ISLAMABAD (The Thursday Times) — Pakistan and 16 other countries on Saturday condemned “in the strongest terms” Israel’s airstrike on Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, which killed at least six people, including a surgeon and a 13-year-old boy, and said it violated international humanitarian law.
The joint statement, released by the Foreign Office in Islamabad, was issued by the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Algeria, Djibouti, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Türkiye, and the United Arab Emirates.
The strike hit a building housing the surgery wards of the hospital in Khan Younis early on Thursday. Medics said two missiles came through the roof of the five-storey building and knocked out a surgery department that serves about half of Gaza’s two million people. Around 20 people were wounded. It was the deadliest single strike in Gaza since Israel’s elections last month.
Among the dead was Rezik Abushira, a surgeon who had worked alongside visiting American doctors in Gaza. Gaza’s education ministry said a 13-year-old boy was also killed.
Israel’s military said it had targeted Muhammad Abu Ismail, whom it described as the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade, and accused the group of using the hospital compound as a headquarters. Hamas denied the claim.
The ministers said the strike “caused casualties among patients and medical personnel, in violation of international humanitarian law, which affords special protection to medical facilities and healthcare workers.” They also condemned continued Israeli strikes on tents and other sites sheltering displaced people, saying the attacks undermined the ceasefire and were “inconsistent with US President Donald Trump’s Comprehensive Plan.”
The statement warned that Israeli restrictions on aid, medical supplies, and shelter materials such as tents, caravans, and mobile homes were deepening Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe as winter approached. Children and infants, it said, “could once again die from exposure to freezing temperatures.”
On Thursday, a nine-month-old boy died of hypothermia in his family’s tent in Khan Younis, his father and a doctor said.
The ministers called on Israel to meet its obligations under the Sharm El-Sheikh Agreement immediately and in full, and to let UN agencies and aid groups work without obstruction. They urged the United States and the Board of Peace, the body overseeing the ceasefire plan, to step up efforts to make Israel lift all restrictions on aid.
The Board of Peace said on Thursday that the loss of life at Nasser Hospital showed why the plan “must be implemented immediately without further delay.”
Israel and Hamas declared a ceasefire on October 10, 2025, but Israeli strikes have continued. Hospital officials say Israel has struck the Nasser complex at least seven times since the war began.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on November 9 that he had directed the Foreign Office to pursue all possible means to urgently scale up humanitarian aid to Gaza after heavy rain flooded tens of thousands of tents.
