Three Palestinians were killed and 15 wounded, five of them seriously, when an Israeli strike hit beside a Red Cross field hospital in Rafah on Wednesday afternoon — and by the civil defence's count, five Palestinians were killed across Gaza that day, under a ceasefire that has now lasted a year without stopping the killing. Health officials at Nasser Hospital told the Associated Press the strike landed midafternoon near the field hospital in the southern city. A strike earlier in the day killed one man and critically wounded a woman, and another strike wounded at least five more people, AP reported.
What happened beside the Red Cross field hospital in Rafah?
The strike hit in the middle of the afternoon, next to a facility that exists to treat the wounded. Health officials at Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis, gave AP the toll from the Rafah strike: three killed, 15 injured, five of them seriously. Gaza's civil defence spokesman, Mahmud Bassal, told AFP the deaths resulted from a drone attack in Rafah, and that the local hospital had received three bodies and 15 injured people, one of whom later died — which takes the Rafah toll to four on AFP's account. WAFA, the Palestinian news agency, placed the Rafah strike in the al-Mawasi area and likewise reported three killed and at least 10 wounded, in a summary carried by Drop Site News. AP's own tally for Wednesday, in the reporting it opened, is four killed: the three beside the field hospital and the man killed in the earlier strike. AFP's is five. Both are published here as reported, unreconciled.
What was struck in Khan Yunis, and what has Israel said?
In a separate attack on Khan Yunis, also in southern Gaza, another person was killed, AFP reported; WAFA located that strike as a drone attack in the Mawasi area of al-Qarara, north of Khan Younis, which killed one Palestinian and wounded several others, and reported a further strike south of Khan Younis that wounded a man and his daughter. Asked about Wednesday's strikes, the Israeli military told AFP it had "struck terrorists" and that further information would be provided later. It did not respond to AP's request for comment at all. Neither wire's report carried a named target, and neither carried published evidence for the military's description of the people killed and wounded beside a Red Cross field hospital — three dead, 15 injured, five of them fighting serious wounds in the hospital the strike landed next to.
How many Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire?
More than 1,550, on the health ministry's count as reported by AP — a ministry whose records AP noted are regarded as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts. AFP put the figure at more than 1,500 reported killed in Israeli attacks in the year since the formal ceasefire. The health ministry's cumulative figures, summarised in Drop Site News' October 28 roundup, stand at 74,564 Palestinians killed since October 7, 2023, and 1,568 killed since October 11, 2025, the first full day of the ceasefire, with 5,649 wounded in that period. Wednesday's arithmetic is what that toll looks like at ground level: a drone beside a field hospital in Rafah, a man dead and a woman critical from a morning strike, a fifth death in Khan Yunis — five more names added to a ceasefire ledger that has never once closed a day at zero.
This report is drawn from the Associated Press's October 28, 2026 Middle East roundup, opened and read in full via newsline24.online (published 18:30 UTC), AFP's October 28, 2026 report, opened and read in full via the TT News Agency carrier Sweden Herald (published 20:06 UTC), and Drop Site News' October 28, 2026 roundup, opened and read via search and page summaries, for WAFA's placement of the strikes in al-Mawasi and al-Qarara and the health ministry's cumulative figures. The Wednesday toll is published unreconciled — at least four killed per AP, five per AFP's civil defence account — because the two wires' counts differ on whether one of the Rafah wounded had died. Casualty figures are attributed to the hospitals, officials and agencies each outlet cited; the Israeli military's 'struck terrorists' statement is published as its claim, exactly as AFP reported it, alongside the fact that it gave AP no comment.
