On September 8, 2025, about a month before fighting in Gaza halted, Mohammed Akram al-Kafarna was killed in an Israeli strike.
Following his death, the Palestinian Nurses and Midwives Syndicate mourned al-Kafarna as the Gaza head of the medical association.
The International Council of Nurses, a Geneva-based body that calls itself “the global voice of nursing,” wrote in a condolence letter that it was “deeply saddened by the death of Dr. Mohammed Akram al-Kafarna, one of the leaders of the Palestinian nursing profession in Gaza.”
He was “among the hundreds of nurses and healthcare workers who have tragically lost their lives during the conflict,” the ICN added, according to a copy of the letter published on Facebook.
But al-Kafarna was no Florence Nightingale. According to Hamas, alongside his medical work, al-Kafarna was also a fighter in the Nidal Nasser Battalion in Beit Hanoun, part of its Northern Gaza Brigade.
Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories
By signing up, you agree to the terms
In a picture published by Hamas, al-Kafarna is seen in full military gear, holding a loaded rifle.
His name is one of scores published by Hamas and its fellow Gazan terror group, Islamic Jihad, in recent months, belatedly identifying their many fighters killed during the two years of war sparked by the October 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel.
Among the names are not only those previously identified as journalists and athletes, but also healthcare workers, including doctors, nurses, and hospital employees.
The revelations that these figures had dual roles that made them legitimate military targets have cast doubt on claims that the Israel Defense Forces aimed their firepower at innocent civilians, including those in key roles that are supposed to afford them special protections.
At least 18 Gazans killed during the war who were reported to be healthcare workers — including doctors, nurses, paramedics, and other employees of Gaza hospitals or the Hamas-run Health Ministry — have since also appeared in lists published by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad identifying them as members of the groups.
The names of the 18 were first compiled by independent researcher Salo Aizenberg, and confirmed by The Times of Israel.
Despite the admissions, groups tracking those killed in the two years of fighting continue to list the figures as healthcare workers. On the ICN’s website, the statement condemning al-Kafarna’s death remains available, as does its assertion that his killing constituted a violation of international law.
The role of healthcare amid the fighting in Gaza has been among the most sensitive touchpoints, with Israel accused of targeting hospitals and first responders throughout the war. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is run by the Hamas terror group that has been the de facto ruler of the Strip since 2007, 1,141 health workers are among the approximately 70,000 people killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. Rights groups, citing the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, claim that the number of health workers killed is over 1,500.
Gaza Health Ministry tallies of war dead, which have never differentiated between civilians and combatants, are considered suspect by Israel given Hamas’s role in administering health and rescue services in the Strip. During the war, Israel regularly accused Hamas of using hospitals and other medical facilities as bases for military operations, often in tunnels dug below hospital buildings.
The IDF has released photographs, operational footage, and interrogation material that it says demonstrate Hamas’s use of hospitals to hide weapons, control centers, barracks, and even hostages.
The army has said its activities around hospitals, which left some facilities closed or only partially operational, sought to protect civilians and patients from harm within a complex combat environment, though rights groups have challenged those claims and continue to accuse Israel of decimating the Strip’s health services as part of a genocidal campaign.
Israel has also defended arrests of hospital directors and other health workers accused of collaborating with Hamas, such as Kamal Adwan hospital head Hussam Abu Safiya, whom the IDF says served as a colonel in Hamas’s armed wing.
Bad medicine
Throughout the war, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the two main fighting forces in Gaza, refrained from identifying rank-and-file operatives killed in the fighting, but, in recent months, both have begun publishing names in online obituaries, with hundreds of names published so far.
A previous Times of Israel review of published names revealed that several figures identified as journalists were actually terror operatives.
Earlier this month, the Israeli military provided details on 12 soccer players killed in the Gaza Strip during the war who it said have been identified as terror operatives, slamming their international portrayal as innocent athletes. Seven of the 12, including one who was a FIFA referee, were acknowledged as members by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Hamas continues to release new names daily, while Islamic Jihad publishes additional lists every few weeks.
Among those claimed by the terror groups are several figures previously identified as nurses, such as Ahmad Adel Abu al-Hilal, who served as a team commander in the Central Information Unit of Islamic Jihad’s Rafah Brigade.
