Dr. Rizk Abu Shaaira

Abu Shaaira was killed shortly after midnight in the early hours of Thursday 12 November 2026, when an Israeli airstrike hit the Al Yassin surgical building at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis. He had been operating that evening and was on call overnight with other surgeons on the second floor. Some outlets, including Screen International and Deadline, dated the strike to Wednesday 11 November, the evening on which it began.

The Gaza Health Ministry said at least six people were killed, including Abu Shaaira and a 13 year old boy, Jihad Naeem Muhammad Abu Tilikh, who had been due to have surgery, and that dozens were injured. Dr. Mohammed Odainy, another surgeon who appears in American Doctor, was critically wounded. The Israeli military and the Israel Security Agency said they had struck a senior Hamas commander and other militants operating from the hospital, later naming the commander as Muhammad Abu Ismail, and said they were looking into reports that medical workers had been killed. The strike damaged operating rooms, wards and other departments and came during a ceasefire agreed in October 2025. Funerals for those killed were held in Khan Younis later that morning.

Few details of Rizk Abu Shaaira's early life were published at the time of his death. He was a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, and Gaza health officials gave his age as 52 when he was killed in November 2026. His name appears in English language reporting in several spellings, including Rizq Abu Shuaira, Rezq Abu Shaeera and Rizk Abu Shaira. He trained as a physician and became a general surgeon, working at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, the main referral hospital for the south of the Gaza Strip.

Abu Shaaira was a general surgeon in the surgery department of Nasser Medical Complex, a hospital that health officials say serves at least 500,000 people in southern Gaza. Through the war that began in October 2023 the hospital was attacked repeatedly, besieged and at times forced out of service, while its staff treated large numbers of patients with blast and shrapnel injuries amid shortages of medicines and equipment. Gaza Health Ministry director general Dr. Mohammed Zaqout said Abu Shaaira remained at the hospital throughout the war and did not abandon his duties for a single day.

He worked alongside visiting foreign doctors, including teams from MedGlobal and surgeons from the United States and the United Kingdom. He features in American Doctor, Poh Si Teng's 2026 documentary about three American physicians, Thaer Ahmad, Mark Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa, who volunteered at Nasser and returned home to bear witness to what they had seen. The film premiered at Sundance in January 2026 and was released in North America by Watermelon Pictures, with a UK and Ireland release by Conic scheduled for 20 November 2026. Sidhwa said he and Abu Shaaira had performed a complex operation together on a man with shrapnel wounds.

Colleagues described Abu Shaaira as warm and devoted to his patients. British surgeon Goher Rahbour called him a lovely and affable man and, after his death, wrote "RIP you beautiful soul." A nurse at Nasser Hospital told Medical Aid for Palestinians that he was deeply dedicated to his work and that the surgical staff had worked together with him as one team. Details of his family were not widely reported at the time of his death.

Abu Shaaira's death drew tributes from colleagues in Gaza, from foreign doctors who had worked beside him, and from the makers of American Doctor. Director Poh Si Teng said he was among the extraordinary medical professionals whose courage and humanity the film sought to honour. Watermelon Pictures said it was horrified and heartbroken and called for accountability and protection for medical workers. Gaza health officials said more than 1,700 health workers had been killed in the territory since October 2023, and Abu Shaaira's death, weeks before the film's UK release, became a widely reported example of the danger faced by the doctors it portrays.