Gazan officials said that at least 21 people were killed and dozens injured on Tuesday in a strike that hit a tent encampment housing displaced people in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area in southern Gaza where Israel has designated a humanitarian safe zone.
The Israeli military immediately denied it had carried out any attacks inside the zone. Videos verified by The Times show multiple people dead and injured in an agricultural area of Al-Mawasi, where civilians had been sheltering near the zone.
Dr. Mohammed Al Moghayer, a senior official with the Palestinian Civil Defense emergency rescue organization, said that most of the dead and injured were taken to nearby field hospitals, and others to Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis. Dr. Moghayer and the Gazan Health Ministry said that in addition to those killed, 64 people were injured, including 10 very seriously.
It was not immediately clear what sort of weapons or shells had landed in the camp, or whether they had been fired from the ground or launched from aircraft.
The reports come just two days after dozens of people were killed when a fire tore through a camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah after an Israeli airstrike, drawing international condemnation. The Israeli military said that the target of the strike in Rafah on Sunday was a Hamas compound, and that “precise munitions” had been used to target a commander and another senior militant official there.
Israeli troops have been pressing farther into Rafah. The United Nations has said that in the last three weeks a million people have fled the southern city, once a major hub for displaced people forced out of other parts of the enclave by fighting.
Israel has on previous occasions designated parts of Al-Mawasi as a “humanitarian zone,” but the population of the area has grown massively in recent week as hundreds of thousands of people have heeded Israeli warnings to leave the city of Rafah, where Israeli troops have pushed forward in recent weeks. Displaced people have said Al-Mawasi lacks food and basic amenities and the United Nations has warned of dire conditions.
Johnatan Reiss, Arijeta Lajka and Christiaan Triebert contributed reporting.