Palestinians Say Israeli Strike on Gaza Tent Camp Killed 40

An Israeli strike on a crowded tent camp housing Palestinians displaced by the war in Gaza killed at least 40 people and wounded 60 others early Tuesday, Palestinian officials said. Israel said it targeted "significant" Hamas militants, allegations denied by the militant group. It was among the deadliest strikes yet in Muwasi, a sprawl of crowded tent camps along the Gaza coast that Israel designated as a humanitarian zone for hundreds of thousands of civilians to seek shelter from the Israel-Hamas war, the AP reports. The Civil Defense, first responders operating under the Hamas-run government, said it recovered 40 bodies from the strike and was still looking for people. It said entire families were killed in their tents.

An Associated Press camera operator saw three large craters at the scene, where first responders and displaced people were sifting through the sand and rubble with garden tools and their bare hands by the light of mobile phones. They pulled body parts from the sand, including what appeared to be a human leg. Attaf al-Shaar, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah, said the strike happened just after midnight and caused a fire. "The people were buried in the sand. They were retrieved as body parts," she told an Associated Press reporter at the scene. (Israeli strikes are continuing despite an urgent polio vaccination campaign in Gaza.)