Israel attacks Gaza ‘humanitarian zone’, killing at least 11, wounding 15 

At least 11 Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed in an Israeli air strike on makeshift tents housing displaced people in a designated humanitarian safe zone in southern Gaza, local medics and news organisations report.

The predawn attack on Thursday in the al-Mawasi area – which Israel’s military declared a “safe zone” early on in its war on Gaza – is reported to have resulted in the killing of three children and two women among the 11 who died.

A video clip from the aftermath of the attack showed people searching for survivors among burning tents, scattered debris, and washing lines where residents of the camp for displaced people had hung clothes to dry.

The Reuters news agency reports that 15 people were also wounded in the attack, though there were no details on their condition.

Israel’s military did not comment on its latest attack on the humanitarian area, which has been targeted relentlessly by Israeli warplanes, drones and artillery, including the most recent attack on December 22, which killed eight people, including two children.

Days earlier, Israeli tanks advanced on al-Mawasi from the southern city of Rafah, forcing dozens of families to flee northward fearing imminent attack.

At least 20 people were killed and others wounded in an Israeli missile strike on tents in al-Mawasi on December 3, in what Israel’s military said was the targeting of a Hamas official.

On New Year’s Day, Israeli attacks across Gaza killed at least 26 people with four children and a woman reported to be among those slain. Ten people were also missing among the rubble of buildings destroyed in the attack.

Fifteen people, all reported to be civilians, were killed in one strike on a home where displaced people had taken shelter in Jabalia in northern Gaza, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza said.

Israeli forces gave no warning for the attack on al-Mawasi early on Thursday morning but had earlier issued orders for all residents in northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp to flee three areas that it said were designated for an attack.

The warning for residents to flee from Jabalia to Gaza City was described as a “pre-anesthesia before the attack” by the Israeli military’s Arabic language spokesman, Avichay Adraee.

“Once again, terrorist organisations are launching rockets from your area, which has been warned many times in the past,” he said in a post on social media.

Despite large parts of northern Gaza, including Jabalia, suffering almost three months of siege by Israeli forces, two United States-based defence think tanks said this week that Palestinian fighters had launched a coordinated, “multi-wave attack” on Israeli forces in Jabalia – one that was larger than most other Palestinian military operations across Gaza in recent months.

The death toll from the first two days of 2025 adds to the 45,553 Palestinians, at least, who have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since launching a punishing war on the territory in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on southern Israel.