The Gaza Civil Defense announced that 40 people were killed and 60 wounded in the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone in Khan Younis on Monday night, in an attack that Israel presented as directed against a Hamas “command center”.
“40 martyrs and 60 wounded were recovered and transferred” to nearby hospitals after the strike, a Gazan Civil Defense official, Mohammed Al-Mughair, told AFP.
“Our teams are still working to find 15 people missing after the strike that targeted the tents of displaced people in al-Mawasi, in Khan Younis,” a city in the southern Gaza Strip, he added.
The strikes left large craters in the humanitarian area, said the Civil Defense, the organization responsible for emergency services in the Gaza Strip.
“Entire families disappeared in the Al-Mawasi massacre in Khan Younis, under the sand, in deep holes,” another civil defense spokesman, Mahmoud Basal, said in a statement.
“More than 20 to 40 tents have been completely damaged,” he added, lamenting a shortage of tools and equipment that is hampering rescue operations.
The Israeli army said it targeted the area after identifying the presence of Hamas officials there, which it has been waging a merciless war against since the unprecedented attack that the Islamist organization launched on its territory on October 7.
An Israeli military aircraft “struck senior Hamas terrorists operating from a command and control center within the Khan Younis humanitarian zone,” the Israeli military said.
“Terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip continue to systematically abuse civilian and humanitarian infrastructure, including the designated humanitarian zone, to carry out terrorist activities against the State of Israel and IDF troops,” it said in its statement.
Hamas has denied having fighters in the humanitarian zone.
“The occupation’s (Israel, editor’s note) claims about the presence of resistance fighters are a blatant lie,” Hamas said in a statement on the Telegram messaging service.
Israel regularly accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields, which the group denies.
Al-Mawasi, in the city of Khan Younis, was designated a safe zone by the Israeli army at the start of the war, and tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge there.
The army, however, has continued to carry out periodic operations in the area, including a strike in July that health officials said killed more than 90 people, including Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif, according to Israel.
– Almost the entire population displaced –
The latest attack comes after three Israeli security guards were killed on Sunday by a truck driver who opened fire at the crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after its unprecedented October 7 attack in southern Israel that killed 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.
Of the 251 people abducted that day, 97 are still being held in Gaza, 33 of whom have been declared dead by the army.
In response, Israel launched a major offensive in Gaza that left at least 40,988 dead, according to the death toll from the Hamas government’s health ministry in the Gaza Strip, released before Tuesday’s attack.
The Israeli army ordered the evacuation of several areas in the northwest of the Gaza Strip on Monday.
Nearly the entire population of Gaza has been displaced at least once in nearly a year of war. Tens of thousands of people leave their homes or makeshift shelters with each evacuation, taking their belongings with them, sometimes without knowing where to go.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt are trying to negotiate a ceasefire and a hostage and prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas, but the talks remain deadlocked.
bur-smw-lgo/phs
