Women, children among the dead while the Israeli military is again attacking civilians who are taking refuge in a so-called humanitarian safe zone.
At least 11 Palestinians, including women and children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on makeshift tents housing displaced people in designated humanitarian safety zone in southern Gaza, local medics and news agencies report.
Thursday's pre-emptive attack in the al-Mawasi area – which Israel's military designated a “safe zone” early in its war on Gaza – reportedly killed three children and two women. among the 11 who died.
Video footage after the attack showed people searching for survivors amid burning tents, scattered debris, and washing lines where residents of the displaced persons camp had hung clothes to dry. .
Reuters news agency reports that 15 people were also injured in the attack, although there was no information on their condition.
The Israeli military did not comment on its latest attack on the humanitarian zone, which has been constantly targeted by Israeli warplanes, drones and artillery, including the latest attack on December 22, which killed eight people, including two children.
Days earlier, Israeli tanks advanced on al-Mawasi from the southern city of Rafah, forcing dozens of families to flee to the north fearing an attack.
At least 20 people were killed and others wounded in an Israeli missile strike on tents in al-Mawasi on December 3, in what the Israeli military said was targeting a Hamas official.
On New Year's DayIsraeli attacks across Gaza killed at least 26 people including four children and a woman was reported to be among those killed. Ten people were also missing among the rubble of buildings destroyed in the attack.
Fifteen people, all reportedly civilians, were killed in a single strike on a home where displaced people had taken shelter in Jabalia in northern Gaza, a spokesman for Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza.
Israeli forces gave no warning about the attack on al-Mawasi early Thursday morning but had earlier issued orders for all residents of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza to flee. from three areas that they said were designated for attack.
The warning to residents to flee from Jabalia to Gaza City was described as “pre-anesthesia before the attack” by Israeli military Arabic language spokesman Avichay Adraee.
“Once again, terrorist groups are launching rockets from your area, which has been warned many times before,” he said in a post on social media.
Despite large parts of northern Gaza, including Jabalia, suffering almost three months of siege by Israeli forcesTwo US-based defense think tanks said this week that Palestinian fighters had launched a coordinated “multi-wave attack” on Israeli forces in Jabalia – one that was larger than the most other Palestinian military operations across Gaza in recent months.
The death toll from the first two days of 2025 adds to the 45,553 Palestinians, at least, who have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since they launched a punitive war on the landafter 7 October 2023, an attack by Hamas in southern Israel.
