Gaza Civil Defense reports 40 dead in attack on humanitarian zone

Photo: Bashar Taleb Agence France-Presse The Israeli army ordered on Monday the evacuation of several sectors of the northwest of the Gaza Strip where it is relentlessly continuing its offensive against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, after more than eleven months of war.

Agence France-Presse

Published at 20:43 Updated at 21:10

• Middle East

The Gaza Civil Defense reported on Monday night that 40 people were killed in an Israeli attack on the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone in Khan Younis, with Israel claiming to have targeted a Hamas “command center.”

“40 martyrs and 60 wounded were recovered and transferred” to nearby hospitals after the strike, a Gazan Civil Defense official, Mohammed Al-Mughair, told AFP.

“Our teams are still working to find 15 people missing after the strike that targeted the tents of displaced people in al-Mawasi, in Khan Younis,” he added.

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Civil Defense sources reported that the strikes had created large craters in the humanitarian area.

“Entire families disappeared in the massacre of Al-Mawasi in Khan Younis, under the sand, in deep holes,” another Civil Defense spokesman, Mahmoud Basal.

The Israeli army said it targeted the area after identifying the presence of Hamas cadres there.

An Israeli military aircraft “struck senior Hamas terrorists operating from a command and control center within the Khan Younis humanitarian zone,” the Israeli military said.

“Terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip continue to systematically abuse civilian and humanitarian infrastructure, including the designated humanitarian zone, to carry out terrorist activities against the State of Israel and IDF troops,” it said in its statement.

Hamas denied having fighters in the humanitarian zone.

“The occupation’s [Israel’s] claims of the presence of resistance fighters are a blatant lie,” Hamas said in a statement on the Telegram messaging service.

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