Throughout Israel\u2019s war<\/span> on Palestine, doctors Thaer Ahmad and Feroze Sidhwa spent months at Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, where they provided care as volunteers and survived a raid and an airstrike on the complex. On Wednesday evening, they were in an Uber in New York headed to a screening of their film about their time\u00a0in Gaza when they realized Nasser was the target of another Israeli airstrike.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey just hit Nasser again,\u201d Ahmad said, turning from the front seat toward Sidhwa. \u201cI think Rizk is dead.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He was referring to Dr. Rizk Abu Shaaira, an experienced surgeon and fixture of the Palestinian medical community whom both had worked alongside at the hospital and who appears in their film \u201cAmerican Doctor<\/a>.\u201d When Israel attacked Nasser Hospital on Wednesday \u2014 for at least the seventh time since the genocide escalated in 2023 \u2014\u00a0Abu Shaaira was one of the six people killed.<\/p>\n As the doctors arrived at a theater in Westchester for their screening, they received a flood of messages, photos, and video from their colleagues at Nasser, showing smoke-filled departments and wrecked operating rooms. The attack forced the closure of the hospital\u2019s emergency, surgery, radiology and laboratory departments, hospital officials said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Six people were killed in the airstrike, according to Gaza health officials, and 52 others were wounded, said M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res\/Doctors Without Borders. Israel said it had used a precision-guided missile to target a Hamas commander.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n One video showed a body bag holding Abu Shaaira, who had been working a night shift in the surgical ward, one of several floors severely damaged in the airstrike. Sidhwa, who worked directly with Abu Shaaira during his time volunteering at Nasser, described the 52-year-old father as a colleague who was \u201centhusiastic about everything\u201d and \u201cloved surgery.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Another image<\/a> showed unexploded ordnance launched at the hospital that medical workers had placed atop a stretcher, bearing the label \u201cGBU-39\/B<\/a>\u201d \u2013 a model of guided missiles manufactured by U.S. company Boeing. Israel purchases this precise missile model using funds from the U.S. State Department.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s not complicity,\u201d said Feroze when asked about the U.S.-made missiles used in the attack. \u201cThat\u2019s active participation in the murder of physicians and other healthcare workers.\u201d<\/p>\n Wednesday\u2019s attack on Nasser Hospital, which serves a population of about 1.3 million people, is the fourth Israeli strike on a hospital since the so-called ceasefire agreement in October 2025. It is the seventh on the Nasser complex, including a double-tap strike<\/a> in August 2025 when Israeli warplanes struck the hospital twice within minutes, killing first responders and journalists. Sidhwa had been volunteering at Nasser during an earlier airstrike on the complex in March 2025 violating an earlier ceasefire<\/a>. That strike killed multiple people, including a 16-year-old boy.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cUnder international humanitarian law, hospitals must be respected and protected.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n When Ahmad volunteered at Nasser in early 2024, a part of the hospital\u2019s pediatric ward was still damaged from an Israeli tank shell that flew through a window, killing Donia Abu Mohsen, 12, while she received care from a previous airstrike that killed her family. During his stint, Israeli soldiers raided the complex<\/a> and detained several doctors with whom he worked; they remain imprisoned without charge<\/a>. Ahmad said his colleagues at Nasser told him that upon hearing the first booms on Wednesday, they knew immediately, due to familiarity, that they had been hit by an Israeli attack.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSomething that has troubled us so much is how normalized the targeting of these hospitals has become for Palestinians serving their communities,\u201d Ahmad said. \u201cThey knew what was going on right away.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Since returning from<\/span> their time treating patients in Gaza, both Ahmad and Sidhwa have lobbied members of Congress to support the Block the Bombs Act<\/a>, a House bill that seeks to prohibit the sale of certain arms to Israel that are tied to violations of U.S. and international human rights law. Among the weapons subject to the ban is Boeing\u2019s 250-pound GBU-39. With a new Congress soon to be controlled by Democrats<\/a>, many of whom ran campaigns<\/a> touting support for the bill, both Ahmad and Sidhwa called on lawmakers to act.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf our Congress upheld international humanitarian law, as well as U.S. domestic law, Dr. Rizik would still be alive,\u201d Ahmad said, \u201cand there wouldn\u2019t be a surgeon who lost both of his legs in this bombing.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Israeli military claimed in a series of statements posted to social media that it had targeted a senior Hamas commander and other Hamas members who were \u201chiding\u201d in the hospital and that the strike was meant to \u201celiminate the threat they posed.\u201d The military did not specify the actual threat nor address the killing of Rizk, patients, and other civilians by \u201cprecision-guided missiles\u201d it claims to have deployed to mitigate civilian harm. Israel alleged Hamas was operating out of the hospital\u2019s second floor, but provided no evidence beyond a computer-rendered video<\/a>. At least six Israelis have been killed in Gaza since the start of the so-called ceasefire, the Israeli military has said<\/a>. Israel has killed more than 1,400 Palestinians in that time, according<\/a> to Gaza health officials. The United Nations said<\/a> that among those reported dead are at least 340 children. <\/p>\n In a statement to The Intercept, the Israeli military repeated its claim that Wednesday\u2019s strike was targeting a Hamas commander, but it declined to confirm whether the alleged target of their strike was killed or comment on the civilians killed in the attack.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump\u2019s Board of Peace, tasked with rebuilding Gaza, called Wednesday\u2019s attack a \u201ctragic loss of life\u201d but went on to repeat the Israeli allegation that Hamas carries out \u201ccontinued exploitation of hospitals and other critical civilian infrastructure for military purposes.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Sidhwa called the Board of Peace statement<\/a> on Hamas\u2019 alleged embedding in hospitals \u201cbullshit,\u201d adding that he has seen no evidence of Hamas embedding its fighters within any hospital in Gaza, a recurring observation by international doctors who volunteer in the strip.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cShow me one example,\u201d Sidhwa said. \u201cI would love to see a single photo, a single video, a single testimony from a Palestinian. Literally anything. It\u2019s just completely absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res\/Doctors Without Borders said in a statement that it was \u201cappalled and outraged\u201d by Israel\u2019s attack, adding that its doctors had to operate on two of their colleagues and another patient injured in the strike. The group referred to its earlier decision in January to temporarily halt<\/a> its teams\u2019 operations at Nasser, citing reports of \u201carmed men in different areas of the large compound of the hospital,\u201d and said similar incidents have taken place more recently. Even so, the group said, this does not justify Israel\u2019s attack.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
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