More than 30 people killed in strike on refugee camp, says Gaza health ministry

At least 30 people were killed when Israeli warplanes struck a refugee camp in the Gaza strip early on Saturday, the health ministry in Gaza has said.

The Hamas-run authority said dozens were also injured in the strike on the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.

They were taken to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah.

Ashraf al-Qidra, the spokesman for the health ministry, said 33 people were killed and 42 wounded.

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He added that first responders, aided by residents, were still searching the rubble for dead or possible survivors.

The number of casualties has not been independently verified.

Arafat Abu Mashaia, who lives in the camp, said the Israeli airstrike flattened several multi-story homes where people forced out of other parts of Gaza were sheltering.

“It was a true massacre,” he said early Sunday while standing on the wreckage of destroyed homes. “All here are peaceful people. I challenge anyone who says there were resistance [fighters] here.”

Mohammed Alaloul, 37, a journalist working for the Turkish Anadolu Agency, told the AFP press agency his 13-year-old son, Ahmed, and his four-year-old son, Qais, were killed in the attack, along with his brother.

His wife, mother and two other children were injured, he said.

An Israeli military spokesperson said they were looking into whether the IDF had been operating in the area at the time of the airstrike, AFP reported.

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The Maghazi refugee camp, a built-up residential area, is located in the evacuation zone where Israel’s military had urged Palestinian civilians in Gaza to seek refuge as it focuses its military offensive in the northern areas.

Despite such appeals, Israel has continued its bombardment across Gaza, saying it is targeting Hamas fighters and assets everywhere. It has accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields.

Saturday’s strike came as Israel said it would press on with its offensive to crush the territory’s Hamas rulers, despite US appeals for a pause to get aid to desperate civilians.

During his current tour of the region, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said humanitarian pauses can be critical in protecting civilians, getting aid in and getting foreign nationals out, “while still enabling Israel to achieve its objective, the defeat of Hamas”.

He has stopped short of supporting a ceasefire, saying: “It is our view now that a cease-fire would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on 7 October.” 

Jordan’s foreign minister Ayman Safadi said Arab countries want an immediate ceasefire, saying “the whole region is sinking in a sea of hatred that will define generations to come.”

Egyptian officials said they and Qatar were proposing humanitarian pauses for six to 12 hours daily to allow aid in and casualties out. 

At least 1,115 Palestinian dual nationals and wounded have exited Gaza into Egypt via the Rafah border crossing.

The Foreign Office is calling for the crossing to be reopened to allow British nationals to leave Gaza after many were turned away when it was closed in a row over the evacuation of injured patients.

Israel has repeatedly rejected calls to halt its offensive, even temporarily for humanitarian reasons.

The Israel Defense Forces said a four-hour pause will take place on Sunday to enable people in the north of Gaza to evacuate to the south of the territory, which they say will be safer despite strikes across all of the Gaza Strip.

“Anyone in Gaza City is risking their life,” Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said.

Gaza’s health ministry has said more than 9,400 Palestinians have been killed in the territory in nearly a month of war.

The soaring death toll in Gaza has sparked growing international anger, with tens of thousands from Washington to London taking to the streets Saturday to demand an immediate ceasefire.

In London, demonstrators laid out fake bloodied corpses of babies killed in airstrikes.

The attack on the Maghazi refugee camp comes days after the Jabalia and Bureij refugee camps were struck.

Additional reporting by AP.