The Israeli military said on Friday that it had struck a missile launch site belonging to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group that had been embedded in a shelter for displaced people in a “humanitarian zone” of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.
The claim could not be independently verified, but armed groups have used Gazans as human shields by keeping weapons and launching rockets from civilian areas. Local residents could not be immediately reached.
The military said on Friday that before the strike, “various measures were taken in order to mitigate harm to uninvolved civilians.”
Israel maintains it takes care to avoid killing civilians, even though they are dealing with Hamas’s tactic of operating in civilian centers. Gazan authorities dispute that claim, and the death toll in the enclave has spiraled. Health authorities say more than 37,000 people have been killed in Israeli military operation. They have not differentiated between combatants and civilians.
Dozens of Palestinians were killed in May after an Israeli airstrike hit a makeshift camp in southern Gaza. Israeli said that it had destroyed a rocket launcher used by Hamas in an attack in central Israel hours earlier, which was not near the camp. A few hours later, Israel struck again, dropping two 250-pound bombs on temporary structures in the camp, sending shrapnel in every direction and starting a fire.