Smoke rises from the ashes in a tented area, the day after a strike on the al-Mawasi area, northwest of the Palestinian city of Rafah on Saturday [Bashar Taleb/AFP]
Witnesses said Israeli tanks carried out a sudden and unexpected incursion in al-Mawasi, launching a number of artillery shells towards the evacuation centres and makeshift tents.
The entire area of al-Mawasi is an evacuation centre. It’s a very tiny strip of land where more than 100,000 Palestinians have been taking refuge. It’s the place where field hospitals have been established and it’s a centre for humanitarian organisations.
Israeli tanks – supported by fighter jets and drones – have moved into five neighbourhoods in the west of the city.
Heavy shelling and gunfire also targeted the TENTS of displaced families in the al-Mawasi area – located further to the west of Rafah, Reuters reports.
The area that Israeli officials have told Palestinians to move to is mainly sand dunes and has no toilets, water points, drainage, shelter or health facilities.
Attack drones hover above al-Mawasi as injured wait for help
Within the past two hours, there has been an attack on a residential block in the al-Mawasi evacuation zone in Khan Younis. This is where the vast majority of displaced families were ordered by the Israeli military in the initial weeks of the war to go and shelter to avoid being bombed.
At least 12 Palestinians including children were killed in an air raid that hit a TENT full of displaced people in al-Mawasi, supposed 'safe zone', near Khan Younis in southern Gaza, the Health Ministry says.
Israeli warplanes bombed tents where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. Several people were killed and injured in the attack.
A Palestinian mother has described the moment fire rained down on the tent where she and her family were sheltering, killing her husband and daughter.
“The tent caught fire on us. My daughter beside me was burned… I couldn’t help her.”