The Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza announced the killing of 40 Palestinians and the injury of 60 others in the massacre committed by the IOF the displaced in their tents in the Mawasi area in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip.
It explained that “there are more than 200 tents in the targeted area, and over 20 to 40 tents were completely destroyed by the bombing.”
The tents that were bombed, burned and completely buried under the sand as a result of the intensity of the raids.
The Director General of the Government Media Office in Gaza, Ismail Al-Thawabtah, said that “the IOF committed a new massacre against the displaced in the Mawasi area of Khan Yunis, which is shocking to humanity.”
Al-Thawabtah added in media statements that more than 40 dead and 60 wounded have arrived at hospitals so far, while dozens of missing persons are still buried under the sand.
He pointed out that the various government teams continue to recover the dead and trying to save the victims trapped under the rubble.
He stressed that the IOF “was aware that this area only includes displaced people, and yet it targeted them directly to kill them.”
Al-Thawabtah said that “the occupation is trying to mislead public opinion by publishing false statements on the presence of resistance command rooms in these areas, which are fabricated lies.”
He pointed out that “these massacres come in light of the occupation’s destruction of the health system and the burning of hospitals,” stressing that the area targeted by the occupation is classified as “humanitarian and safe” according to Israeli maps.
He continued: “The targeted area includes about 70 tents for the displaced who were either killed or injured by the bombing.”
Thousands of displaced Palestinians are crowded into this targeted area. This is not the first time for the IOF to target displacement camps in the Al-Mawasi area, which it classified as “expanded humanitarian areas”, and considered safe according to its previous descriptions. The IOF previously targeted the tents of the displaced in the same area several times, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries.
Over the months of war, the IOF pushed to gather displaced people from the north and south of Gaza to the Al-Mawasi area on the Mediterranean coastline, which extends for a distance of 12 km and a depth of one kilometre, from Deir al-Balah in the north, passing through Khan Yunis Governorate in the south of the Strip and up to Rafah.
The area is largely open and not residential, and lacks infrastructure, sewage networks, electricity lines, communications networks and the Internet, and most of its lands are divided into agricultural or sandy greenhouses.
In this small geographical area, the displaced live in tragic conditions and a severe shortage of basic resources, such as water, sanitation, medical care and food.
Since October 7th; The IOF have been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, leaving tens of thousands dead and wounded, and creating enormous humanitarian conditions, and causing a major health and environmental disaster, due to the destruction of vital facilities and the overflow of sewage in large areas.
