GAZA: An Israeli missile slammed into a tent encampment in southern Gaza just as displaced people had gathered there to watch a football match at a school, eyewitnesses said on Wednesday.
At least 29 people, mostly women and children, were killed in the strike, according to Palestinian officials, which took place as spectators crowded the school grounds in Abassan east of Khan Younis and hawkers sold smoothies and biscuits.
"They were watching a football match. There were injuries and martyrs. I witnessed this...people thrown around and body parts scattered, blood," a young woman, Ghazzal Nasser said in Abassan. "Everything was normal. People were playing, others were buying and selling food and drinks. There was no sound of planes or anything," she said.
The Israeli military said it was reviewing reports that civilians were harmed. It said the incident occurred when it struck with a "precise munition" a Palestinian fighter who took part in the Oct. 7 raid on Israel. The military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it knew that a football match was going on when the strike was ordered.
At the nearby Nasser Hospital, dozens of Palestinians bid farewell to loved ones before funerals and burials.
"The schools were overcrowded with people and the street was full too, suddenly a missile hit and destroyed the whole place," said Asmaa Qudeih, who lost some relatives in the attack.
"Bodies flew in the wind, body parts flew, I don't know how to describe it," she said.
Israeli forces continued to press their offensive in north and central Gaza on Wednesday, and deepened their incursion into two Gaza City districts, carrying out house-to-house searches.
The Palestinian group Hamas said the renewed Israeli campaign threatened to derail efforts to secure a ceasefire in the nine-month-old war, with talks to resume in Doha on Wednesday.
In Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.S. Middle East envoy Brett McGurk he was committed to securing a Gaza ceasefire deal provided Israel's red lines were respected, his office said.
Hamas has accepted a key part of a U.S. plan aimed at ending the nine-month-old war, dropping a demand that Israel first commit to a permanent ceasefire before signing the agreement.
In the central Gaza camp of Al-Nuseirat, medics said six Palestinians, including children, were killed in an airstrike on a house, while another airstrike killed two people and wounded several others in Khan Younis. More than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, health officials in the territory said. — Reuters
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