Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that Israeli strikes on the Al-Shati camp west of Gaza City killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 50.

Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once during 21 months of conflict, and the Al-Shati camp, on the Mediterranean coast, hosts thousands of people displaced from the north in tents and makeshift shelters.

Raed Bakr lives with his three children and said he heard “a massive explosion” at about 1:40 am, which blew their tent away.


He said he carried a six-year-old child to get treatment and said the nearby Shifa hospital once one of Gaza’s largest and was overwhelmed with wounded people.


The civil defence agency’s Bassal said two more people were killed in Deir el-Balah, where the Israeli army said it would expand its ground operations, having ordered the evacuation of much of the area.