A tank attack on a United Nations centre sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians has killed at least nine people and wounded 75 others in Gaza’s second largest city, senior U.N. humanitarian officials said Wednesday.
Two tank shells hit a building filled with 800 people at a training center compound where 10,000 Palestinians have sought refuge from Israel’s ground invasion, said Thomas White, the director of UNRWA, the U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees.
In a post on X, White said UNRWA employees were unable to reach the area in Khan Younis because the route there has been blocked by an earth bank, without elaborating. Another attack on the same facility on Monday killed six people, UNRWA said earlier this week.
No other information was immediately available.
Later Wednesday, the Israeli military said it did not believe the blast was “a result of an aerial or artillery strike” by its forces, without specifically addressing the U.N.’s mention of tank fire, and said it was reviewing operations in the area.
James McGoldrick, the acting U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said in a video conference with reporters that intensified Israeli military activity is also taking place in the area, which includes Nasser Hospital and other health facilities where medical staff are hunkering down with patients and displaced people.
For weeks, Khan Younis has been one of the frontlines of the war between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, a conflict now entering its fourth month. On Tuesday, the Israeli army said forces had completely encircled the city.
Elsewhere in Gaza, at least five people were killed when a strike hit a mosque in the far southern city of Rafah Wednesday, according to Associated Press journalists.
The dead and the injured were taken to nearby Abu Youssef al-Najjar hospital where they were counted by AP staff.
