Deir al-Balah, Sep 10: An Israeli strike on a crowded tent camp housing Palestinians displaced by the war in Gaza killed at least 19 people and wounded 60 early on Tuesday, Palestinian officials said. Israel said it targeted senior Hamas militants with precise munitions.
The overnight strike hit Muwasi, a sprawl of crowded tent camps along the Gaza coast that Israel designated as a humanitarian zone for hundreds of thousands of civilians to seek shelter from the Israel-Hamas war.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said it confirmed that at least 19 people were killed in the strike, and that the toll may rise as more bodies are recovered. The Civil Defence, first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government, had earlier said 40 people were killed. The Israeli military disputed that toll.
The ministry is also part of the Hamas-run government but its figures are widely seen as generally reliable. It maintains detailed records and its tallies from previous wars have largely coincided with figures from independent researchers, the United Nations and even the Israeli military.
Both the Health Ministry and the Civil Defence did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy of their tolls.
Associated Press footage shows three large craters at the scene. First responders dug through the sand and rubble with garden tools and their bare hands, using mobile phone flashlights until the sun came up. They pulled body parts from the sand, including what appeared to be a human leg.
“We were told to go to Muwasi, to the safe area… Look around you and see this safe place,” said Iyad Hamed Madi, who had been sheltering there.
“This is for my son,” he said, holding up a bag of diapers. “He’s 4 months old. Is he a fighter? There’s no humanity.”
One of three hospitals that took in casualties from the strike, Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, said around two dozen bodies were brought in. An Associated Press cameraman saw 10 bodies in the hospital’s morgue, including two children and three women.
“We were sleeping, and suddenly it was like a tornado,” Samar Moamer told the AP at the hospital, where she was being treated for injuries from the strike. She said one of her daughters was killed and the other was pulled alive from the rubble.
The Israeli military said it had struck Hamas militants in a command-and-control centre embedded in the area. It identified three of the militants, saying they were senior operatives who were directly involved in the October 7 attack and other recent attacks against Israel and Israeli forces.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesperson, disputed the initial reports of the number of casualties in a post on the platform X, saying they “do not line up with the information available to the (Israeli army), the precise weapons used and the accuracy of the strike.”
Hamas released a statement denying any militants were in the area, calling the Israeli allegations a “blatant lie.” Neither Israel nor Hamas provided evidence to substantiate their claims.
Israeli forces likely unintentionally shot and killed American activist in West Bank
The Israeli military said Tuesday that an American activist who was killed in the West Bank last week was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by Israeli forces who were aiming at someone else.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old activist from Seattle who also held Turkish citizenship, was killed Friday following a demonstration against Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, according to Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli protester who witnessed the shooting.
The Israeli military said it “expresses its deepest regret” after its inquiry “found that it is highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by (Israeli army) fire which was not aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator of the riot.”
Pollak said the shooting occurred about half an hour after clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces had subsided.
Eygi, a volunteer with the activist group International Solidarity Movement, was attending a weekly demonstration against settlement expansion that has been held for years and has often brought Israeli crackdowns and protester stone-throwing.
The killing came amid a surge of violence in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, with increasing Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis, attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and heavier military crackdowns on Palestinian protests. More than 690 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health officials.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the killing as “unprovoked and unjustified” while speaking Tuesday at a news conference in London. “No one should be shot while attending a protest. In our judgement the Israeli Security Forces need to make some fundamental changes in the way they operate in the West Bank,” he said.
The Palestinian Authority held a funeral procession for Eygi in the West Bank city of Nablus on Monday. Turkish authorities said they are working on repatriating her body to Turkey for burial in the Aegean coastal town of Didim, as per her family’s wishes.
The deaths of American citizens in the West Bank have drawn international attention, such as the fatal shooting of a prominent Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022 in the Jenin refugee camp.
Several independent investigations and reporting by The Associated Press shortly after the killing determined that Abu Akleh was likely killed by Israeli fire. Months later, the military said there was a “high probablility” one of its soldiers had mistakenly killed her but that no one would be punished.
Earlier in 2022, Israel’s military said it would punish a senior officer and remove two others from their posts over the death of Omar Assad, 78, a Palestinian-American who was dragged from a car by Israeli troops, bound and blindfolded after being stopped at a checkpoint. (AP)
