Up to 90 Killed in Israeli Attack on Al-Mawasi, Southern Gaza Strip

Palestinians mourn near the body of a man killed after an Israeli air strike in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip. Photo: EFE/EPA/MOHAMME

July 13, 2024 Hour: 2:47 pm

The Ministry of Health of the Gaza Strip increased the death toll in the Israeli attack on the humanitarian area of Al-Mawasi in the southern Gaza Strip to 90 to eliminate the military leader of the Palestinian resistance group, Mohamed Deif.

The health agency said that half of the dead are children and women, and that the bombing also left 300 injured, some in critical condition.

The attack occurred in the Mawasi area, west of the city of Khan Younis, designated a “humanitarian zone” by Israeli forces at the beginning of their operation in the southern town of Rafah in early May.

Another massacre by the Israeli army this morning in #Gaza: dozens of civilians killed, including children, and hundreds injured. The army bombed a densly populated area in Mawasi, Khan Younes, which was designated by Israel as a safe zone for tens of thousands of refugees who… pic.twitter.com/YPAp7ehMoB
— Husam Zomlot (@hzomlot) July 13, 2024

“There are still many bodies of martyrs scattered in the streets, under the rubble and around the tents of the displaced that cannot be reached due to the heavy shelling of the occupation (Israeli army) that targeted places and tents in the in Al-Mawasi,” civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told the French news agency AFP.

Israeli warplanes targeted tents housing displaced Palestinians and a water distillation unit in an area that a Gaza civil defence spokesperson told to the Qatari news media Al Jazeera was designated a “safe zone” by the Israeli military.

The moment the israelis directly targeted the fire and rescue team on duty helping to retrieve the wounded & extinguish fires in Mawasi in Khan Yunis pic.twitter.com/1y6kl5WHvu
— Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) July 13, 2024

An official at the Nasser Hospital told the same media that “medical teams did not have the capacity to receive any more wounded patients, while civil defence teams continued to work at the site of the attack.”

Al-Mawasi has been designated as a safe humanitarian zone by the Israeli army, which has been demanding that Palestinians from across the Gaza Strip move into the area (falsely claiming that the area was a safe haven) since the outbreak of the siege of the Zionist Army in early October 2023.

Continued Israeli aggression against Gaza since October last year has so far resulted in 38,345 documented Palestinian deaths and 88,295 injured. Thousands more are feared trapped under the rubble and in the streets, inaccessible to rescue teams and ambulances.