At least 40 people have been killed in southern Gaza and dozens more injured in Israeli strikes on a designated humanitarian zone. In a statement, the Israeli military said, its aircraft attacked an operations centre in Khan Younis belonging to Hamas fighters, and that it had taken steps to mitigate risk of harming civilians.

The operations director of Hamas’s civil defence authority told reporters that forty people were killed and more than 60 injured, while many are still under the rubble.

In a social media post, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said, it had attacked key terrorists of the terrorist organisation Hamas who were operating in a command and control complex disguised in the humanitarian area in Khan Younis. Prior to the attack, many measures were taken to reduce the chance of harming civilians, including the use of precision weaponry, air strikes and additional intelligence information, he added.

Thousands of displaced Palestinians have fled to Khan Younis since Israel launched its military campaign in the territory last October. The ground operation was launched in response to Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October, in which about 1,200 were killed and 251 were taken hostage. More than 40,900 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.