When he was killed in Gaza on May 25, 2025, Palestinian media outlets, including the Palestinian Authority’s official television station, reported that he worked as a nurse at the European Hospital in southern Khan Younis, publishing a photograph of him wearing nursing scrubs.
Islamic Jihad also named Ayman Suleiman Abu Tir, who was killed in Gaza on June 26, 2025, as a commander in its Central Operations Unit.
The Gaza Nurses Syndicate’s Facebook page identified Abu Tir as a nurse at Nasser Hospital.
A database run by a website called Genocide in Gaza, which documents Gaza residents killed during the war, identifies him as head of the clinical nutrition department at Nasser Hospital.
Genocide in Gaza describes itself on its website as an independent legal team that collects information and documents what it describes as “acts of genocide and massacres committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip” since October 7, 2023.
It could not be reached for comment.
Jaber Abd al-Hamid Mohammadin was presented by Gaza’s Health Ministry on Facebook as a nurse who was killed while working in the intensive care unit at Rantisi Children’s Hospital in northern Gaza.
According to reports on social media, he was killed on December 13, 2024. However, there are no known reports of an IDF ground operation at the hospital at that time, and the military’s main operation there took place in late 2023.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad has since identified Mohammadin as a commander in its military manufacturing unit.
Six healthcare workers whose names later appeared on Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad lists of members killed during the war are included in a 2024 report published by Healthcare Workers Watch, a Palestinian group documenting healthcare workers killed in Gaza and detained by Israel.
According to its website, it compiles information by monitoring social media and cross-checking it against data from Gaza’s Health Ministry, hospitals, professional associations, and local media outlets.
Healthcare Workers Watch did not respond to The Times of Israel’s request for comment on whether it intends to update its report or issue a clarification.
Among those listed by the group is Ibrahim Abd al-Raouf al-Farra, who appears in the report as a nurse.
According to another database of those killed in the war maintained by the Institute for Palestine Studies, al-Farra worked as a clinical instructor at a nursing faculty, as a nurse at a private clinic, and at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. A picture of him posted on Facebook in 2021 shows him wearing a lab coat with the logo of a Khan Younis youth center.
Hamas, however, has listed al-Farra as one of its operatives. According to the group, he served in the Osama bin Zaid Battalion of the Khan Younis Brigade and was killed on October 20, 2023.
The Beirut-based Institute for Palestine Studies, an independent research institute, operates a database titled, “Documenting the Targeting and Destruction of the Health Sector in the Gaza Strip.” According to the project’s website, its purpose is to provide “accurate and detailed information” on what it describes as “Israel’s attacks on Gaza’s healthcare sector during the genocidal war.”
The Institute for Palestine Studies could not be reached for comment.
Healthcare Workers Watch also lists Ahmad Mohammed Hassan Balousha as a nurse killed in the war. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry’s Facebook page, he worked in the ministry’s organ transplantation unit.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, however, identified him as a commander in the military judiciary unit of its Northern Brigade.
Najm al-Din Nasser Abu al-Jabin was also identified as a nurse killed by Israel. According to Hamas, he served in the Fawzi Abu al-Qara Battalion of the group’s Northern Brigade and was killed on October 27, 2023.
According to reports from Gaza, Salem Jumaa Shirab was killed on March 2, 2024. About a year after his death, Gaza’s Health Ministry Nursing Administration wrote on Facebook that he had worked as a nurse at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, and was killed while working at an Emirati field hospital in Rafah.
He has since been named by Islamic Jihad as a member of its military medical department in the Khan Younis Brigade.
Mohammed Darram Abu al-Harbid is listed in the Healthcare Workers Watch database as a physiotherapist or occupational therapist killed during the war. In Facebook posts published before October 7 by a Gaza charity operating a physiotherapy center in Beit Hanoun, he is described as a specialist in the field.
However, he was subsequently identified by Islamic Jihad as a member of its air defense unit in the Northern Brigade of its military wing.
Healthcare Workers Watch and the Genocide in Gaza database list Haitham Mohammed Hammad as either a nurse or a Health Ministry employee.
