Women, children among the dead, as the Israeli army again attacks civilians sheltering in the so-called humanitarian safe zone.
At least 11 Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on makeshift tents housing displaced persons in a designated humanitarian safe zone in southern Gaza, local doctors and news organizations reported.
The pre-dawn attack on Thursday in the al-Mawasi area – which the Israeli military declared a “safe zone” at the start of its war on Gaza – is reported to have resulted in the killing of three children and two women among the 11 dead. .
A video clip from the aftermath of the attack showed people searching for survivors among burning tents, scattered debris and washing lines where residents of the camp for displaced people had hung clothes to dry.
Reuters news agency reports that 15 people were also injured in the attack, but there were no details on their condition.
The Israeli military did not comment on its latest attack on the humanitarian zone, which has been relentlessly targeted by Israeli warplanes, drones and artillery, including the most recent attack on December 22, which killed eight people, including two children.
Days earlier, Israeli tanks advanced on al-Mawasi from the southern town of Rafah, forcing dozens of families to flee northward for fear of an imminent attack.
At least 20 people were killed and others wounded in an Israeli rocket attack on tents in al-Mawasi on December 3, in what the Israeli military said targeted a Hamas official.
On New Year’s Day, Israeli strikes across Gaza killed at least 26 people with four children and a woman reported to be among the dead. Ten people also disappeared among the ruins of buildings destroyed in the attack.
Fifteen people, all reported to be civilians, were killed in an attack on a house where displaced people were sheltering in Jabalia in northern Gaza, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza said.
Israeli forces gave no warning of the attack in al-Mawasi early Thursday morning, but had earlier issued orders to all residents in northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp to leave three areas it said were designated for an attack.
The warning to residents to flee Jabalia to Gaza City was described as a “pre-anesthesia before the attack” by the Israeli army’s Arabic-language spokesman, Avichay Adraee.
“Once again, terrorist organizations are launching missiles from your area, which has been warned many times in the past,” he said in a social media post.
Despite large parts of northern Gaza, including Jabalia, suffering almost three months of siege by Israeli forces, two US-based defense institutes said this week that Palestinian fighters had launched a coordinated “multi-wave offensive” against Israeli forces in Jabalia. – one that was larger than most other Palestinian military operations across Gaza in recent months.
The death toll from the first two days of 2025 adds to at least 45,553 Palestinians who have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since the start of a punitive war in the territory following the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas in southern Israel.
