Israeli forces have killed at least 19 Palestinians in an attack on a designated “humanitarian safe zone” in southern Gaza, leaving massive craters where dozens of tents sheltering Palestinian families once stood.
Israel dropped at least four bombs on the al-Mawasi refugee camp early Tuesday morning, hitting at least 20 tents, according to Al Jazeera. The attack wounded many; shortly after the massacre, Palestinian officials reported that at least 40 people had been killed, but later revised that figure. It added that entire families are missing as a result of the strike.
The exact death toll is unknown, as Israel’s use of heavy bombs left behind huge craters in what was previously a crowded tent area. Palestinians have reported that the craters are nine meters, or three stories, deep. Many tents were also set ablaze by the strike.
Pictures and videos show rescuers digging through the sand to find survivors and recover bodies — whatever remnants may remain after being torn apart by Israeli bombs, as first responders pulled dismembered body parts from the sand.
“The people were buried in the sand,” witness Attaf al-Shaar, told The Associated Press. “They were retrieved as body parts.”
The health ministry said that the revision of the death toll is in part due to the fact that ambulances and civil defense crews have been unable to reach the site.
CNN has reported, citing weapons experts, that pictures of the aftermath of the site show that Israel likely used 2,000 pound bombs on the tent camp. These bombs are among the largest and most destructive in Israel’s arsenal, designed to penetrate deep into fortified bunkers or cause damage in a wide radius.
One expert said that one of the bomb fragments suggests that Israel used a bomb with a SPICE 2000 kit attached — kits that the U.S. has sent Israel to turn unguided bombs into precision guided munitions.
An investigation by Al Jazeera also found that Israel had used several 2,000 pound bombs in the attack, with some photos showing that the craters were between 10 and 15 meters deep.
The desert area of al-Mawasi is sheltering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians due to Israel’s sweeping evacuation orders encompassing nearly the entirety of the Gaza Strip. The area is so crowded with families forcibly displaced by Israel that there is hardly room for humanitarian convoys to transport goods, and diseases are spreading easily across the close quarters in which Palestinians have been forced to live.
Those who survived the attack described being woken up by what felt like an earthquake or a tornado.
The attack is the latest on the “safe” zone that Israel has attacked many times since Israeli officials first started herding Palestinians to the area of only 41 square kilometers, or less than 16 square miles. The reality is that, as Palestinians have long said, there is no area of Gaza that’s safe from Israel’s genocidal aggression.
The strikes on the area “show ‘humanitarian zones’ are in name only,” said the Norwegian Refugee Council in a statement in the aftermath of the attack.
The UN condemned the attack as a likely war crime.
“Over the past 11 months, the Israeli military has forced most Palestinians in Gaza into an ever diminishing, unilaterally declared, humanitarian zone, where they have made little to no effort to ensure the safety of Palestinian civilians or to provide shelter, food and other necessities of life,” the UN Human Rights Office said in a statement.
“Instead, the Israeli Defense Force continues to choose to use weapons with wide area effects in these increasingly densely populated areas despite the overwhelming evidence that these means and methods have led to disproportionate harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure, suggesting a complete disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians,” the office went on.
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