Israeli attack disrupts Gaza football match, killing dozens of people, witnesses say

GAZA – An Israeli missile struck a tent camp in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday as displaced people gathered to watch a soccer match at a school, witnesses said on Wednesday.

At least 29 people, mostly women and children, were killed in the attack, according to Palestinian authorities. The attack occurred as spectators crowded the school grounds in Abassan, east of the city of Khan Younis, and street vendors sold smoothies and cookies.

“They were watching a football match. There were injuries and deaths. I saw it… people being thrown around, body parts scattered, blood,” a young woman, Ghazzal Nasser, told Reuters in Abassan.

“Everything was normal. People were playing, others were buying and selling food and drinks,” she said. “There were no airplane noises or anything like that.”

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The Israeli military said it was investigating reports that civilians had been harmed. The incident occurred when it used “precision ammunition” to hit a Hamas fighter who took part in the October 7 raid on Israel that sparked the war.

When asked to comment on whether the military was aware that a soccer match was in progress at the time it ordered the attack, it did not immediately respond.

At the nearby Nasser Hospital, dozens of Palestinians said goodbye to their loved ones before funerals and burials.

“The schools were overcrowded with people and the streets were also full when suddenly a rocket hit and destroyed the whole place,” said Asmaa Qudeih, who lost several relatives in the attack.

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“Bodies were flying in the wind, body parts were flying, I don’t know how to describe it,” she said.

Israeli forces continued their offensive in the north and center of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, advancing further into two Gaza districts and conducting numerous house-to-house searches.

The militant Hamas group said the renewed Israeli offensive threatened to undermine efforts to reach a ceasefire in the nine-month war. Talks are due to resume in Doha on Wednesday.

In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US Middle East envoy Brett McGurk that he was determined to negotiate a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip as long as Israel’s red lines were respected, his office said.

Hamas has accepted a key part of a US plan to end the nine-month war, dropping the demand that Israel first commit to a permanent ceasefire before signing the agreement.

Netanyahu stressed that the agreement should not prevent Israel from resuming fighting until its war aims are achieved. At the beginning of the war, he promised to destroy Hamas.

Civilians flee attacks on Gaza

On Wednesday, leaflets were dropped over Gaza, this time with a map marking “safe routes” for the evacuation of the entire city, rather than just specific neighborhoods. The Israeli leaflets urge civilians to head south to the central Gaza Strip.

The town, which was home to more than a quarter of Gaza’s population before the war, was destroyed by an Israeli attack in the first weeks of fighting last year. But in recent months, hundreds of thousands of Gazans are believed to have returned to the ruins.

Residents reported that Israeli forces were patrolling the main road to the coast, snipers were manning the roofs of some of the still-standing high-rise buildings, and tanks were stationed at the headquarters of the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA.

The Israeli military said in a statement that its forces continued operations in Gaza City against militants from Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad, who had operated from UNRWA facilities and used them as a base for attacks.

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The Palestinian Red Crescent said it had received dozens of desperate calls from Gaza City residents trapped in their homes, but the intensity of the bombing had prevented teams from reaching them.

“Information coming out of Gaza City shows that residents are living in tragic conditions. (Israeli) occupation forces continue to attack residential areas and drive people from their homes and shelters,” it said in a statement.

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The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said fighters were fighting with Israeli forces operating in the area, using anti-tank missiles and mortar shells, and were sometimes engaging in hand-to-hand combat.

The Israeli military announced that one of its soldiers was killed in fighting in central Gaza on Tuesday. It released the names of 681 military personnel killed in the October 7 attacks and subsequent fighting.

Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday that 60 percent of Hamas fighters were killed or wounded as a result of the military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

In the central Gaza camp of Al-Nuseirat, an airstrike on a house killed six Palestinians, including children, according to medics, while another airstrike in Khan Younis killed two people and injured several others.

More than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began, health officials in the Hamas-controlled territory said.

The war broke out when Hamas-led militants entered southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli sources.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Gaza airstrike hit as displaced people gathered for soccer game: witnesses