Local rescue officials quoted the death toll as at least 40 people in an overnight Israeli strike on a humanitarian zone created to shelter displaced persons in southern Gaza, which the Israel Defense Forces said was to attack Hamas terrorists in the area.

More than 60 others were injured in the strike, according to Gaza Civil Defense, as rescuers worked to recover victims buried under sand and debris. The civil defence said its crews faced “great difficulty” in retrieving victims believed to be sleeping during strikes due to a lack of means and “the absence of a light source.”

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said late on Monday evening it “struck significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command-and-control center embedded inside the humanitarian area” in Khan Younis, Gaza. Hamas has denied it had placed fighters in that area.

The strike hit Al-Mawasi, a coastal enclave near Khan Younis to which tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have fled- most of them into tents in an area with sparse infrastructure and scant access to shelter or life saving humanitarian aid.

The army said the operation was conducted in cooperation with the direction of the Israel Security Agency and the Air Force, adding that it took measures to minimize civilian harm, “including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional means.” The military did not say whether it issued warnings to civilians in the area.

Hamas, in a statement, decried as “a blatant lie, through which it (Israel) seeks to justify these heinous crimes” claims by Israel that its fighters were in the area. ( Paris)Hamas said “dozens of unarmed civilians, most of whom were children and women,” were killed in the strike.

The spokesman of the Gaza Civil Defense, Mahmoud Bassal, said Palestinians in that area were not warned about the strike. The displaced people in the Al-Mawasi area number over 200 tents, Bassal added, estimating about 20 to 40 were destroyed and that “entire families have disappeared in the sand.”

According to Gaza Civil Defense, several witnesses stated that at least five missiles hit there. Bassal said that the explosion created three craters. “Ambulance and civil defence crews were mobilized at the site, and there is talk of a large number of killed and wounded,” the Gaza Civil Defense said.

The video above, posted on social media and Al Aqsa TV of Hamas, shows members of Gaza Civil Defense digging in the sand to find missing individuals. Screens of different clothes and shoes can be seen thrown everywhere. CNN has not independently verified the footage.

The IDF accused Hamas and other terror organizations in the Gaza Strip of “continuing to systematically abuse civilian and humanitarian infrastructure, including the designated Humanitarian Area, to conduct terrorist activity against the State of Israel and IDF troops.”

It has been a frequent target of Israel in its search for Hamas leaders, and bombardments have caused heavy civilian collateral deaths. In mid-July, a strike targeting Hamas’s military leader, Mohammed Deif, killed at least 90 Palestinians.

The following month, Israel said its intelligence agencies had confirmed that Deif, whom it claimed was one of the declared architects of the October 7 attacks, had died in that bombing.

Israel says it has killed or captured half of Hamas’ commanders and more than 14,000 fighters since the war started, but there are signs that the fighting group is reconstituting in parts of the strip cleared by Israeli forces, which reduced great swaths of it to rubble.