Many health workers have been killed during attacks on medical facilities and medical transport in the Gaza war. By July 2026, Israeli forces had killed more than 1,700 healthcare workers in Gaza. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reported that at least 1,701 health sector workers were killed between October 2023 and October 2025, not including at least five additional medical workers killed during 2026. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor verified that Israel had killed over 1,700 healthcare workers and detained hundreds more since the start of the war. By mid-2026, more than 80 percent of hospitals and healthcare institutions in Gaza had been rendered non-operational. According to a July 2026 United Nations humanitarian report, overall Palestinian fatalities since October 2023 exceeded 73,000, including more than 1,700 healthcare workers and 595 humanitarian aid workers.
Although deaths and injuries occurred among medical responders on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, the vast majority of attacks were conducted by Israeli forces against Palestinian personnel. Throughout the conflict, the World Health Organization (WHO) documented hundreds of attacks on healthcare facilities, ambulances, and medical personnel, with the highest concentration in the Gaza Strip.
Attacks on health workers in Palestine
Israeli forces killed at least 1,722 healthcare workers in Gaza by October 2025, averaging two fatalities per day. The World Health Organization (WHO) verified more than 449 attacks on healthcare in Gaza and the occupied West Bank since 7 October 2023, alongside 60 attacks on healthcare infrastructure within Israel. The casualties in Gaza encompassed physicians, nursing staff, paramedics, hospital administrators, and specialized supportive personnel.
On 8 October 2023, Israel killed at least six health workers during strikes on medical facilities and ambulances. By 15 October 2023, the confirmed number of health workers killed had risen to 28, spanning 30 recorded incidents of violence against health facilities, ambulances, and medical responders. By 16 November 2023, more than 200 health workers had been killed, dying inside hospitals, while operating ambulances, at active bombing sites, or within their private residences.
On 18 January 2024, Israel struck a residential compound housing Medical Aid for Palestinians staff and their family members, injuring several individuals. On 9 February 2024, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that the cumulative medical worker death toll had reached 340.
In early March 2024, Meinie Nicolai, a director at Doctors Without Borders (MSF), stated that Israel had killed two humanitarian aid workers without providing an official military justification. Reem Abu Lebdeh, a trustee on the UK board of MSF, was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis during the same period.
By 26 March 2024, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported that 15 of its staff members had been killed since the outbreak of war. By 1 June 2024, that total had risen to 33.
In July 2024, a Palestinian physician and his family were killed by an Israeli airstrike after complying with an Israeli military evacuation order. In September 2024, the Gaza Health Ministry released an identified list of 1,151 healthcare workers killed up to that date.
Hospital staff
On 14 October 2023, according to a statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, an Israeli rocket damaged the upper two floors of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital's cancer treatment centre, which housed the ultrasound and mammography wards, injuring four staff members. Another explosion in the hospital's courtyard on 17 October led to an estimated death toll of about 471, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The cause of the explosion is disputed; investigations by several mainstream news agencies suggested the blast was caused by an errant rocket fired from inside Gaza, though without reaching a definitive forensic consensus. Conversely, an independent visual investigation by Forensic Architecture published on 20 October 2023 concluded that the blast originated from a munition fired from Israel.
At al-Awda Hospital, staff reported that Israeli snipers opened fire on civilians outside the building, while a hospital monitoring manager stated that a staff nurse was fatally shot through a window on the building's fourth floor. On 3 February 2024, the Red Crescent buried three of its staff members following two weeks of repeated bombardments surrounding the Al-Amal Hospital. Another hospital physician in Deir el-Balah was killed by a strike on 22 February 2024.
By mid-2024, cumulative deaths among healthcare professionals in Gaza had surpassed the combined total of health worker fatalities documented across all other global conflicts during 2022, as well as in any single year since 2016. Furthermore, dozens of medical personnel were detained by Israeli forces, including Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Hospital, who remained held without charges for seven months until his release in July 2024. In May 2024, Adnan al-Bursh, head of orthopaedics at Al-Shifa Hospital, died inside an Israeli prison following four months in military detention.
In October 2024, MSF condemned an Israeli airstrike that killed one of its healthcare staff alongside fourteen civilians. On 13 December 2024, Israeli tank fire killed Dr. Sayeed Joudeh, identified as the last practicing orthopaedic surgeon operating in northern Gaza.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, was detained by Israeli forces during hospital military operations in December 2024 and remained in custody as of July 2026. In July 2026, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded that Israeli security forces had intentionally killed, detained, and mistreated medical personnel, characterizing the acts as war crimes of wilful killing and torture, alongside the crime against humanity of extermination. The Commission formally demanded Israel release Abu Safiya and all arbitrarily detained healthcare providers.
