Israeli strike kills 19 in Gaza humanitarian area, health officials say
JERUSALEM – An Israeli strike Tuesday on Mawasi, a coastal tent encampment in southern Gaza that Israeli forces designated a humanitarian zone, killed at least 19 people and injured more than 60, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
Rescue workers were still trying to reach people trapped under rubble and debris, it added. A Gaza Civil Defense official, Mohammed al-Mughair, put the death toll at 40 earlier Tuesday. Ahmad al-Naqa, another Civil Defense official, said later in the day that the previous number was an estimate and that the Health Ministry reports the final numbers.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that it struck a Hamas command and control center hidden at Mawasi. It said it targeted “a number of senior” Hamas figures who were embedded within the humanitarian zone, accusing them of being “directly involved” in the Oct. 7 assault on Israel and of planning to carry out further attacks on Israelis. The strike killed three Hamas fighters, David Mencer, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister’s office, said in a briefing.
In a statement, Hamas called the IDF’s claims “a blatant lie” and accused Israel of trying to justify “these heinous crimes.” Hamas reiterated its claim that its members do not use civilian areas for military purposes.
Israeli warplanes hit the area with about five missiles in the middle of the night, leaving three large craters inside the camp and sending ambulances scrambling, said another Gaza Civil Defense spokesman, Mahmoud Bassal, on Tuesday morning. The strike took place near the British Hospital, he added. Unverified videos of the strike’s aftermath appeared to show people digging in the sand with their hands for survivors.
Mawasi - a remote coastal area between Khan Younis and Rafah in southwestern Gaza - has for months been declared a humanitarian zone by the IDF amid evacuation orders and intense fighting. Overflowing in areas up to the shoreline with hundreds of tents sheltering displaced individuals and families, Mawasi is the last IDF-designated safe zone in Gaza, though aid groups say nowhere is safe and that they are unable to effectively work in area.
A previous Israeli strike on the area in July killed at least 90 people, according to local health authorities. Israel said then it was targeting top Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif in that attack, a claim that Hamas has also denied.
Rami al-Shareef, a father of three displaced from Gaza City, has been in Mawasi with his family since May.
“I was lying inside the tent trying to sleep, and suddenly there was a loud sound of bombing, and we didn’t know what happened,” he said Tuesday. “There was the sound of three missiles. I went out with all the people in a panic after I checked on my three children and my wife, and they were fine.”
The 41-year-old said the targeted area was about half a kilometer away from the tent where he was staying. “I saw a deep hole,” he said. “We don’t know who the target was or who the person was in the place,” he said.
“There is nothing that justifies killing people while they sleep,” Shareef said. He said Israeli forces should wait to target wanted militants instead of putting people in harm’s way, adding: “Civilians should not be killed in this way.”
Reham Rady, 33, said she was asleep in a tent with her husband and two children when the strike occurred.
“Suddenly the sand was above us. My father, who lives in a tent next to us, came and pulled us out from under the sand,” Rady said, adding that she was lightly injured in the attack. “We came to this area because they told us it was safe.”
“There is no safe place in Gaza,” she said. “We complied with the orders to evacuate, and this happened to us.”
The Norwegian Refugee Council, a nongovernmental humanitarian group, said in a statement that the strikes on Mawasi showed that the area where Israel had ordered civilians to gather was a humanitarian zone “in name only.”
Jan Egeland, the NRC’s secretary general, said in the statement that the images of “craters burying dozens of tents where children and their families slept moments earlier are horrifying.” He said Israeli has for months “been forcing Palestinians in Gaza to flee from place to place without offering them genuine assurances of safety.” A cease-fire is the only way to stop more people from being killed, he added.
Egypt denounced the strikes on the encampment, saying in a statement that by “committing these crimes in this manner,” Israel has created a “threat to regional and international peace and security.”
Mahmoud Satary, 31, who said he was about a hundred meters away from where the missiles hit, told The Post that all the tents in the area and many people were “completely buried” under the sand.
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