hospital—Gaza’s only facility specialising in paediatric cancer, dialysis, and respiratory and digestive diseases, was treating 80 patients at the time. Among them were four children in intensive care and eight newborns in critical condition.
Following the attack, around half of the patients evacuated with their families in search of safety. Forty patients remain, alongside 12 intensive care cases and a medical team of 30 doctors and nurses.
The targeting of Al-Rantisi is not an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern of Israeli attacks on Gaza’s medical facilities, in violation of international humanitarian law, particularly the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit attacks on medical staff and institutions.
Since the start of the assault on Gaza, both Palestinian and UN data show that most hospitals and health facilities have been rendered partially or completely inoperative, either by direct airstrikes or by a crippling blockade. Israeli occupation has closed all border crossings since 2 March 2025, blocking vital supplies of food, medicine, and equipment, further deepening an already catastrophic humanitarian and health crisis.
Israeli occupation’s war on Gaza, backed by the United States, has killed at least 64,964 Palestinians and wounded 165,312, the majority of whom are women and children. Hundreds more have died from starvation. The situation now clearly constitutes what legal experts are calling an unfolding genocide.