An obituary from Islamic Jihad gives him a third role: cell commander in the military medical department of its Northern Brigade.
Doctors with guns
On June 25, 2024, Médecins Sans Frontières announced the death of Fadi Jihad al-Wadiya, a 33-year-old physiotherapist and father of three who had joined the organization in 2018.
The statement expressed outrage over his death, saying he was killed while riding a bike near an MSF clinic, “on his way to provide medical care to others who had been injured.”
A day later, after Israel accused al-Wadiya of being a member of Islamic Jihad, MSF responded that it “has no indication that this is true.”
“There is no justification for this; it is unacceptable,” the group fumed.
Then in February of this year, Islamic Jihad identified al-Wadiya as a member of the organization, describing him as an assistant in its military manufacturing unit.
MSF has since appended a note to its posts about al-Wadiya stating that it “had no information indicating that Fadi al-Wadiya was involved in any military activity before he was killed by Israeli forces.”
“If the Israeli authorities had any credible information about Fadi’s involvement in military activities, they never shared it with MSF — prior to his killing or when we reached out immediately after he was killed to ask for clarifications around the circumstances of his death,” the group added. “We would never knowingly employ people engaging in military activity. Any employee who engages in military activity would pose a danger to our staff and patients.”
Al-Wadiya continues to be listed by MSF as one of its employees killed during the war, on an “In Memoriam” page.
Not all of the healthcare-related personnel identified by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad worked in clinical roles. Some were employed in supporting positions within Gaza’s healthcare system.
Ahmad Faiz al-Dalu appears on a Palestinian Islamic Jihad list as a team commander in the Training Department of the Central Operations Unit in the Gaza City Brigade.
The exact date of his death is unclear. However, in July 2025, Gazan media reported that his body had been recovered and identified him as a medical laboratory technician at Kamal Adwan Hospital. Palestinian media published a photograph showing him wearing the hospital’s uniform.
Several other individuals identified by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as members of their organizations are listed in various databases as employees of Gaza’s Health Ministry in administrative positions.
Raed Abd al-Hamid Khdeir served as a cell commander in Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Khan Younis Brigade. The Institute for Palestine Studies database identifies him as an administrative employee at Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Tamer Mohammed al-Hamidi appears on a Palestinian Islamic Jihad list as a cell commander responsible for armaments in the organization’s Central Brigade.
According to an online database maintained by a group calling itself the Shireen Observatory, which documents Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank killed by Israeli forces, al-Hamidi worked in an administrative position at Al-Aqsa Hospital, apparently referring to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza.
Shireen Observatory could not be reached for comment.
The Institute for Palestine Studies also identifies al-Hamidi as an administrative employee at Gaza’s Health Ministry.
On June 22 of this year, amid a ceasefire that took effect in October, Maysara Salah Nassar was killed while traveling in a civilian vehicle struck by Israel, according to reports from Gaza.
According to the Genocide in Gaza database, Nassar was a paramedic. However, Islamic Jihad published a notice identifying him as a cell commander in the military medical department of the organization’s Rafah Brigade.
Two of the figures flagged by Aizenburg were not included in any of the databases, but were identified as health workers by their places of work.
After Munther Faiz al-Sharafa was killed in July 2025, a Gaza City clinic identified him as an employee, without specifying what his role was. Al-Sharafa subsequently appeared on a Palestinian Islamic Jihad list as a cell commander in the Financial Management Unit of the Gaza City Brigade.
Abd al-Latif Adel Abu Tabiya was killed that same month, along with his infant daughter and several family members, according to reports from Gaza.
On his Facebook profile, Abu Tabiya identified himself as an employee of the European Hospital in Khan Younis, though without specifying his role there.
The hospital compound was bombed by Israel in May 2025, after being evacuated, in strikes that killed then-Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar, who Israel said had been hiding in terror tunnels beneath the site.
Though it is unknown whether he had any connection to the military activities taking place at the hospital, Abu Tabiya was later identified by Islamic Jihad as a team commander in the Eastern Battalion of the Khan Younis Brigade.
Related: Finally naming their war dead, Gazan terror groups admit some slain journalists were fighters