At least 19 people have been killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a “humanitarian zone” in Gaza, local health authorities reported on Tuesday.
Gaza’s civil emergency service stated that at least four missiles hit the al-Mawasi area in Khan Younis, a location that Israel had instructed Palestinians to evacuate to amid the bombing campaign and ground offensive.
The attack on an overcrowded tent camp was a “massacre,” the spokesman for the service, Mahmoud Bassal, told AFP news agency, adding that “entire families disappeared… under the sand, in deep holes.”
Gaza’s health ministry has said 19 bodies have been recovered so far. “There are still a number of victims under the rubble, under the sand and on the roads,” but rescuers cannot reach them at the moment, the ministry stressed.
A survivor of the strike told Al Jazeera that he and his neighbors “woke up to the Israeli warplanes firing missiles at us. The tents were engulfed in flames, like an inferno.” Al-Mawasi “is claimed to be a safe humanitarian zone… but in reality, these are all lies.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has insisted that it struck the camp because “significant Hamas terrorists... were operating within a command and control center embedded inside the humanitarian area.”
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has said Israel is able to “persist in committing further massacres” in al-Mawasi and other parts of Gaza due to global community’s failure to implement international law and halt the IDF operation.
“An immediate ceasefire is the only way to protect Palestinian civilians and create a suitable environment for achieving a prisoner exchange deal,” the ministry stressed.
Al-Mawasi was also struck by Israel in July, resulting in at least 90 fatalities, according to Gaza authorities. Back then, the IDF said it had targeted and killed a high-ranking Hamas commander, Mohammed Deif. The Palestinian armed group claims that Deif is still alive.
Israel began its military operation in Gaza in response to a cross-border incursion by Hamas last October, in which around 1,200 people died. More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed and almost 95,000 wounded in Israeli attacks on the enclave, according to Gaza’s health ministry.