An Israeli strike yesterday on a crowded tent camp housing Palestinians displaced by the war in Gaza killed at least 19 people and wounded 60, Palestinian officials said. Israel said it targeted senior Hamas militants with precise munitions.
The overnight strike occurred in Muwasi, a sprawl of crowded tent camps along the Gaza coast that Israel designated as a humanitarian zone for hundreds of thousands of civilians to seek shelter from the nearly year-old Israel-Hamas war.
Footage showed three large craters at the scene. First responders dug through the sand and rubble with garden tools and their bare hands, using mobile phone flashlights until the sun came up. They pulled body parts from the sand, including what appeared to be a human leg.
Photo: Bloomberg
“We were told to go to Muwasi, to the safe area... Look around you and see this safe place,” said Iyad Hamed Madi, who had been sheltering there.
“This is for my son,” he said, holding up a bag of diapers. “He’s four months old. Is he a fighter? There’s no humanity.”
Gaza’s health ministry said at least 19 people were killed in the strike, and that the toll could rise as more bodies are recovered. The Civil Defense, first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government, had earlier said 40 people were killed. The Israeli military disputed that toll.
A cameraman at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis saw 10 bodies in the morgue, including two children and three women. It was one of three medical centers that received casualties, Civil Defense said.
“We were sleeping, and suddenly it was like a tornado,” Samar Moamer said at Nasser Hospital, where she was being treated for injuries from the strike.
She said one of her daughters was killed and the other was pulled alive from the rubble.
The Israeli military said it had struck militants in a command-and-control center embedded in the area. It identified three of the militants, saying they were senior operatives who were directly involved in Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7 last year and other attacks.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesperson, disputed the initial casualty reports in a post on the social media, saying they “do not line up with the information available to the [Israeli army], the precise weapons used and the accuracy of the strike.”
Hamas released a statement denying any militants were in the area, calling the Israeli allegations a “blatant lie.”
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