At least 500 killed in Israeli raid on Gaza hospital: Health Ministry

“The hospital was housing hundreds of sick and wounded, and people forcibly displaced from their homes” because of other Israeli attacks, a statement read.

The assault has cause widespread carnage and has left hundreds wounded.

Ashraf al-Qudra, the spokesperson for the Gaza Ministry of Health, told Al Jazeera Arabic that “the Israeli occupation targeted the hospital while hundreds of people were gathered and were sheltering there”.

“We are now in a critical stage, there are massacres being carried out right now,” he added.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has declared three days of mourning following the Israeli bombing of al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reports.

Various political factions have also called on Palestinians in the West Bank to observe a commercial strike on Wednesday to protest the deadly Israeli attack on the hospital.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry also announced in a statement the strike on the hospital was a “cold-blooded massacre”.

The hospital attack will “forever remain a stain on the conscience of humanity that has been witnessing the horrors committed against the Palestinian people without taking action to stop it,” the statement read.

The statement continued: “Every rule of international law is being shredded as thousands are mercilessly massacred and millions of people are being stripped of their humanity, subjected to wanton killing, starvation and forced transfer, with no end in sight as Israeli occupying forces continue to pound the Gaza Strip, with thousands of missiles and bombs targeting civilian areas by air, land and sea and threats to commit mass murders.”

Thousands of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah have gathered in the al-Manara public square to denounce Israel’s air strike on the al-Ahli al-Arab hospital.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has also stated that the United States is responsible for the deadly Israeli attack on the al-Ahli Hospital.

“The US holds the responsibility of the hospital attack because of the cover it gives to the Israeli aggression,” Haniyeh said.

Haniyeh added that the attack confirmed Israel’s “brutality” and the extent of its “defeat” after Hamas’s attack.

He also called for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank to rise up against the Israeli occupation – just as thousands take to the streets in Ramallah.

The World Health Organization’s director general has also condemned the fatal attack on al-Ahli Arab Hospital.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for the “immediate protection of civilians” and for Israel’s “evacuation orders to be reversed”.

About 3,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip since the war erupted on October 7.