Al-Mawasi, Gaza - An Israeli strike Tuesday on a designated humanitarian zone in Gaza killed at least 40 people, according to local authorities, in the latest atrocity of a year-long war.

The strike hit Al-Mawasi, which was designated a safe zone by the Israeli military early in the war, with tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians seeking refuge there.

That hasn't stopped the Israel military from carrying out brutal attacks that routinely kill scores of civilians. It's also not the first time refugee encampments have been targeted with horrific results.

Gaza civil defense official Mohammed al-Mughair said 40 bodies and 60 wounded were taken to nearby hospitals following the strike in the early hours of Tuesday, which left huge craters in the ground.

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"Our crews are still working to recover 15 missing people as a result of targeting the tents of the displaced in Mawasi, Khan Yunis," Mughair told AFP.

In another statement, civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal said people sheltering in the camp had not been warned of the strike, adding a shortage of tools and equipment was hindering rescue operations.

"More than 20 to 40 tents were completely damaged," he said, adding the strike left behind "three deep craters".

"There are entire families who disappeared under the sand in the Mawasi Khan Yunis massacre."

Following the strike, survivors rushed to pull their belongings from the rubble, including mattresses and clothing, an AFP journalist saw.

"They told us to come to Al-Mawasi, so we came to Al-Mawasi, we settled here. The area was bombed without prior warning, they didn't ask us to flee to a safer area or anything," a Palestinian man told AFP without giving his name.

The Israeli military said in a statement that its aircraft had "struck significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command and control center embedded inside the Humanitarian Area in Khan Yunis," offering no evidence or explanation for how an overcrowded encampment with no infrastructure in sight could serve as a sophisticated base of military operations.

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In a later statement, the military also questioned the toll provided by authorities in Gaza, saying that the numbers "do not align with the information held by the IDF".

The statement named several Palestinian militants it said were killed in the strike, describing them as "directly involved in the execution of the October 7th massacre" that sparked the war in Gaza.

Hamas said in a statement that claims its fighters were present at the scene of the strike were "a blatant lie."

Over the course of the war, Israel has justified the killing of tens of thousands of civilians – who make up the majority of the 40,000-plus death toll in Gaza – by simply accusing the organization of human shielding.