At least 71 Palestinians were killed and 289 wounded in an Israeli airstrike in the Al Mawasi area, south of the Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Al Mawasi is a densely populated “humanitarian zone” where thousands of people fleeing the Israeli offensive are seeking refuge. Some have arrived displaced from the north of the Strip, others have been evacuated from Rafah in the south. The Israeli army itself has on several occasions ordered the transfer of Gaza's population to this area, which it describes as “safe” and “humanitarian”, despite the fact that several International agencies and organizations have denounced the poor sanitary and humanitarian conditions in the camp..
Israel claims the attack specifically targeted one of Hamas’ top leaders, Mohammed Deif, commander of the al Qasam Brigades, the Islamist militia’s armed wing, who has been on Israel’s most-wanted list for years. The Israeli government holds him responsible for planning and carrying out numerous terrorist attacks, including the Oct. 7 attack.
As several Israeli officials told EFE, the Hamas leader was in a fenced area controlled by the Islamist group, where he was reportedly hiding with a large number of militia members, including Rafaa Salameh, another brigade commander wanted by Israel.
The Islamist militia has denied that the Israeli attack targeted leaders of the group, and has accused the Israeli government of using the excuse of the need to eliminate the militia leadership to carry out “massacres.” “This is not the first time that the occupation has claimed to target Palestinian leaders, only to be proven wrong. “These false accusations are being used to cover up the scale of the terrible massacre,” Hamas said in a statement.
Meanwhile, health staff at Nasser Hospital – close to the area of the incident and one of the few still operating in the Palestinian enclave – are denouncing that the hospital “can no longer function”. Doctors say they are “overwhelmed” and unable to provide health care, given the high number of casualties caused by the bombings and the severe shortage of medical supplies due to the Israeli blockade.
One of the Hamas leaders, Abu Zuhri, told Reuters that the attack shows that Israel is “not interested” in achieving any kind of ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. “All the martyrs are civilians and what happened is a serious escalation of war and genocide, supported by American support and international silence,” the Hamas leadership told the organization.
Since the beginning of the conflict on October 7, 38,443 people have been killed by the Israeli offensive in Gaza, and 88,481 have been wounded, according to the latest count from the Gaza Ministry of Health.