AL MAWASI: According to the Palestinian Civil Defense Agency, 40 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli hit on the Al Mawasi humanitarian zone in the southern province of Khan Yunis, Gaza, on Tuesday.
Following the Israeli military’s designation of Al-Mawasi as a safe zone, tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees sought safety there. But the Israeli army claimed in a recent statement that it had hit a “Hamas command center” nearby.
Mohammed al-Mughair, a civil defense officer in Gaza, reported that after the early-Tuesday attack on Al-Mawasi, 40 people were pronounced dead and 60 injured at surrounding hospitals. Mughair stated, “Our crews are still working to recover 15 missing people as a result of targeting the displaced people’s tents in Mawasi, Khan Yunis.”
People taking refuge in the camp among the dunes near the Mediterranean coast had not been informed of the strike, according to civil defense spokesperson Mahmud Basal.
According to him, the impact created “three deep craters.” “Whole families have vanished beneath the sand.”
UN envoy denounces the attack; Israeli defense minister says, as mission in Gaza draws to a close, attention will shift to the border with Lebanon
Without any previous notice
The strike survivors hurried to extract their personal items, such as clothes and mattresses, from the debris.
They instructed us to travel to Al-Mawasi, so we did and made our home here. Unknown to the journalists, a Palestinian man said, “The area was bombed without prior warning; they didn’t ask us to flee to a safer area or anything.”
“Significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command-and-control center embedded inside the humanitarian area in Khan Yunis” were attacked, according to the Israeli military, by aircraft.
“The terrorist groups operating in the Gaza Strip persist in their systematic misuse of civilian and humanitarian infrastructure, encompassing the designated humanitarian area, in order to perpetrate acts of terrorism against the Israeli army and the State of Israel,” the statement asserted.
The toll given by Gaza authorities was then called into doubt by the military, which stated that the figures “do not align with the information held by the IDF.” Citing a number of Palestinians as “directly involved in the execution of the Oct 7 massacre” that set off the Gaza war, it said they were killed in the strike. Claims made by the Israeli military that there were Hamas fighters at the site of the strike were rejected by Hamas as a flagrant fabrication.
In an attempt to mediate a shaky ceasefire, Egypt, Qatar, and the US have concentrated on getting Palestinian captives released on October 7 in return for a halt to Israel’s onslaught.
Nearly completing the mission
According to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, soldiers are almost finished with their job in Gaza, and as long as Hezbollah continues to exchange fire with Israel, their attention will shift to the country’s northern border with Lebanon.
In a video provided by his office to troops on Israel’s northern border, Gallant stated, “The center of gravity is moving northward, we are near to completing our tasks in the south, but our mission here is not yet done.”
He acknowledged that Hamas “as a military formation no longer exists” and that a ceasefire and prisoner exchange would provide Israel with a “strategic opportunity” to address other security issues.
International humanitarian law “must be upheld at all times,” the UN ambassador Tor Wennesland declared, emphasizing that “civilians must never be used as human shields” in condemnation of the strike.
Efforts to declare a truce failed
The fighting has not stopped, despite Hamas’s demands that any agreement include Israel’s total withdrawal from Gaza, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that forces must stay near the Gaza-Egypt border. The top diplomat for Egypt was informed by EU foreign policy leader Josep Borrell in Cairo that the EU was firmly in favor of a ceasefire.
“A truce that has been called for numerous times; we are on the verge of reaching it, but not quite. Why? Simply put, he told reporters after the meeting, “because those who are waging war have no interest in putting an end to it.”
