70 people have been killed in an Israeli air attack in the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, the Palestinian health ministry said.
On Sunday, ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said the death toll was likely to rise. He noted:
“What is happening at the Maghazi camp is a massacre that is being committed on a crowded residential square.”
Dozens of people have been injured, several homes have been destroyed in the attack, and families are picking through the rubble to try to find survivors. Ahmad Turokmani, who lost several family members, including his daughter and grandson, said:
“We were all targeted. There is no safe place in Gaza anyway.”
Al Jazeera’s Tarek Abu Azzoum, reporting from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, said the Maghazi refugee camp is one of the most densely populated areas in the centre of the Gaza Strip. He said it was one of the places where the Israeli military had previously ordered Palestinians in Gaza to evacuate. Now the camp has been “completely razed to the ground”. He added:
“The vast majority of the casualties right now have been among civilians, including [a] two weeks [old] baby that has been killed in cold blood in this genocide.”
He compared that attack with the one on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza last week, which killed at least 90 people.
The Maghazi camp was also attacked last month, killing at least 50 Palestinians. The closest hospital to the camp is Al-Aqsa Hospital, but medical facilities across Gaza are not functioning as Israel continues to bomb the territory for a third month, killing more than 20,400 Palestinians since October 7 and displacing more than 80 per cent of the 2.3 million people who live there.
