Nearly 100 Palestinians Massacred in Two Refugee Camps   

GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) -- Dozens of Palestinians were martyred in Israeli strikes on a displaced people’s camp in Gaza’s Khan Younis on Saturday, according to the government media office.
Gaza’s health ministry said at least 71 Palestinians were killed in the attack, adding that 289 others were injured.
Hamas said the bombardment hit tents housing displaced people in the Mawasi district of Khan Younis, an area that the occupying regime of Israel had reportedly designated a safe zone.
“The Israeli occupation army conducted a big massacre by bombarding the tent camps of the displaced in Khan Younis,” the statement issued by the Gaza government media office said.
“The horrifying massacre killed and wounded more than 100 people, including members of the Civil Emergency Service.”
Israeli army radio cited military sources as saying the target of the strikes was Muhammad Deif, head of Hamas’s military wing, which the Zionist military later confirmed.

However, a Hamas official told Reuters this was “nonsense”.
“All the martyrs are civilians, and what happened was a grave escalation of the war of genocide, backed by the American support and world silence,” Abu Zuhri said, adding that the attack proved Israel was not interested in a ceasefire.
Shortly after, extremist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that he gave a “permanent directive to eliminate senior Hamas officials” at the beginning of the war, adding he would hold security talks throughout the day to discuss further developments.
Journalist Firas Abu Sharkh, who was reporting from the scene, said Israeli forces “directly targeted” civil defense and ministry of health teams working to recover the dead and wounded in Mawasi.
This was also reported by the military correspondent from Israel’s Yediot Ahronot, who said on X that the military had “continued to attack the compound where Deif was staying even after the initial attack to make sure that the rescue forces did not arrive to rescue” the victims.
Nabil Walid, based in Khan Younis, told Middle East Eye that a missile hit the Ajrar gas complex, which led to an explosion, while another struck a water desalination plant.
An official at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis has said that they were overwhelmed with bodies and injured people following the attack on Mawasi.
He said they had so far received 20 dead bodies and dozens of wounded people, adding that the medical teams did not have the capacity to treat any more.
Civil defense teams were also working to recover bodies from the rubble.
Muhammad Al Khatib, a worker for Medical Aid for Palestinians based in Khan Younis, said his organization had been forced to temporarily evacuate one of their medical points, intended to provide primary health care services, due to the “insecurity”.
“Al-Mawasi is heavily crowded and has a big market where people move around to try and secure their basic needs,” he said in a statement.
In another incident around the same time, a Gaza civil defense official said an Israeli strike killed 21 people at the Shati displacement camp west of Rafah.  
The Zionist regime has martyred at least 38,443 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to a toll from the Gaza health ministry issued Saturday afternoon.
The war has left the vast majority of Gazans displaced and short of life-saving assistance in a territory where much of the infrastructure has been destroyed.
 The Palestinian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Saturday condemning the Israeli “massacres” in Gaza’s Mawasi and Shati refugee camps.
In a post on X, the ministry called on “the states supporting Israel to awaken their conscience and morals, and to stop obstructing international efforts to end the genocidal war” in Gaza. 
The Gaza government media office hit out at the occupying regime for spreading “fake news, lies and rumors” about the Mawasi attack targeting senior Palestinian officials “in order to divert attention from the horrific crime in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis”.
The office rejected the Israeli claim as a “failed attempt to justify the horrific massacre”.
“The Israeli occupation has been practising a policy of deception repeatedly since the beginning of the war of genocide, in an attempt to cover up its failure and the crimes it commits against civilians and displaced persons, especially children and women,” it said.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad also condemned Israel’s “horrific massacre” in Mawasi, saying that Zionist claims that the attack was targeting Hamas leaders “proves its premeditated intention to commit this crime”.
“This crime confirms that the occupation has disregarded all international norms and covenants,” the PIJ said in a statement, adding that the attack constitutes “an insistence on continuing the war of extermination against our people”.
The official spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the U.S. administration is responsible for the Israeli attack on Mawasi.
“The U.S. administration bears the responsibility for this heinous massacre, which claimed the lives of hundreds of our children, women, and elderly,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement.
He added that the administration’s continued provision of financial and military support to Israel violates “international legitimacy resolutions” and emboldens the country to “commit bloody massacres against our people every day”.
Abu Rudeineh called on the UN Security Council “to intervene immediately to stop these bloody massacres and compel the occupation authorities to immediately cease all these actions that violate all international legitimacy resolutions”. 
The British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) also called for the UK government to “act urgently” to halt arms sales to Israel.
The charity said in a statement that, in the aftermath of Israeli strikes on displaced people sheltering in Mawasi, they had been forced to temporarily evacuate one of its medical points near the area.
“Al-Mawasi is heavily crowded and has a big market where people move around to try and secure their basic needs,” MAP’s Muhammad Al Khatib said.
The charity said it has been “warning for months that there is no safe place for anyone in Gaza amid Israel’s military bombardment that ICJ [International Court of Justice] has concluded may amount to genocide”.
In May, a fire killed 45 people at a tent city in Al-Mawasi. Israel’s military said it had targeted and killed two senior Hamas fighters in northwest Rafah in the strike which sparked the blaze. 
In June, the military leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, compared the war in Gaza to the monumental 7th century battle in Karbala. 
“We have to move forward on the same path we started,” Sinwar wrote. “Or let it be a new Karbala.”
Incidentally, the escalation in Israeli genocide coincides with Muharram, the first month in the Islamic lunar calendar, which marks the martyrdom of Imam Hussein (AS), the third Shia Imam and the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon Him), and his 72 companions in the Battle of Karbala against the huge army of Yazid in 680 in order to protect Islam.