Newsman: Israeli missiles set ablaze a tent camp for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza, killing or wounding 65 people, the enclave’s civil emergency service said on Tuesday, in what the Israeli military called a strike on a Hamas command center. In a separate attack in western SyriaIsraeli airstrikes killed 16 people and wounded dozens more overnight, Syrian state media reported on Monday.
The Gaza Civil Emergency Service said at least 20 tents caught fire, and missiles caused craters as deep as 30 feet. It said the 65 victims included women and children but did not immediately provide a breakdown of deaths and injuries.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office put the number of fatalities at more than 40. It said that at least 60 others were wounded in the strikes and many remained missing as rescue workers continued their searches early on Tuesday.
“Our teams are still moving out martyrs and wounded from the targeted area. It looks like a new Israeli massacre,” a Gaza civil emergency official said. The official added that teams had been struggling to search for victims who might have been buried.
The Israeli military said it “struck significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command and control center embedded inside the Humanitarian Area in Khan Younis.”
“The terrorists advanced and carried out terror attacks against IDF troops and the state of Israel,” the statement said, referring to the Israeli Defence Forces.
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forced from their homes at least once, and some have had to flee as many as 10 times.
On Sunday, Israeli airstrikes killed 16 people in western Syria and wounded dozens more overnight, Syrian state media reported on Monday.
The Syrian state news agency SANA, citing a military source, said Israel had launched the strikes at around 11:20 p.m. on Sunday and targeted “a number of military sites in the central region,” without elaborating on what was struck.
The Syrian foreign ministry condemned the attack as an act of blatant aggression. In addition to the 16 fatalities and 36 wounded, it had caused “material damage to some residential areas,” it said in a statement reported by SANA.
