At least 90 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on an area designated as humanitarian by the Israeli army itself, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said.
The Israeli government, for its part, has acknowledged responsibility for the attack, but says the bombing targeted two Hamas military leaders.
More than 300 people were injuredaccording to a statement from the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Hamas said the attack took place in the al-Mawasi area near the city of Khan Yunis, which the Israeli army had previously designated as a “humanitarian zone” and urged Palestinians displaced by the conflict to move to.
An Israeli official said the attack targeted two heads of Hamas’ military wing and said the area targeted was “out in the open” and that “There were only Hamas terrorists and no civilians”. A version that Hamas denied.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to hold security talks throughout the day, his office said, according to Reuters.
Like an earthquake
An eyewitness to the incident in el-Mawasi told the BBC that the site of the attack looked like an “earthquake” had occurred.
Videos recorded in the area of the attack spread on social networks show burning remains and Bloodied victims being loaded onto stretchers.
People can also be seen desperately trying to dig through the rubble of a large crater with their hands.
Images from the nearby Kuwait field hospital showed scenes of chaos in which Patients were receiving treatment on the floor.
One of the doctors treating the wounded told the BBC that it was “one of the black days”.
Dr Mohammed Abu Rayya told BBC World Service Newshour that most of those taken to hospital arrived dead, with others suffering from multiple shrapnel wounds.
“It’s like being in hell”he said because of the number of women and children who lost their lives in the bombing.
A Hamas official, quoted by Reuters, called the attack “serious escalation” which proves that Israel is not interested in reaching a ceasefire agreement.
Ceasefire talks in Qatar and Egypt ended without success on Friday, the BBC has learned.
Who was the target?
Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, is one of the most wanted men by the Israeli army and one of its main targets.
The man was imprisoned in 1989, after which he formed the brigades with the aim of kidnapping Israeli soldiers.
Deif has an almost mythical status in the Gaza Strip, having evaded arrest and survived several assassination attempts.
Israel accuses him of orchestrating some of the deadliest attacks the country suffered in the 1990s.
He is believed to be one of the masterminds behind the Hamas attack on October 7.in which some 1,200 Israelis and foreigners, mostly civilians, were killed and another 251 were taken to Gaza as hostages.
The incident sparked an ongoing Israeli military operation in the Palestinian territory that has claimed more than 38,000 lives, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
Israeli military authorities also reported that they were seeking to eliminate Rafa Salama, Hamas commander in Khan Yunis. They described “precise” the intelligence information that led to the incident.
However, Israeli official spokesmen refused to say whether they believed they had managed to kill the two targets, nor did they say whether they believed that Some of the more than 100 Israeli hostages who are still in Hamas’s hands were in the area and could have been killed or injured.
Hamas, for its part, called the information regarding the presence of its leaders in the area “false.”
“This is not the first time Israel has claimed to target Palestinian leaders, something that has since been proven false.“the group said in a statement.
The organization also denied that any of its leaders died in the incidents.
Not the first time
This is not the first time that Israel has targeted refugee camps or places hosting displaced persons in its attempts to liquidate Hamas leaders. There have been five such incidents so far in July:
- Saturday, July 6th16 people were killed in an attack on a school run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, which was housing some 2,000 people, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
- Sunday, July 7thRockets hit a church-run school in Gaza City, killing a senior Hamas government official and three others, local sources said.
- On Monday the 8th, In the evening, several people were injured during a shelling of another UNRWA school in Nuseirat.
- And on Tuesday the 9thAt least 29 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a camp for displaced people opposite a school in Abasan al-Kabira (east of Khan Yunis), hospital authorities reported.
The Israeli military justified the first three attacks by saying Hamas politicians and fighters were using the refugee camps as bases of operations.
*With reporting by Rushdi Abualouf, Tom McArthur and David Gritten.
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