ICHR Strongly Condemns the Israeli Occupation's Crime of Targeting the Baptist Hospital
The Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) condemns the crime committed by the Israeli occupation in targeting the Arab Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City at dawn on Sunday, April 13, 2025. The attack is part of a series of systematic assaults carried out by Israel, the occupying power, against the healthcare system in the occupied Gaza Strip since the start of the aggression on October 7, 2023.
Israeli warplanes launched two missiles that directly struck the two-story operations building, which includes the surgery department, oxygen station, and intensive care unit, as well as the emergency and reception building of the hospital. This resulted in the complete destruction of the hospital, rendering it completely out of service. Hundreds of patients, including those in intensive care, were forcibly evacuated within just twenty minutes.
Due to the systematic targeting and direct bombardment of hospitals and healthcare facilities during the genocide in Gaza, most of the 36 hospitals in the Strip have ceased providing services and have effectively gone out of operation.
The Baptist Hospital was the only remaining central hospital in Gaza following the targeting of Al-Shifa Hospital and other hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip. As one of the oldest and most important hospitals in the area, it affiliates the Anglican Church in Jerusalem and serves over one million Palestinians in Gaza and North Gaza governorates. It has been operating with minimal resources amid the near-total collapse of the healthcare system. Its bombing for the fifth time leaves Gaza with no functioning hospitals. This attack is part of the occupation's systematic plan to eliminate what remains of the health sector in the Gaza Strip.
The destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza threatens the lives of thousands of Gaza City residents and deprives them of access to basic medical care. It flagrantly denies the sick and wounded their right to life-saving treatment and healthcare. The ongoing closure of the Strip's crossings and the refusal to allow the wounded and sick to leave for treatment abroad only exacerbates the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and undermines the population's access to necessary medical care.
Targeting hospitals and medical facilities constitutes a blatant violation of all provisions and rules of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, both of which prohibit and criminalize attacks on healthcare facilities and medical personnel. Such acts amount to war crimes, acts of genocide, and state terrorism.
The silence and tolerance of the international community toward the occupation state's practices and its commission of genocide in the Strip amount to complicity and partnership in these crimes. Accordingly, the ICHR calls on the following:
•    The international community, United Nations agencies including the World Health Organization, international human rights and humanitarian organizations, and the International Committee of the Red Cross to fulfill their legal, moral, and humanitarian responsibilities. They must act urgently to pressure the occupying power to cease targeting civilians, healthcare facilities, and medical personnel, to immediately halt the Israeli military aggression on the Strip, and to compel the occupying power to fulfill its legal obligations toward the Palestinian people under occupation. Immediate measures must be taken to end these gross violations of the Palestinian healthcare sector and ensure the protection of the remaining medical system and the provision of its medical needs so it can deliver services. Assistance must also be provided to allow for the evacuation of the wounded in need of life-saving treatment abroad.
•    The international community, third-party states, and human rights bodies must work to investigate the crimes of the occupation as a step toward holding its leaders and all those involved in committing the crime of genocide accountable at the international level. This includes ending the policy of impunity, enforcing arrest warrants, and handing over the perpetrators to the International Criminal Court to ensure justice is served.
•    The international community must impose a comprehensive arms embargo on the occupying state, suspend arms trade agreements with it, and prevent the supply of weapons used to commit acts of genocide against the Palestinian people