Hassan Eslaih has been murdered in Nasser Hospital while undergoing treatment for wounds from the last Israeli attack. Israel’s military has acknowledged conducting “a targeted attack” on the Nasser Medical Complex in the Khan Younis city of southern Gaza, killing two individuals, among them Palestinian journalist Hassan Eslaih.
Gaza’s Government Media Office on Tuesday confirmed the death of Eslaih, who was undergoing treatment at the burn unit of the hospital for critical wounds he suffered during an April 7 Israeli air raid on a media tent next to the hospital.
The AFP news agency video footage of Nasser Hospital following Tuesday’s attack included smoke billowing from the building as rescuers combed through the debris by the light of torches. A hospital staff member who identified himself as Abu Ghali claimed the Israeli shelling “does not distinguish between civilians and military targets.”
“This is a civilian hospital that treats wounded people 24 hours a day,” he said to AFP. Eslaih was a manager at the Alam24 News Agency and a freelancer for international news agencies, whose work included images of the Hamas-led October 7 raid.
At least 178 journalists and media workers have been killed in Palestine, Israel, and Lebanon since the war began, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Gaza’s Government Media Office put the death toll at 215.
Israel’s military said in a post on Telegram that the strike targeted a Hamas “command and control complex” at the hospital – the largest in southern Gaza – without providing further evidence. The terrorists employed the compound in preparing and conducting terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians and [military] personnel,” the post stated, what looked like a mention of Eslaih and Hamas.
The Health Ministry of Gaza on Tuesday denounced “the persistent targeting of hospitals and the pursuit and assassination of injured patients within treatment rooms”, and said that this “affirms Israel’s intentional will to cause more harm to the healthcare sector”.
Gaza hospitals have been a common target of Israeli strikes since October 2023 when the war started, but it is against the law to attack health centres, medical staff and patients according to the 1949 Geneva Convention. Israeli forces have bombed and set on fire a minimum of 36 hospitals throughout the enclave since the outbreak of war, according to Gaza officials.
