Gaza’s civil defence agency’s spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP that 10 people, of the 20 Palestinians who were killed in an overnight Israeli airstrike, were from the same family.
The 10 members of the family were killed during the first airstrike, as they were sheltering in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis. A second airstrike on the Al-Shati camp near Gaza City, also left more than 30 wounded.
The victims were from two families, Bassal added.
“The explosion was massive, like an earthquake,” said Zuhair Judeh, 40, who saw the Al-Shati airstrike.
“It destroyed the house and several nearby homes. The bodies and remains of the martyrs were scattered,” he added, calling it “a horrific massacre”.
Several people remained missing, presumed trapped under the rubble, he said.
Gaza civil defence has said 20 people, including at least six children, have been killed in Israeli airstrikes overnight. Agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP the first hit a tent housing displaced people in Khan Younis in the south shortly after midnight local time (9pm GMT Tuesday) and the second struck a camp in the north soon afterwards.
Humanitarian workers, medical officials and doctors in Gaza say they have been overwhelmed by almost daily “mass casualty incidents” as they struggle to deal with those wounded by Israeli fire on Palestinians seeking aid.
The UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories said the governments of Italy, France, and Greece “must explain why they provided airspace and safe passage to ICC-wanted Benjamin Netanyahu, whom they are obligated to arrest.”
