Gaza's civil defence agency said early Tuesday that a strike on the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone in the Palestinian territory's main southern city of Khan Yunis killed 40 people and wounded 60 others, with the Israeli army saying it had hit a Hamas command centre in the area. Civil defence official Mohammed Al-Mughair told AFP that "40 martyrs and 60 injured were recovered and transferred" to nearby hospitals following the strike.
"Our crews are still working to recover 15 missing people as a result of targeting the tents of the displaced in Mawasi, Khan Yunis," Mughair added.
Civil defence sources said separately that the strike had left behind large craters. "Entire families disappeared in the Mawasi Khan Yunis massacre, under the sand, in deep holes," said civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal.
The Israeli military said in a statement early Tuesday that its aircraft had "struck significant Hamas operating within a command and control center embedded inside the Humanitarian Area in Khan Yunis".
"The organizations in the Gaza Strip continue to systematically abuse civilian and humanitarian infrastructure, including the designated Humanitarian Area, to carry out terrorist activity against the State of Israel and IDF troops," it added.
Hamas said in a statement on Tuesday that claims its fighters were present at the scene of the strike were "a blatant lie". The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group's unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken back to Gaza as hostages.
More than 40,980 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.
An estimated 1.9 million people - more than 80% of the population - are estimated to have been displaced by the war, and some have had to flee as many as 10 times.
