Dozens killed in Israeli "massacre" on Gaza tent camp

At least 19 people have been killed and many wounded in an Israeli strike on a designated “safe zone” in southern Gaza, according to officials.

A spokesperson for Gaza’s civil defence said the initial assessment of the scene suggested the attack was “one of the most heinous massacres in this frenzied war”.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said the bodies of the victims recovered so far had arrived in hospitals after the missile attack on a tent camp in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, where Palestinians were sheltering, early on Tuesday.

Israeli attacks have frequently hit areas where its military had previously directed civilians seeking safety.

“A number of victims are still under the rubble, under the sand, and on the roads, and ambulance and civil defense crews cannot reach them and retrieve them, and they have not reached hospitals yet,” the health ministry statement noted, while reporting the lower death toll.

“The people were buried in the sand,” one witness, Attaf al-Shaar, told The Associated Press.

“They were retrieved as body parts.”

“Dozens are still missing and the civil defence have been digging with their bare hands to get the people out,” reported Al Jazeera’s Mansour Shouman.