An Israeli drone strike hit the courtyard of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, on Friday, wounding several hospital workers. The attack was the latest in a pattern that the Palestinian Health Ministry describes as the “systematic targeting of health facilities.”
The strike wounded several Palestinians at the medical facility, according to Gaza’s emergency services and Al Jazeera reporting. The courtyard of the hospital was hit directly, disrupting operations and forcing staff to work under hazardous conditions. Witnesses reported scenes of panic among patients and medical workers.
Kamal Adwan is one of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza. It provides emergency and routine care to thousands of Palestinians in an area that has been under a near-total siege for months. The United Nations has said that an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people remain in the area, with access to food, water, and medical care severely restricted.
The hospital has been targeted repeatedly.
In December 2024, the Israeli military forcibly evacuated the facility, calling it a “Hamas command center,” a claim hospital administrators denied. During that operation, two paramedics were killed by a separate strike 500 meters (1,640 feet) away, their bodies left in the street with no one able to reach them.
In March 2025, the World Health Organization said that Kamal Adwan was one of the few health facilities in northern Gaza still operating at all. Its director had issued repeated desperate pleas for protection, saying the facility was hit by regular shelling and explosives.
Friday’s drone strike fits an established pattern. The Palestinian Health Ministry has documented dozens of attacks on medical facilities since the war began. In June 2026 alone, strikes near or on hospitals in Gaza City, Khan Younis, and Beit Lahiya killed at least 18 medical workers and patients.
The Israeli military typically says it is targeting Hamas operatives and that it does not intentionally strike medical facilities. It stated that it was “unaware of strikes in the area of Kamal Adwan hospital” after the December 2024 evacuation incident. No statement has been issued yet on Friday’s attack.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has repeatedly warned that attacks on health care facilities violate international humanitarian law. Under the Geneva Conventions, hospitals and medical personnel are protected targets in armed conflict — they may only lose that protection if they are used to commit acts harmful to the enemy, and only after a warning that goes unheeded.
The Kamal Adwan strike came on the same day that Israeli forces also struck historic sites in southern Lebanon, wounding medics near a Red Cross center in Tyre. The overlapping attacks on health infrastructure in Gaza and cultural heritage in Lebanon suggest a widening disregard for the laws of war that are supposed to limit what armies can do, even in conflict.
For the staff of Kamal Adwan, the International Committee of the Red Cross’s legal frameworks matter less than the simple question of whether they will survive their shift. One paramedic who survived an earlier attack on the hospital told reporters: “No one cares about us.”