The ministry is also part of the Hamas-run government. Its figures are widely seen as reliable.

The Hamas government’s media office said in a statement that the toll discrepancies arose from different methods of counting the dead, saying the Health Ministry counts only bodies taken to hospitals while the Civil Defence also counts bodies that have not yet been retrieved.

An AP cameraman at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis saw 10 bodies in the morgue, including two children and three women.

“We were sleeping, and suddenly it was like a tornado,” Samar Moamer said at hospital, where she was being treated for wounds from the strike. She said one of her daughters was killed and the other was pulled alive from the rubble.

The Israeli military said it struck Hamas militants in a command centre embedded in the area. It identified three of the militants, calling them senior operatives who were directly involved in the October 7 attack by Hamas that triggered the war and other recent attacks.

Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesperson, said in a post on the social media platform X that the initial casualty reports did “not line up with the information available to the (Israeli army), the precise weapons used and the accuracy of the strike.”

Hamas in a statement denied that any militants were in the area and called the Israeli allegations a “blatant lie.” Neither Israel nor Hamas provided evidence to support their claims.

Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames Hamas for their deaths because the militants often operate in residential areas and are known to position tunnels, rocket launchers and other infrastructure near homes, schools and mosques.

In July, Israel carried out a strike in the humanitarian zone that killed at least 90 Palestinians. The military said it targeted and killed Mohammed Deif, the shadowy leader of Hamas’ military wing, but Hamas says Deif is still alive.

International law allows for strikes on military targets in areas where civilians are present, provided the force used is proportionate to the military objective — something that is often disputed and would need to be settled in a court, which almost never happens.

The war has caused vast destruction and displaced around 90 per cent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Israeli evacuation orders, which now cover around 90 per cent of the territory, have pushed hundreds of thousands of people into Al-Mawasi, where aid groups have struggled to provide even basic services.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count, but says women and children make up just over half of the dead. Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 militants in the war.

Hamas-led fighters killed some 1200 people, mostly civilians, in the October 7 attack. They abducted another 250 people and are still holding around 100 hostage after releasing most of the rest in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel during a weeklong cease-fire last November. Around a third of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead.

AP

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