The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 71 people were killed in an Israeli attack Saturday in the south of the war-stricken enclave.
The ministry said 289 others were injured in the attack that struck the Khan Younis area. It said that many of the injured and dead were taken to nearby Nasser Hospital.
At the hospital, Associated Press journalists counted over 40 bodies and witnesses there described an attack that included several strikes.
Abdel Kareem Hana / AP
An Israeli official has confirmed that Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’ military wing, was the target of the Israeli strike. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity pending a formal announcement, said Rafa Salama, another top Hamas official, was also targeted in the strike.
The official did not have details on whether the two targets were killed.
It remains unclear if the attack landed inside Muwasi, an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone, which stretches from northern Rafah to Khan Younis. The coastal strip is where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have fled to in search of safety, sheltering mostly in makeshift tents.
Days ago, a blistering Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza. The attack killed at least 29 people at the Al Awda school in Khan Younis, according to an official at the nearby al-Nasser Hospital.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.
Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,300 people in Gaza and wounded more than 88,000, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. More than 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, and most are now crowded into squalid tent camps, facing widespread hunger.