At least 13 people have been killed in an overnight Israeli strike in the designated humanitarian zone in southern Gaza, a local hospital says.
Residents said three missiles hit a tented camp crowded with displaced Palestinians in the al-Mawasi area, south-west of the city of Khan Younis, leaving 7m-deep (23ft) craters.
The Israeli military said its aircraft attacked what it called “a number of senior Hamas terrorists” operating there – a claim Hamas denied.
The military also disputed the initial death toll put out by the Hamas-run Civil Defence authority, which reported that rescue teams had recovered more than 40 bodies.
Hundreds of thousands of people from other areas of Gaza are living in dire conditions in al-Mawasi after being told by Israel to evacuate there for their own safety.
Eyewitnesses told the BBC that large explosions rocked the area shortly after midnight on Tuesday and that flames could be seen rising into the sky.
Khaled Mahmoud, a volunteer for a charity who lives near the site of the strike, said he and other volunteers rushed to help but were stunned by the scale of the destruction.
“The strikes created three craters seven metres [23ft] deep and buried more than 20 tents,” Mr Mahmoud said.
The Civil Defence’s operations director said overnight that more than 40 people were killed and more than 60 others were injured. He also warned that “many are still under the rubble”.
There was no immediate casualty report from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Later on Monday, an official at the nearby Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said 13 people killed in the strike had been brought there.
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said aircraft had conducted “a precise strike on a number of senior Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command and control centre embedded inside the humanitarian area”.
They included Samer Abu Daqqa, head of Hamas’s aerial unit, and Osama Tabesh, head of the observation and targets department in Hamas’s military intelligence headquarters, it added.
“Prior to the strike, extensive intelligence gathering was conducted, as well as continuous aerial surveillance in the hours leading up to the strike, which confirmed the presence of the terrorists in the area alongside additional terrorist operatives.”
The IDF accused Hamas of embedding its operatives and military infrastructure in the humanitarian zone and using civilians as human shields.
A Hamas statement denounced the strike on al-Mawasi as a “heinous massacre” and rejected the IDF’s claim that it had a command centre there.
“This is a clear lie that aims to justify these ugly crimes. The resistance has denied several times that any of its members exist within civilian gatherings or use these places for military purposes,” it said.
The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken back to Gaza as hostages.
More than 40,980 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
An estimated 1.9 million people – more than 80% of the population – are estimated to have been displaced by the war, and some have had to flee as many as 10 times.
Additional reporting by Thomas Mackintosh in London
