AL-MAWASI, Gaza Strip/CAIRO (Reuters) -Israeli strikes ripped a huge crater, set tents ablaze and buried Palestinian families alive under sand in a safe in a zone in southern Gaza before dawn on Tuesday, killing or wounding scores of people, according to Palestinian officials.
Israel said it had struck a command center for Hamas fighters who it said had infiltrated the humanitarian area in al-Mawasi, a vast camp on sandy soil where the military has told hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to shelter since ordering them out of their homes. Hamas denied any fighters were present.
The Gaza civil emergency service said it believed at least 65 people had been killed or wounded, but it could not provide a breakdown of the casualties because many people had been buried and were still missing under the sand. Israel disputed the casualty figures.
Rescuers dug with shovels through the night, searching for bodies and survivors buried where the strike had blasted a crater the size of a small football pitch.
Tents in the surrounding area had been completely incinerated, leaving only their metal frames dusted with ghostly ash in a wasteland littered with debris. A car had been completely buried, only its top visible beneath the sand.
In the morning, mourners at a nearby hospital wailed over bodies heaped in white plastic bags or wrapped in bloodstained shrouds.
One of Raed Abu Muammar’s daughters had been killed. His wife and his other daughter had been buried but were pulled out alive. He carried the surviving baby girl.
“I was under the sand as well. I got out and started looking for my daughters and my wife. I saw body parts of the neighbors in my tent – I did not know those were our neighbors’ parts until I saw my family in one piece.”
“These are the Israeli targets. Look at them,” he said, gesturing to the baby girl in his arms. “We were in humanitarian areas that were supposed to be safe.”
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office put the number of fatalities at more than 40. It said that at least 60 others were wounded in the strikes and many remained missing.
Residents and medics said the camp was struck by five or six missiles or bombs.
The Gaza civil emergency service said at least 20 tents caught fire. It said the estimated 65 victims included women and children but did not immediately provide a breakdown of deaths and injuries.
There was no immediate comment from the Gaza health ministry, which compiles casualty figures. Earlier, the Hamas-aligned Shehab News Agency said 40 Palestinians were killed.
“Our teams are still moving out martyrs and wounded from the targeted area. It looks like a new Israeli massacre,” a Gaza civil emergency official said.
The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it struck senior Hamas commanders who were operating in a command center embedded inside a designated humanitarian area.
“These terrorists were directly involved in the execution of the Oct. 7th massacre and have been recently operating to carry out terror activities,” it said.
The military added that the casualty figure published by Hamas-run authorities in Gaza, “do not align with the information held by the IDF, the precise munitions used, and the accuracy of the strike”.
HAMAS DENIES FIGHTERS PRESENT
One of the survivors, Ola al-Shaer, told Reuters at the site that she had been awakened by the violent blasts. She cried out to her children and fled into the night, surrounded by fire.
“We saw women cut in pieces, children cut in pieces and martyrs. There are still people missing. People are looking for them and they still have not found them yet.”
The war was triggered on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 40,900 Palestinians, according to the enclave’s health ministry.
The two warring sides each blame the other for a failure so far to reach a ceasefire that would end the fighting and see the release of hostages.
Hamas, the Islamist group that controlled Gaza before the conflict, denied Israeli allegations that gunmen were present in the targeted area, and rejected accusations it exploited civilian areas for military purposes.
“This is a clear lie that aims to justify these ugly crimes. The resistance has denied several times that any of its members exist within civilian gatherings or use these places for military purposes,” said Hamas in a statement.
Ambulances raced between the tent camp and a nearby hospital, while Israeli jets could still be heard overhead, residents said.
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forced from their homes at least once, and some have had to flee as many as 10 times.
(Reporting by Nidal Al-Mughrabi. Additional reporting by Mohammad Salem in Gaza and Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Stephen Coates, Peter Graff)
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