Paramedics and ambulance strikes
On 7 October 2023, an ambulance departing the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis was hit by an Israeli strike at approximately 14:00, injuring multiple paramedics, an attack subsequently documented by verified social media footage and Anadolu Agency reporting. On the same date, WHO recorded a separate strike in Jabalia targeting two ambulances, killing two paramedics. Gaza's Health Ministry confirmed that three ambulances overall were directly struck during the initial response, leaving ten paramedics injured.
On 18 November 2023, two people were killed while travelling in a marked MSF evacuation convoy in Gaza City. Shortly thereafter, PRCS reported that Israeli forces targeted an ambulance operating in northern Gaza, resulting in three fatalities.
On 7 February 2024, PRCS stated that gunfire in Gaza City killed one paramedic and wounded two others. On 10 February 2024, two PRCS paramedics dispatched to rescue six-year-old Hind Rajab were found dead inside their destroyed ambulance after losing communications on or around 29 January 2024. In response, the WHO released an institutional condemnation mourning paramedics Yusuf Zeino and Ahmed Al-Madhoun. Independent forensic investigations by media organizations and human rights monitors analyzing munition fragments and satellite imagery indicated that Israeli armor fired directly upon the rescue vehicle.
On 23 February 2024, an airstrike killed a PRCS paramedic in Rafah. In May 2024, PRCS documented another bombing that destroyed an operational ambulance in Rafah, killing two paramedics. In June 2024, an Israeli strike on a civil defence command installation killed three emergency rescue personnel.
In March 2025, Israeli troops killed 15 Palestinian medics and rescue personnel during pre-dawn military operations in the Tel al-Sultan district of Rafah, an event described by surviving eyewitnesses and UN observers as a massacre. The bodies—comprising eight PRCS responders, six Civil Defence rescue specialists, and a UN worker—were recovered from a mass grave alongside destroyed medical ambulances and a marked UN vehicle. Witnesses stated that several recovered bodies displayed evidence of binding and execution at close range. Although initial IDF accounts stated the operation targeted a militant named Mohammed Amin Shobaki, subsequent identifications confirmed no individual matching that identity among the deceased. In July 2026, an internal military inquiry conducted by the IDF concluded the deaths resulted from operational and "professional failures," resulting in the formal dismissal of the military unit's deputy commander.
In a separate strike on 25 July 2026, an Israeli strike killed an emergency medic responding to casualties within the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
Israel's stated reasons for targeting medical facilities
Israeli officials state that military operations target hospitals and ambulances due to operational exploitation by armed groups deploying within them. Multiple legal scholars and human rights monitoring groups argue that Israeli forces frequently fail to provide independent evidentiary substantiation justifying the revocation of protected medical status.
The Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq argues that systematic killings of healthcare professionals operate within a comprehensive military methodology designed to irreversibly dismantle healthcare capability across Gaza, correlating personnel fatalities with severe restrictions on humanitarian medical entry and structural interdictions against emergency patient evacuations.
Dual roles Belated obituaries and lists published by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have identified several killed healthcare workers as members or commanders in their military wings. A July 2026 report by the Times of Israel, verifying research compiled by independent researcher Salo Aizenberg, identified at least 18 instances where doctors, nurses, paramedics, and hospital employees were subsequently named in these notices.
Attacks on health workers in Israel
Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel's national emergency medical service, reported that three employees were killed, four volunteers were injured, a treated patient was shot inside an operational ambulance, and nine emergency vehicles were destroyed by gunfire and arson during the initial 7 October 2023 attack. During the Be'eri massacre, the kibbutz dental clinic became the locus of a prolonged standoff between armed militants and security personnel. The clinic was subsequently breached by Hamas militants, resulting in the fatal shooting of all sheltering medical staff and injured patients.
Two doctors from the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba were killed following the outbreak of the war in October 2023. Dr. Eitan Ne'eman, a pediatric intensive care physician and IDF reservist in the 7008th Battalion, was killed in battle near the Gaza border. Dr. Daniel Levy, an ENT resident living in Kibbutz Be'eri, was killed inside the kibbutz clinic while treating the wounded alongside the local emergency response team.
By February 2024, Israeli military medical reporting documented that approximately 230 Israeli frontline medevac teams had come under active enemy fire during tactical medical evacuation missions.
Attacks on health workers in Lebanon
On 11 January 2024, IDF operations targeted a civilian rescue facility in the southern Lebanese village of Hanine, destroying an ambulance and killing two rescue workers affiliated with the Islamic Health Committee.
Blockade and restrictions on medical supplies