Israeli officials said the attack had been a “precision” strike targeting top Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif and his deputy Rafa Salama.
The strike took place close to the city of Khan Younis in an area designated by the Israeli military as a safe zone for civilians.
During a press conference later in the day Israel’s Prime Minister said it was not clear if the alleged targets had been killed during the strikes.
In a post on X, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that 134 “severely injured people” had been admitted to the nearby Nasser Medical Complex “which is extremely overwhelmed by the influx”.
Multiple hospitals treating the injured
WHO staffers are at the hospital along with two emergency medical teams helping to treat the injured, he continued.
“We have dispatched 50 foldable beds and 50 stretchers to increase the hospital’s capacity while our prepositioned medicines and trauma supplies are being used to save lives.”
Some of the injured have also been taken to a field hospital run by the International Medical Corps in Deir Al Balah where WHO supplies have been provided to meet the urgent needs of around 120 others. Other NGO field hospitals have also received patients in need of urgent treatment, he said.
Senior Communications Officer for the UN refugee agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) Louise Wateridge, tweeted harrowing video from Al Nasser hospital on Saturday afternoon local time where workers were “mopping up pools of blood with water alone.”
She described children lying on blood stained matresses “traumatised from losing siblings. Some had lost limbs. Many had life changing injuries.”
‘Senseless massacre’
The independent UN expert who monitors human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, said in a post on X that she was “horrified” at the deaths and injuries sustained during the strikes on what an Israeli military official said was an operational Hamas compound, in an “open area”.
Hamas said it was “false” that Israel had targeted it’s two top military commanders.
Of the Israeli attack which she said was “yet another senseless massacre” of civilians, Special Rapporteur Albanese tweeted “The justification is always the same: ‘targeting Palestinian militants’.”
Officials from Gaza’s civil defence authority also reported that at least 20 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli attack on a prayer centre inside the Shati camp for the displaced, to the west of Gaza City on Saturday.
Listen here to UNRWA’s Louise Wateridge describe to UN News what saw earlier this week in Gaza City, following a week-long Israeli offensive there.
