The Israeli military has launched attacks across the Gaza Strip after an assault on a tent camp in al-Mawasi in the south killed at least 25 people, according to Palestinian officials.
On Saturday, at least 42 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on the Shati refugee camp and the Tuffah neighborhood in Gaza City, the head of the Gaza Government Media Office told Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera's Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said the Israeli army attacked a residential neighborhood in the Shati refugee camp, where Palestinians displaced from the territory's north were told to seek refuge.
“Rescuers, with the help of civilians, are trying to sift through the rubble to find survivors,” he said. “Casualties arriving at Al-Aqsa hospital are increasing.”
Gaza civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal said it was “very difficult” to reach the victims in Shati.
“Israel is reattacking areas in which it had operated, despite its previous announcement that it managed to militarily control the northern part of Gaza,” reported Abu Azzoum.
Israeli strikes killed 101 Palestinians and injured 169 in the past 24 hours, Gaza's Health Ministry said on Saturday, with many people under the rubble and ambulances and civil defense teams unable to reach them.
This is the highest daily death toll recorded in the enclave by the ministry since June 8, when Israeli forces killed at least 274 Palestinians to free four Israeli captives in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
On Friday, an Israeli attack near the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) base in the al-Mawasi camp – designated by Israel as a safe zone – which, according to Palestinian officials, killed at least 25 people and injured another 50, involved two attacks. , reported the Associated Press news agency.
Witnesses whose relatives were killed in one of the bombings told the AP how Israeli forces fired a second volley that killed people leaving their tents.
“We were in our tent and they attacked with a 'sound bomb' near the Red Cross tents, and then my husband came out at the first sound,” Mona Ashour, whose husband was killed in the attack, told the AP outside Nasser Hospital. . in nearby Khan Yunis.
“Then they hit the second one, which was a little closer to the Red Cross entrance,” he said.
The ICRC condemned the attack on the camp and said the warring parties knew the location of its humanitarian office, which was attacked. It reported that 22 people had died and 45 were injured.
The ICRC office in Gaza, which is surrounded by hundreds of displaced civilians living in tents, was damaged by nearby shelling in Gaza.
Shooting so dangerously close to humanitarian structures puts the lives of civilians and humanitarian workers at risk.
— ICRC (@ICRC) June 21, 2024
“Shooting so dangerously close to humanitarian structures, whose locations are known to the parties to the conflict and which are clearly marked with Red Cross emblems, puts the lives of civilians and Red Cross personnel at risk,” he said in a statement. release.
“The attack damaged the structure of the ICRC office, which is surrounded by hundreds of displaced civilians living in tents, including many of our Palestinian colleagues.”
A survivor of the attack told Al Jazeera that the fire was “consuming” them “from all directions.”
“We had just eaten and were about to sleep and get some rest, and the next thing we knew was the sound of resounding explosions destroying our places. We find ourselves alone without knowing what to do. “We still can’t process what happened,” the survivor said.
Al Jazeera's Abu Azzoum noted that in the last 24 hours since the al-Mawasi attack, there has been an increase in Israeli attacks.
“Witnesses said that Israeli tanks carried out a sudden and unexpected raid on al-Mawasi, launching a series of artillery shells towards evacuation centers and makeshift tents,” he said on Saturday.
“The entire al-Mawasi area is an evacuation center. It is a very small strip of land where more than 100,000 Palestinians have taken refuge. It is the place where field hospitals have been established and is a center for humanitarian organizations,” he added.
The Israeli military has claimed there is “no indication” it was responsible for Friday's camp attack, but said it was under review. Earlier, the army said its forces were carrying out “precise, intelligence-based” actions in the Rafah area.
According to the Health Ministry on Saturday, more than 37,500 people have been killed and 85,900 injured in Israel's war on Gaza since October 7. The revised death toll in Israel from Hamas-led attacks stands at 1,139, with dozens of people still captive. in Gaza.
