Israel Launches New Attack On Gaza After Week-End Strike That Killed Many People

Badminton UNRWA / Bomb attacks at schools that are refugee camps for residents in Khan Younis, Gaza.

JAKARTA - Israel attacked the southern and central Gaza Strip on Monday, July 15, to exert greater pressure on Hamas, following a sensitive final attack that killed a number of Palestinians camping in the designated "safe zone".

Two days after the Israeli attack turned the Mawasi area into a scorched desert filled with burning cars and destroyed bodies, the confused refugees did not know where they should go next.

"The moments when the soil was covered under my feet and the dust and the sand rose into the sky and I saw dismembered bodies unlike I have ever seen in my life," said Aya Mohammad (30), a market seller in Manawa.

"Where to go is everyone's question, and no one knows the answer," he added.

Mawasi in the western suburbs of Khan Younis has protected hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled to the area after Israel declared it a safe zone. Israel said its attack there on Saturday last week targeted military commander Hamas Mohammed Defif, an architect of the October 7 attacks on Israeli cities and villages that sparked the Gaza war.

Palestinian officials said 90 people died on Saturday, July 13, and hundreds were injured.

In the south of Rafah, residents reported new fighting today. Israeli troops in the western and central parts of the city blew up several houses, they said.

Medical officials said they found 10 bodies of Palestinians who died from Israeli fire in the eastern region of the city, some of whom had started to rot.

The military also stepped up airstrikes and tanks in central Gaza in the historic refugee camps of Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi. Health officials said five Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes against a house in the Maghazi camp.

The Israeli military said the air force attacked dozens of Palestinian military targets in Gaza, killing many armed men.

IDF forces kill gunmen in Rafah and central Gaza, sometimes in close combat.