Israel The attack killed at least 90 people and injured hundreds in the western Al Mawashi district. Khan Younis Palestinian health officials said on Saturday that the Israel Defense Forces had targeted the two top officials in an operation. Hamas Including officials Mohammed DeifHead of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.
Palestinian health officials have called the attack a “massacre.” ReutersHamas spokesman Sami Abu Zouri The country’s foreign ministry denied reports that the attack was targeted at Deif as “nonsense”, despite the scale of the attack threatening to further derail tense ceasefire talks currently underway in Cairo and Doha.
Footage captured by Reuters showed hundreds of men, women and children fleeing a huge plume of smoke rising on the horizon, many carrying bloodied and unconscious wounded in their arms or on makeshift stretchers.
Smoke from burning and exploded vehicles clouded the air as a woman cried amid the chaos. “Everybody’s gone. My family’s gone,” she said. “Where are my brothers? They’re all gone. There’s no one left.” At a press conference on Saturday, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said the attack targeted a Hamas compound surrounded by trees, buildings and huts, not a tent compound. He said senior military commanders Deif and Rafa Salamaand other Hamas fighters were in the area, but did not provide details of the intelligence and said the Israel Defense Forces were still verifying the results of the attack.
Abu Zuri said: Reuters “All” those killed were civilians, it said. NBC News cannot independently verify either the IDF’s or Hamas’s statements.
A Reuters video showed people surveying the damage and debris of destroyed buildings inside white tents once used by displaced Palestinians. Post to Instagram Footage reviewed and geolocated by NBC News showed dozens of people digging with shovels and their bare hands inside the wide crater left by the explosion.
The Israel Defense Forces have declared al-Mawasi a safe humanitarian zone. DecemberThis area has been repeatedly Since the attack. Hagari told a press conference that the IDF had asked civilians to evacuate the area, but that senior Hamas officials were hiding among the residents, which led to the attack.
Nearby hospitals were overwhelmed with the wounded. Mohamed Saqer, a spokesman for Nasser Hospital, told NBC News that the hospital did not have the capacity or supplies to treat the wounded and that “many of the wounded will die due to lack of care.”
Within hours, Dr. Mohammed Saqr, head of nursing at Nasser Hospital, He told Quds News Network The hospital said it was “unable to continue providing medical and nursing services due to the high number of deaths, injuries and amputations.”
Palestinian Red Crescent Post to X Following the airstrike, Al Amal Hospital in Khan Yunis received dozens of patients, including some who had been taking refuge in the organization’s displacement camps in the affected areas.
It is unclear what impact the attack will have on ceasefire talks. It came a day after US President Joe Biden said Israel and Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire. Agreed on the framework.
“Six weeks ago I laid out a comprehensive framework for achieving a ceasefire and returning the hostages,” he posted on X. “While there is still work to be done and complex issues, the framework has now been agreed to by both Israel and Hamas.”
“My team is moving forward, and I’m determined to get this done,” Biden added.
But the ongoing attacks on Gaza have further complicated already difficult negotiations. Abu Zuhri told Reuters that Saturday’s attacks show Israel is not interested in a ceasefire agreement. Hamas has previously criticized Israel for delaying a deal, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will not agree to any deal that prevents the resumption of military operations until Hamas is removed. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken May Warning Israel will not be able to completely eliminate Hamas’ presence in Gaza.
Netanyahu accused Hamas of making demands that contradict the agreement brokered by Biden, but did not specify what those demands were.
Hamas has dropped its demand that Israel commit up front to a permanent ceasefire, but the Associated Press report The group still seeks written assurances that negotiations will continue until a permanent ceasefire is achieved.
Nine months into Israel’s war on Gaza, Palestinians continue to suffer from air strikes, the pulling of charred bodies from the rubble, hospitals overflowing with the dead and wounded, and fresh destruction.
More than 80 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced, many of them repeatedly displaced as Israeli forces return. Resuming operations They have invaded some of the enclaves that they had previously cleared.
On Friday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a donor conference that Palestinians are being “forced to move like human pinballs through a landscape of destruction and death. The extreme levels of fighting and devastation are incomprehensible and unacceptable. And this level of chaos is affecting every Palestinian in the Gaza Strip and all those desperately trying to deliver aid to them.”
“Just when you thought the situation in Gaza couldn’t get any worse, civilians have been pushed even deeper into hell,” the Secretary-General added.
Footage captured on-site by an NBC News team on Friday showed a devastating scene after Israeli forces withdrew from Tel al-Hawa, an industrial area west of Gaza City. The area’s famous high-rise buildings were reduced to rubble, and homes were charred, burned and destroyed. Rescue workers said they found 20 burnt bodies inside homes while sifting through the rubble.
“First we fled to Shujaiya, El Saa, El Tuffa and then we came to the industrial area,” Mousa Attia Eldadou, who spent 20 days in Tel al-Hawa before the attacks, told NBC News.
“They attacked us and suddenly at 2am everyone ran. We saw the tanks and the planes and everyone ran. The planes started attacking. What can we do? It’s either live or die.”
