Gaza’s civil defence agency said an Israeli strike Tuesday on a humanitarian zone in the Palestinian territory killed 40 people, with the Israeli army saying it had targeted a Hamas command centre in the area.
The strike hit Al-Mawasi — in Gaza’s main southern city of Khan Yunis — which was designated a safe zone by the Israeli military early in the war, with tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians seeking refuge there.
Israel’s military has occasionally carried out operations in and around the area, including a strike in July that it said killed Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, and which Gaza health authorities said killed more than 90 people.
Gaza civil defence official Mohammed al-Mughair said 40 bodies and 60 wounded were taken to nearby hospitals following the strike in the early hours of Tuesday.
“Our crews are still working to recover 15 missing people as a result of targeting the tents of the displaced in Mawasi, Khan Yunis,” Mughair told AFP.
In another statement, civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said people sheltering in the camp had not been warned of the strike, adding a shortage of tools and equipment was hindering rescue operations.
“More than 20 to 40 tents were completely damaged,” he said, adding the strike left behind “three deep craters”.
“There are entire families who disappeared under the sand in the Mawasi Khan Yunis massacre.”
– ‘Without prior warning’ –
Following the strike, survivors rushed to pull their belongings from the rubble, including mattresses and clothing, an AFP journalist saw.
“They told us to come to Al-Mawasi, so we came to Al-Mawasi, we settled here. The area was bombed without prior warning, they didn’t ask us to flee to a safer area or anything,” a Palestinian man told AFP without giving his name.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its aircraft had “struck significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command and control centre embedded inside the Humanitarian Area in Khan Yunis”.
“The terrorist organisations in the Gaza Strip continue to systematically abuse civilian and humanitarian infrastructure, including the designated Humanitarian Area, to carry out terrorist activity against the State of Israel and IDF (Israeli army) troops,” it added.
In a later statement, the military also questioned the toll provided by authorities in Gaza, saying that the numbers “do not align with the information held by the IDF”.
The statement named several Palestinian militants it said were killed in the strike, describing them as “directly involved in the execution of the October 7th massacre” that sparked the war in Gaza.
Hamas said in a statement that claims its fighters were present at the scene of the strike were “a blatant lie”.
Over the course of the war, Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields, an accusation the group denies.
– Ceasefire talks stalled –
From 1,200 inhabitants per square kilometre before the war, the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone now houses between 30,000 and 34,000 people per square kilometre, the United Nations says.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, including some hostages killed in captivity, official Israeli figures show.
Militants seized 251 hostages during the attack, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in the Gaza Strip has so far killed at least 40,988 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
The UN human rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once during nearly a year of war, according to the United Nations.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have been mediating in efforts to forge a ceasefire and hostage-prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas, but talks remain stalled.
Hamas is demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as part of any deal, but Israel insists troops must remain along the Gaza-Egypt border.
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