Israeli missile strike on Gaza humanitarian area kills at least 40 people, Palestinians say

People and rescuers remove the corpse of a person killed in an Israeli strike on a school in Gaza City. PIC/PTI

An Israeli strike on an area in the Gaza Strip home to Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Hamas war killed at least 40 people and wounded 60 others, authorities said Tuesday.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported the toll for the strike, citing medical officials, and suggested the figures could change.

Details about the strike in the Mawasi coastal community just west of Khan Younis which the Israeli military has designated as a humanitarian zone remained unclear. The area is home to many Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Hamas war in which the Israeli military has devastated the wider Gaza Strip after Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel.

The Israeli military described the strike as hitting "significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command-and-control centre," without immediately providing additional evidence.

Hamas in a reported statement denied that, though Israel long has accused Hamas and other militants of hiding in civilian populations. Israel has launched strikes in and around Mawasi in the past, even as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians now live there.

Footage circulating on social media showed deep craters at the site of the attack, the strewn ruins around it covered in shredded tents, a bicycle and other debris. Rescue workers used shovels to shift through the sand. Bystanders used their hands to dig, illuminated by mobile phone light. At least one crater at the site looked to be as deep as 10 metres.

The Israeli military said it used "precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional means" it did not immediately describe to limit civilian casualties.

Mawasi is an area 1 kilometre wide and 14 kilometres long. Palestinians who fled other areas have crowded into the sandy beach area against the Mediterranean Sea after Israel told them it would be safe. However, aid groups have struggled to provide care there among a sea of tents crowded with the belongings families were able to carry away with them when fleeing their homes.

The war has caused vast destruction and displaced around 90 per cent of Gaza's population of 2.3 million, often multiple times.

Gaza's Health Ministry says over 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 and are still holding around 100 after releasing most of the rest in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel during a weeklong cease-fire last November. Around a third of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead.

Meanwhile, the United Nations agency in charge of aid for displaced Palestinians said the Israeli military stopped a convoy for more than eight hours on Monday, despite it coordinating with the troops.

The agency's head Philippe Lazzarini said the staffers who were held had been trying to work on a polio vaccination 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 Tuesday in northern Gaza.

"UN Staff must be allowed to undertake their duties in safety + be protected at all times in accordance with international humanitarian law, he wrote. "Gaza is no different." 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.

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