Palestinians search for survivors after Israeli airstrikes in designated 'safe zone' in Gaza

Israeli strikes blasted a huge crater in a designated safe zone in southern Gaza before dawn on Tuesday, setting tents ablaze and burying Palestinian families under sand.

Palestinian officials said scores of people had been killed or injured in the strikes. The Gaza Health Ministry, which compiles casualty figures, said hospitals had so far received 19 bodies, and that about 60 people had been wounded. Other victims were still under sand or on roads that rescuers could not reach, it said.

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.

Israel disputed the Palestinian casualty figures.

WATCH l Palestinian girl deals with injury, uncertainty about family after strike:

Palestinian says there's 'no safety left' after Israeli strike hits camp near Khan Younis

10 days ago

Duration 1:04

Displaced Palestinians who were sheltering in the camp in Khan Younis were still digging people out from under the sand after the early morning attack on Tuesday. Rozan Al-Fahd, 12, said she broke her shoulder, and Omar Abdel Aal says there is no safe place left in Gaza.

The Israeli military said it had struck a command centre for Hamas fighters it said had infiltrated the designated "humanitarian" area in Al-Mawasi, a vast camp on sandy soil where the military has told hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to shelter since ordering them out of their homes.

Hamas, the Islamist group that controlled Gaza before the conflict, denied Israeli allegations that gunmen were present in the targeted area, and rejected accusations it exploited civilian areas for military purposes.

For residents of the camp who spoke to CBC freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife, survival was first and foremost on their minds.

"To be honest, this was the scariest night that I lived through since the beginning of the war," said Daoud Adnan, 32.

IDF expresses regret over civilian death

Separately, the Israeli military said Tuesday that a Turkish American activist who was killed in the West Bank last week was likely shot "indirectly and unintentionally" by Israeli forces who were aiming at someone else. Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was a 26-year-old activist from Seattle.

Turkish and Palestinian officials said last Friday that Israeli troops shot Eygi, who had been taking part in a protest against settlement expansion during a regular protest march by activists in Beita, a village near Nablus.

Israeli Defence Forces commanders had conducted an investigation into the incident, the military said in a statement on Tuesday.

"The inquiry found that it is highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire, which was not aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator of the riot," the military said.

"The incident took place during a violent riot in which dozens of Palestinian suspects burned tires and hurled rocks towardsecurity forces at the Beita Junction."

"The IDF expresses its deepest regret over the death of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi," it said.

Israel has sent a request to Palestinian authorities to carry out an autopsy, it said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the killing was "unprovoked and unjustified" and showed the Israeli security forces needed to make some fundamental changes in their rules of engagement.

A surge in violent settler assaults on Palestinians in the West Bank has stirred anger among Western allies of Israel, including the U.S. and Canada, which have imposed sanctions on some Israelis involved in the hardline settler movement.

Eygi's family in the U.S. released a statement saying "we are deeply offended by the suggestion that her killing by a trained sniper was in any way unintentional. The disregard shown for human life in the inquiry is appalling."

'I was under the sand'

In Gaza, residents and medics said thetent encampment near Khan Younis in the Al-Mawasi area, which Israel has designated a humanitariansafe zone for displaced Palestinians, was struck by at least four missiles. The camp is crowded with familiesordered by the Israeli military to flee therefrom elsewhere in the territory.

Tents in the surrounding area had been incinerated, leaving only metal frames dusted with ghostly ash in a wasteland littered with debris. A car had been completely buried, only its top visible beneath the sand.

In the morning, mourners at a nearby hospital wailed over bodies heaped in white plastic bags or wrapped in bloodstained shrouds.

One of Raed Abu Muammar's daughters had been killed. His wife and his other daughter had been buried but were pulled out alive. He carried the surviving baby girl.

"I was under the sand as well," he told Reuters. "I got out and started looking for my daughters and my wife. I saw body parts of the neighbours in my tent I did not know those were our neighbours' parts until I saw my family in one piece."

United Nations Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland strongly condemned the Israeli strike on a densely populated safe area, while also saying civilians should never be used as human shields.

"The principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack must be upheld at all times," he said.

Nearly all ofGaza's 2.3 million people have been forced from their homes at least once, and some have had to flee several times.

"We have no idea what to do,"Hajj Alaa Al-Shaer told El Saife, reporting for CBC News. "People are displaced [the Israeli military] told us to go to the safe areas and they came to the safe areas."

Israel's assault on Gaza has killed more than 41,020 Palestinians and wounded 94,925 more, according to the local Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilian deaths in its reports. Israel attacked the enclave after Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people including several Canadian citizens and took another 250 hostage in a surprise attack on Oct. 7,according to Israeli tallies.

Around 100 hostages are unaccounted for after repatriations, with the Israeli government believing according to its information that at least one-third of those people are no longer alive.

The two warring sides each blame the other for a failure so far to reach a ceasefire that would end the fighting and see the release of hostages.

Israeli strikes kill at least 19 in Gaza tent camp, officials say

10 days ago

Duration 3:51

Israeli strikes ripped a huge crater, set tents ablaze and buried Palestinian families alive under sand in the Al-Mawasi humanitarian safe zone in southern Gaza, Palestinian officials said. Scores of people were killed or injured, with at least 19 dead bodies taken to hospital and other victims feared lost or buried, the officials said.