Israel Used a U.S.-Made Missile to Kill Six at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital

“That’s not complicity," said a U.S. doctor. "That's active participation in the murder of physicians and other healthcare workers.” The post Israel Used a U.S.-Made Missile to Kill Six at Gaza’s Nass

Throughout Israel’s war 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 in Gaza when they realized Nasser was the target of another Israeli airstrike.

“They just hit Nasser again,” Ahmad said, turning from the front seat toward Sidhwa. “I think Rizk is dead.”

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 “American Doctor.” When Israel attacked Nasser Hospital on Wednesday — for at least the seventh time since 2023 — Abu Shaaira was one of the six people killed.

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’s emergency, surgery, radiology and laboratory departments, hospital officials said.

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Six people were killed in the airstrike, according to Gaza health officials, and 52 others were wounded, said Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders. Israel said it had used a precision-guided missile to target a Hamas commander.

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 “enthusiastic about everything” and “loved surgery.”

Another image showed unexploded ordnance launched at the hospital that medical workers had placed atop a stretcher, bearing the label “GBU-39/B” – 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.

“That’s not complicity,” said Feroze when asked about the U.S.-made missiles used in the attack. “That’s active participation in the murder of physicians and other healthcare workers.”

Wednesday’s 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 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. That strike killed multiple people, including a 16-year-old boy.

“Under international humanitarian law, hospitals must be respected and protected.”

When Ahmad volunteered at Nasser in early 2024, a part of the hospital’s 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 and detained several doctors with whom he worked; they remain imprisoned without charge. 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.

“Something that has troubled us so much is how normalized the targeting of these hospitals has become for Palestinians serving their communities,” Ahmad said. “They knew what was going on right away.”

Since returning from their time treating patients in Gaza, both Feroze and Sidhwa have lobbied members of Congress to support the Block the Bombs Act, 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’s 250-pound GBU-39. With a new Congress soon to be controlled by Democrats, many of whom ran campaigns touting support for the bill, both Ahmad and Sidhwa called on lawmakers to act.

“If our Congress upheld international humanitarian law, as well as U.S. domestic law, Dr. Rizik would still be alive,” Ahmad said, “and there wouldn’t be a surgeon who lost both of his legs in this bombing.”

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 “hiding” in the hospital and that the strike was meant to “eliminate the threat they posed.” The military did not specify the actual threat nor address the killing of Rizk, patients, and other civilians by “precision-guided missiles” it claims to have deployed to mitigate civilian harm. Israel alleged Hamas was operating out of the hospital’s second floor, but provided no evidence beyond a computer-rendered video. At least six Israelis have been killed in Gaza since the start of the so-called ceasefire, the Israeli military has said. Israel has killed more than 1,400 Palestinians in that time, according to Gaza health officials. The United Nations said that among those reported dead are at least 340 children.

In a statement to The Intercept, the Israeli military repeated its claim that Wednesday’s 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.

President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, tasked with rebuilding Gaza, called Wednesday’s attack a “tragic loss of life” but went on to repeat the Israeli allegation that Hamas carries out “continued exploitation of hospitals and other critical civilian infrastructure for military purposes.”

Sidhwa called the Board of Peace statement on Hamas’ alleged embedding in hospitals “bullshit,” 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.

“Show me one example,” Sidhwa said. “I would love to see a single photo, a single video, a single testimony from a Palestinian. Literally anything. It’s just completely absurd.”

Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders said in a statement that it was “appalled and outraged” by Israel’s 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 its teams’ operations at Nasser, citing reports of “armed men in different areas of the large compound of the hospital,” and said similar incidents have taken place more recently. Even so, the group said, this does not justify Israel’s attack.

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“Under international humanitarian law, hospitals must be respected and protected,” the group said. “In no conceivable circumstances can attacks on functioning hospitals in Gaza be treated as normal or acceptable.”

The strike came days after the board issued a rare condemnation of the Israeli government for its blockade of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza in the aftermath of a storm that wiped out thousands of tents, killing four people. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuffed the criticism and blamed Hamas for not disarming. Israel, meanwhile, continues to occupy about 70% of the Gaza strip, extending beyond the yellow line, a border drawn in the ceasefire agreement that is meant to mark where Israel can operate its military, and launches attacks on the strip on a weekly basis, all violations of the agreement.

“The same military who’s blocking the necessary supplies, as a middle finger to you, decides that they’re going to bomb a hospital,” Ahmad said. “I’m sure behind closed doors everybody is fuming and reeling, but unless people are ready to actually hold the Israelis accountable, actually use their leverage, nothing is going to change.”

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