Israeli air strike kills at least 10 in Gaza: medics

An Israeli air strike has killed at least 10 Palestinians in a tent encampment sheltering displaced families in southern Gaza strip, medics say.

The 10 people, including women and children, were killed in a tent in Al-Mawasi, designated as a humanitarian area in western Khan Younis on Thursday, according to the medics.

Fifteen people were also wounded, the medics added. The Israeli military has not immediately commented.

Earlier air strikes in Shejaia, a suburb of Gaza City, killed at least eight Palestinians, according to local emergency services.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military and it was not immediately clear who was killed in the attack.

In al-Buriej, in the centre of the strip, the Israeli military said it struck a militant operating in an area from which rockets had been fired into Israel the previous day.

Its Arabic spokesman had ordered people to leave the area before the strike.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said a woman and a child were killed in the strike.

Israel says its almost three-month-old campaign in the northern Gaza Strip is aimed at preventing Hamas militants from regrouping.

Its instructions to civilians to leave are meant to keep them out of harm's way, the military says.

Palestinian and United Nations officials say no place is safe in the enclave and that evacuation orders worsen the humanitarian conditions of the population.

According to the Palestinian civil defence, more than 1500 tents sheltering displaced people across the Gaza Strip were flooded by heavy rains over the past two days, leaving people exposed to the cold and their belongings damaged.

Hundreds of thousands live in tents on the coast as winter brings frequent rainstorms and temperatures drop below 10C at night. At least six infants and another person have died of hypothermia, according to the Health Ministry.

Israel has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians in the war in Gaza, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave. Most of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced and much of the tiny coastal strip is in ruins.

The war was triggered by Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in which 1200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

US and Arab mediators have spent nearly a year trying to broker a ceasefire and hostage release but those efforts have repeatedly stalled.

Defence Minister Israel Katz warned that Hamas will "suffer blows of a magnitude not seen in Gaza for a long time" if it doesn't soon release the remaining hostages and stop firing at Israel.

Hamas has demanded a lasting truce while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting until "total victory".

with AP