Palestinians in Mawasi say only tents were struck in ‘fire belt’ Israeli attack which killed 40

At least 40 people were killed in the early hours of Tuesday morning by a series of Israeli airstrikes which targeted an area in Mawasi, Khan Younis — a designated humanitarian zone where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are currently taking shelter in tents. 

Civil defense crews and displaced people taking shelter in the area continued work on Tuesday to search for scores of people still missing after the airstrike.

Later on Tuesday morning, people sheltering in the area gathered to look at a deep crater left in the sand of the coastal area by the bombing, or picked through belongings scattered across a large area of tents razed to the ground or reduced to tatters of fabric hanging off their frames. 

Several people who were sleeping in their tents in the vicinity described to a Mada Masr correspondent feeling at least four separate airstrikes in a “fire belt” which swept through the area at around 1 am. 

Ibrahim al-Gadi described heavy smoke filling the air at the time of the strike. “I couldn’t see the child next to me,” he said. “The tents fell on us. We used our backs to keep it from falling on the children. We couldn’t recognize the children's faces after the bombing until we washed the residue off everyone.”

The Israeli military said the airstrikes were “a precise strike” targeting senior Hamas fighters who were operating in a “command and control center embedded inside the humanitarian area in Khan Younis,” and claimed four Hamas officials were struck during the operation, including the head of the aerial unit in the strip.

One resident of the area, Fatoum al-Garna, told a Mada Masr correspondent on Tuesday morning that the only people in the area were displaced Palestinians in tents. 

Another, Jabareen al-Raei, responded to the claim that the site was a military post by describing it  as a place for “growing guava and dates, with pigeons, sheep and goats. Where is the military site?”

“The Occupation's allegations of the presence of resistance fighters are a blatant lie,” Hamas said in an official statement on Tuesday morning, describing the airstrikes as a “horrific massacre” in which the Occupation “targeted the tents of the displaced with heavy missiles launched by its warplanes, which resulted in the martyrdom of dozens of unarmed civilians, most of whom were children and women.”

A civil defense official told media outlets that at least 40 people were killed in the airstrikes and around 60 wounded, saying that work was ongoing to retrieve many thought to be missing under mountains of sand and remains of structures toppled by the airstrikes. It is estimated that around 200 tents were flattened by the strikes, 40 of which destroyed completely, and no less than 100 Palestinians could be missing. 

Garna described hearing the “very very strong” bombing at around 1 am, saying, “we woke up terrified and ran to the street without even taking our children before coming back for them.”

But now, she said, she doesn’t know where she and her children can find safe shelter. “We were displaced from Khan Younis before and came to Mawasi because they said it was safe,” she said. “What kind of safety is this?