An Israeli strike on a displacement camp in the south of the Palestinian territory yesterday killed at least 71 people, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said.
It is the latest mass-casualty incident in the al-Mawasi area, where many Palestinians had fled, and came as international mediators pushed on with efforts to halt the war between Israel and Hamas militants.
Israel said the massive strike targeted Hamas’ military commander, but was not immediately known whether Mohammed Deif was among the dead.
Photo: AFP
Israeli officials confirmed that he and a second Hamas commander, Rafa Salama, were the targets. Hamas immediately rejected the claim.
Deif is believed by many to be the chief architect of the attack on Oct. 7 last year that killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and triggered the Israel-Hamas war. He has topped Israel’s most-wanted list for years and is believed to have escaped multiple Israeli assassination attempts in the past.
His potential killing threatens to derail ceasefire talks and would be seen as a major Israeli victory in the nine-month campaign.
“These false claims are merely a cover-up for the scale of the horrific massacre,” Hamas said in a statement in response to Israel.
A statement from the Gaza health ministry said there were more than “71 martyrs” and 289 people wounded in what it called a “brutal massacre by the occupation” at al-Mawasi camp.
The Israeli military said it had “additional terrorists hid among civilians” based on “precise intelligence.”
Footage of the aftermath showed charred tents, burned-out cars and household belongings scattered across the blackened earth as emergency workers and Palestinians displaced by the nine-month war searched for survivors.
Victims were carried on the hoods and in the hatchbacks of cars, and on donkey carts and carpets.
Witnesses said the strike landed inside al-Muwasi, the Israeli designated safe zone that stretches from northern Rafah to Khan Younis.
The coastal strip is where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have fled to in search of safety, sheltering mostly in makeshift tents.
“This was designated as a safe zone filled with people from the north,” said one displaced man who did not give his name. “Children were all martyred here. We collected their pieces with our hands.”
He said seven or eight missiles hit the camp and that first responders were targeted as well.
On Friday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to donor governments to resume funding to UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
“Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse in Gaza — somehow, appallingly, civilians are being pushed into ever deeper circles of hell,” he said.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said later that the agency had enough funds to operate through September.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
‘ARMED GROUP’: Two defendants used Chinese funds to form the ‘Republic of China Taiwan Military Government,’ posing a threat to national security, prosecutors said A retired lieutenant general has been charged after using funds from China to recruit military personnel for an “armed” group that would assist invading Chinese forces, prosecutors said yesterday. The retired officer, Kao An-kuo (高安國), was among six people indicted for contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法), the High Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement. The group visited China multiple times, separately and together, from 2018 to last year, where they met Chinese military intelligence personnel for instructions and funding “to initiate and develop organizations for China,” prosecutors said. Their actions posed a “serious threat” to “national security and social stability,” the statement
RSS