Israeli strike on Khan Younis shelter kills at least 25 amid surge in Gaza fighting
An Israeli airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in southern Gaza has killed at least 25 people, according to Palestinian officials, as a stepped-up military offensive in the territory sent thousands fleeing in search of refuge.
The airstrike on Tuesday afternoon hit the tents of displaced families outside a school in the town of Abassan, east of Khan Younis. An Associated Press reporter who counted the bodies at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said 25 people were killed. Health officials said the dead included at least seven women and children.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement: “A warplane, using precision munitions, attacked a terrorist from the military wing of Hamas who participated in the hideous massacre on October 7th.”
The IDF said it was reviewing reports that civilians were harmed and that the incident was under investigation.
The area hit was crowded at the time of the attack, according to witnesses who spoke to the BBC, on of whom reported that as many as 3,000 people were packed into the area at the time of the strike.
Another person told the broadcaster there had been no prior warning of a strike.
Tuesday’s strike comes a week after the IDF ordered a mass evacuation of parts of southern Gaza. Much of Khan Younis was destroyed in a long assault this year, but large numbers of Palestinians had moved back to escape another Israeli offensive in Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah.
Elsewhere, Palestinians across the territory reported an increase in heavy airstrikes this week, with residents of the central Gaza City describing helicopter strikes, explosions and gun battles, as Israel expanded its two-week-old offensive in Shuja’iya, an eastern neighbourhood, moving tanks into areas of the city where Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters have regrouped.
Ismail Al-Thawabta, the director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, said Israeli strikes on central Gaza areas killed 60 Palestinians and wounded dozens of others on Tuesday. The Israeli military ordered the evacuation of several districts in eastern and western Gaza City.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said its crews received dozens of humanitarian distress calls from Gaza City but were unable to help due to the intensity of the bombing there.
On Wednesday, Israel announced that a soldier had been killed in fighting in central Gaza. Israeli soldiers were engaged in close-quarter combat with militants in Gaza city, the IDF said in an earlier statement.
The last few days of airstrikes on the blockaded Palestinian territory are some of the fiercest since the war broke out after Hamas attacked southern Israel on 7 October. Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, described the fighting as “the most intense in months”.
The new fighting has unfolded as international mediators make headway in ceasefire negotiations after a major concession from Hamas last week, when the group dropped its insistence on a “complete” ceasefire as a prerequisite for talks.
Mediation efforts led by Egypt, Qatar and the US have since accelerated, with Egyptian media reporting that talks are due to continue in Doha and Cairo this week, attended by the CIA director, William Burns, and Israel’s Mossad chief, David Barnea. “There is an agreement over many points,” a senior source told al-Qahera news on Tuesday.
But speaking on Monday night, the group’s Qatar-based political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, said that the “catastrophic consequences” of the latest battles on the ground in Gaza could “reset the negotiation process to square one”. The group has also accused Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of deliberately trying to thwart the truce talks.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report