Key Points
- Israel has struck a crowded tent camp in Gaza which it had designated as a humanitarian zone.
- The attack killed at least 19 people in the designated safe zone with more bodies believed to be buried.
- The Israeli military says the strike targeted a Hamas command centre concealed within the camp.
Israel has bombed a declared safe zone in Gaza, in an airstrike the territory's health ministry said killed at least 19 people and injured dozens more.
The Israeli military says the attack targeted Palestinian militants.
The strike hit al-Mawasi in the southern Gaza Strip, which Israel had designated as a "humanitarian zone" early in the war and prompted condemnations from the region and beyond.
Samar al-Shair, one of tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians who have sought refuge in the coastal area, said the attack came "as we were sleeping in our tents", setting makeshift shelters ablaze.
Al-Shair told Agence France-Presse the Israeli military had asked Palestinians to go to al-Mawasi, "telling us it was safe. Where is the safety?"
Israel has carried out occasional operations in and around the area, including a strike in July that the military said killed Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, and which Gaza health authorities said left more than 90 people dead.
In al-Mawasi, the military says it targeted "significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command-and-control centre embedded inside the humanitarian area", which the Palestinian group has denied.
The Gaza health ministry said 19 bodies had been brought to hospitals since the early morning strike, but more victims were likely still buried in the sand.
The territory's civil defence agency earlier gave a death toll of 40 people, which the Israeli military said did "not align with the information" it had.
Survivors of the strike scrambled to retrieve their belongings from the rubble, including mattresses and clothing, an AFP journalist reported.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said people sheltering in the camp in the dunes along the Mediterranean coast had not been warned of the strike, which left behind "three deep craters".
"There are entire families who disappeared under the sand," he said.
Türkiye said the strike added to Israel's "list of war crimes", while Egypt denounced "the continuation of Israeli massacres" and Saudi Arabia decried "a new attack in a repeated series of violations by the Israeli war machine".
Israel's offensive in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 people, according to the territory's health ministry.
The war has left large swathes of Gaza in ruins and displaced the vast majority of its 2.4 million people at least once.
Hamas' October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the recent conflict resulted in the deaths of 1,200 people, according to Israeli figures.
Militants seized 250 Israeli captives during the attack, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
