Palestinian authorities have sharply condemned Israel’s airstrikes on the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza, calling the attack “one of the ugliest form of genocide.”

Gaza City’s al-Ahli Hospital, a mainstay of Gaza’s broken healthcare system, came under attack by an Israeli warplane early Sunday.

The attack heavily damaged the health facility. There was no report of casualties, but the Gaza health ministry said one child died during the rushed evacuation as they were unable to provide urgent care.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the attack “is a clear contempt for international law, humanitarian principles, and the global community.”

The ministry said the Israeli regime has deliberately destroyed “34 hospitals in Gaza since the war began (in October 2023) and imposed starvation, thirst, and a blockade on vital medical supplies.”

“This crime would not have occurred without the complicity and failure of the international community to act.”

The ministry holds the UN Security Council fully responsible for its “failure to protect civilians, enforce an immediate ceasefire, open humanitarian corridors, and initiate sustainable aid and reconstruction efforts.”

Israeli forces attacked the hospital only hours after the military threatened to expand its ground offensive deep into Gaza.

The regime’s minister of military affairs, Israel Katz, who said that the offensive will soon “intensify and expand to other areas throughout most of Gaza,” called on Palestinians to start moving westward and “evacuate the combat zones.”

Gaza’s civil defense agency deplored the attack on al-Ahli Hospital in a statement, saying that doctors and patients were given only about 20 minutes’ warning to evacuate the building before the strike.

“The bombing led to the destruction of the surgery building and the oxygen generation station for the intensive care units.”

The hospital, which is also known as the Baptist Hospital, was first hit less than two weeks into Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, when a missile hit a parking lot on the site where dozens of displaced families were sheltering.

More than 470 people were killed and hundreds of others injured back then

Hospitals, protected under international humanitarian law, have repeatedly come under attack during Israel’s campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing over the past 17 months.