An Israeli strike on a crowded tent camp housing Palestinians displaced by the war in Gaza killed at least 40 people and injured 60 others early on Tuesday, Palestinian officials said.
Israel said it targeted “significant” Hamas militants, allegations denied by the militant group.
It was among the deadliest strikes yet on 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 Israel-Hamas war.
Gaza’s Civil Defence said its first responders recovered 40 bodies after the strike and were still looking for people. It said entire families were killed in their tents.
An Associated Press camera operator saw three large craters at the scene, where first responders and displaced people were sifting through the sand and rubble with garden tools and their bare hands by the light of mobile phones.
Attaf al-Shaar, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah, said the strike happened just after midnight and caused a fire.
“The people were buried in the sand. They were retrieved as body parts,” she told an Associated Press reporter at the scene.
Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, one of three hospitals to receive casualties, said around two dozen bodies were taken in from the strike.
The Israeli military said it had struck Hamas militants who were operating in a command-and-control centre. It said its forces used precise munitions, aerial surveillance and other means to avoid civilian casualties.
Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians in the war, which was ignited by Hamas’s October 7 attack. It blames Hamas for their deaths because the militants often operate in residential areas and are known to position tunnels, rocket launchers and other infrastructure near homes, schools and mosques.
Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari disputed the reported number of casualties in a post on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, saying the reports “do not line up with the information available to the (Israeli army), the precise weapons used and the accuracy of the strike”.
He said the militants killed were directly involved in the October 7 attack and accused them of committing other recent attacks against Israel and Israeli forces, without elaborating.
Hamas released a statement denying any militants were in the area. Neither Israel nor Hamas provided evidence to substantiate their claims.
The war has caused vast destruction and displaced around 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times.
Israeli evacuation orders, which now cover around 90% of the territory, have pushed hundreds of thousands of people into Muwasi, a sprawling line of squalid tent camps along the coast.
Aid groups have struggled to provide even basic services in Muwasi, and Israel has occasionally struck targets there despite designating it as a humanitarian zone.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began. It does not differentiate between fighters and civilians in its count.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in their October 7 attack.
They abducted another 250 people and are still holding around 100 after releasing most of the rest in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel during a weeklong ceasefire last November. Around a third of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead.
The United States, Egypt and Qatar have spent much of this year trying to broker an agreement for a ceasefire and the release of the hostages, but the talks have repeatedly been bogged down as Israel and Hamas have accused each other of making new and unacceptable demands.
The war has plunged Gaza into a humanitarian crisis, and humanitarian groups have struggled to provide aid because of ongoing fighting, Israeli restrictions, and the breakdown of law and order.
The international authority on the severity of hunger crises said in June that the territory is at high risk of famine.
The Israeli Army stopped a UN convoy on its way to northern #Gaza for more than eight hours today (Monday) despite prior detailed coordination.
The convoy had both national & international staff traveling to roll out the #polio vaccination campaign for children in Gaza city and…— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) September 9, 2024
The main United Nations agency providing aid to Palestinians said Israeli troops stopped a convoy taking part in a polio vaccination campaign for more than eight hours on Monday, despite it co-ordinating with the military.
UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said the staff members who were held had been taking part in the campaign in northern Gaza and Gaza City.
“The convoy was stopped at gunpoint just after the Wadi Gaza checkpoint with threats to detain UN staff,” he wrote on the social platform X. “Heavy damage was caused by bulldozers to the UN armoured vehicles.”
He said the staff and the convoy later returned to a UN base, but it was unclear if a polio vaccination campaign would take place in northern Gaza on Tuesday.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The vaccination drive, launched after doctors discovered the first polio case in the Palestinian enclave in 25 years, aims to vaccinate 640,000 children during a war that has destroyed the healthcare system.
